Driving an Ambulance in High School

What kind of car did you drive in high school? My first car, which I obtained late in my junior year of high school, was a 1969 Cadillac ambulance. My father bought it for me from a used TV shop in Grand Junction, Colorado. I thought it was a blast because it still had most of the lights on top of it, was red and white, and a whole control console in the drivers cab for dozens of lights. The siren had been removed, but hey, it was a wacky car and loads of fun to cruise in.

The back of the car still had the medicine cabinets, a gurney and a variety of lights–blue for that medical subdued ambiance, and normal bright white lights for when you had to see well to work on a patient. It also had a false floor where I could store things. The only real down side was the terrible gas millage and it was difficult to maneuver for parking. Well, there was one other side-effect that I didn’t figure out till much later. My father was a pretty smart man in that I was the only teen in wester Colorado driving one of these. It was a big, safe car. Not much chance of me being squashed in a compact car collision. My friends wanted to go toilet paper houses in the surrounding neighborhoods. They suggested we take the ambulance because there was 10 of us, and it was the only car large enough to carry us all. It sounded like a great idea at the time. Admittedly, it was practical, but not perhaps the wisest thing we could have done. We ran the circuit and hit about eight houses. When I got home my father was waiting up. His first question for me was, “Did you have fun tonight?” His second question was, “Will you be going back in the morning to clean up the mess you made toilet papering the houses around the neighborhood?” It was only then that I figured out rather than having Lo-Jack or some tracking device, my father had given me a car which could never be mistaken and extremely easy to ID. I was stuck and spent the next morning cleaning up the mess my friends and I had made.

One of the great advantages of the ambulance was its large carrying capacity. I had a small DJ business which some large equipment. It was rather easy to fit the equipment in the back of the car. Rear loading lights made loading and unloading the vehicle easy, and if I wanted to be a little different, I could flip on all the lights while loading and unloading from a dance.

Eventually repairs to the aging engine forced me to sell off the car. However, I had so much fun with the car, I replaced it with a Golden County Sherif’s Interceptor Cruiser!