“This was when it was brand new, and I was too,” Carol Case laughs, holding up a 60-year-old photo of herself with her 1963 Falcon Futura.
Carol was one of more than 120 vintage vehicle enthusiasts who showed off gleaming rides at Cars and Crafts at the Creek at Flat Creek Baptist Church Saturday.
“This year, we celebrate,” she says. “It’s 60 years old, and I’m 80. Praise God, I’m still driving it.”
In the photo, 20-year-old Carol wears the Delta Airlines uniform for flight attendants, or stewardesses, as they were known in those days. She bought the car with her first Delta paycheck.
Because she was so young, she needed a co-signer for the loan. Her father was willing, appreciating the life lesson the opportunity presented.
“Only if you buy it and pay for it will you appreciate the car,” he said.
With this understanding, the two of them went to Deel Ford in Coral Gables, Fla., and walked the lot.
“Of course, I had to look at prices, and the Falcons were the cheapest,” she recalls. “I saw that car and just fell in love with it,” telling her father, “I’ve got to have that car.”’
At $2,380, with car payments of $72.11 a month, including taxes and insurance, it would take a big bite out of her paycheck for three years.
“My dad handed me the coupon book and flipped through it,” she remembers.
“36 months,” she recalls him saying. “You better stay, young lady, with Delta Airlines for 36 months. You better hold this job and pay every payment of that. Don’t stick me with this car.”
She promised and kept her word, remaining with Delta for three years and then 35 more.
Early in her career, she drove the car from her home near Lenox Square to the Atlanta airport.
“That was the furthest north that you could live and still report as a flight attendant,” she says. “So I drove it in the Atlanta heat with the Delta uniform on and the nylon stockings. The hat and everything.”
With no power steering, no power brakes, no air conditioning (and only an AM radio), by the time she got to work, her makeup was running, her hair out of place, but she loved it.
She loved driving it in the Smoky Mountains, too, and on many other adventures. She cruised around Florida when based in Miami and was back on Atlanta roads when she returned to Delta’s hometown to fly international routes.
She had the car restored in 1993. The current engine has 10,000 miles on it. Carol doesn’t know how many miles were on the odometer before the restoration.
When she retired from Delta in 2000 after nearly 38 years, she and her husband moved for a while to Colorado. She drove it there, too, although noting the altitude definitely affected performance.
It’s not the only car she’s ever owned, but it’s the one she kept and the one she drives now, although she stays close to home in Peachtree City. She’ll continue to drive as long as her health allows, enjoying back roads in the country as often as she can.
Carol’s faithful ride didn’t win any prizes at the car show Saturday–“People chose Corvettes over the old girl,” she said–but it takes the grand prize in her heart.

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