Trunk full of memories for Yasinowski couple

When Russell Yasinowski was a boy he had a dream.

It was a simple dream, to take his parents on a vacation, their first time away from their farm at Wishart.

By 1958 Yasinowski, by then a young man, had saved enough money from farming and part-time jobs, to buy a car.

So he took the $3,400 from the sock he had it ‘banked’ in, and headed to Wynyard and a visit to Stern Motors.

“I dropped it on John Stroznik’s desk,” recalled Yasinowski. “He counted it up, wrote a receipt and gave me the keys.”

The car was a Pontiac Pathfinder with a few modern options, including a sharp two-tone paint job, and “it had a radio in it,” said Yasinowski. “That was still something different then …

“I like the car. They were a good looking car.”

So Yasinowski had a new car to fulfill his childhood dream with, although that spring day he couldn’t get the car home to the Wishart-area farm.

“I had to leave it at the neighbours,” he said, noting the last mile-and-a-half of road was impassable to a car in the spring. So the last leg of the trip was by a 1530 tractor “on steel wheels.”

With the car purchased Yasinowski was able to take his parents on the vacation he had always wanted to treat them to.

The trip would take them to Ontario to visit a son who had moved away years earlier.

“We hadn’t seen him since the 1940s,” recalled Yasinowski.

On the way back west they stopped in Winnipeg where the family had first settled in Canada.

While the trip was a dream fulfilling one, it was not the only one made in the Pathfinder, which still sits stored in a garage.

After that the car became a workhorse. Yasinowski said he courted his wife of more than 55 years Anne in the car.

Once married it took the couple to dances all over East Central Saskatchewan, as well as carrying Russell and teammates to numerous ball tournaments.

Yasinowski estimated “well over 300,000 miles” on the car, adding “it was well over 200,000 when I redid the motor.”

The motor is a six cylinder, which Yasinowski said has drawn a lot of interest through the years. He recalled a trip to the United States. The car was still relatively new, but when a gas attendant asked if he wanted the oil checked he said yes.

The attendant commented “what is that” and that drew a number of people over, and had Yasinowski worried something was wrong, only to find they had not seen a six cylinder in a car before.

Yasinowski said the six cylinder “made 28 miles to the gallon.” on the highway, but still gave the Pathfinder lots of spunk.

“The best I had it up to was 118,” he said with a grin, much to his wife’s chagrin at the memory. “That was a good road,” he added.

Yasinowski said he drove the car almost daily until 1979-80. “That’s when we parked it.”

Today it is a show piece, kept for sentimental value.

“We had it running last year. We took it for a ride down the road and back,” he said.

Yasinowski added that over the years they have had the car in a few area parades, and at the Thresherman’s Show in Yorkton, where the car still draws a lot of attention.