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Retirement Talk for Boomers, Seniors, and Retirees

Frog Spit

Jackie Spinks

                                                          Chapter Fifteen

France has wine, England has the royal family, and America has cars.  Will we ever love again as we did those first horseless carriages that Ford whipped out? 

If having a job was the most important thing in life and helping the relatives was the second, owning a car was the third.  On Sunday afternoon, when we weren’t touring the town for houses Mama wouldn’t have on a bet, Daddy, my uncles and assorted friends, would stand around and examine each other’s car. 

They’d circle them, kick tires, frown and after multiple inspections, stand in a group and compare the mileage on each car and point out the superior attributes of this or that make, regaling each other with stories of breakdowns and their emergency treatments.

One or another, usually Daddy, would break from the group, mutter this or that, rub a fender, shake his head, look serious, and finally, like a surgeon, who washed up and was preparing to operate, open the hood, and peer into her inner viscera.

The others would then languidly mosey over and look inside, too.  They’d argue on the diagnosis of whatever was the current problem.  One would say, “Think it’s the crank shaft.”

“Nah, just a loose fan belt.”

“Have you checked the oil?”

The questioner would get a look as if checking and changing the oil was a sacred rite and they were being accused of rejecting the providence of God, by forgetting that sanctified ritual.  Well, what can be said, except it merited no answer.

They acted concerned, all knowing, but probably didn’t know much more than the names of problems, but as a group, had a great old time talking and thinking about cars.  Coming from the Old Country and always working with their muscles and nature, they knew little about cars.  But cars fascinated them as nothing had and they were willing to spend all their spare time, that they weren’t working at manual labor, looking, talking and thinking about cars.

“She’s been shifting hard.  Guess she’s getting old.”
            “Maybe you should trade her in,” Uncle #1 once suggested to Daddy, who had a steady affection for his old Model-A. With that remark,  Daddy got a look on his face, like Uncle #1 had suggested he visit a slaughterhouse and watch the animals being butchered.

“She’s got another 25,000 miles left in her, if she’s got a mile,” Daddy said, his voice quivering with pique.  Daddy had a long and faithful love affair with our old Model-A and he’d be damned if he would dump her just because she was getting a little rusty around the edges.

“What do you think of them new Hudsons?” Uncle #2 changed the subject.

“Nothing but trouble.  Give me a Ford any day,” Daddy quickly retorted.

“I’m thinking of getting me a Hudson.  This guy has a real beaut he’s giving away for a song,” Uncle #2 said.

Daddy looked around wildly for a way out.  He hated criticism of his Ford.  It was okay if he criticized it, but he became incensed if anyone else did.  At the same time, he also envied someone getting a beaut for a song.  He spotted me—Brother and a cousin.

“Hey, kids, let’s go for a spin.  Show these corkers there’s plenty of life left in the old flivver.”

“I wish it had a rumble seat.  Sam’s dad has a car with a rumble seat,” Brother said.

“Just get in.”  Daddy was huffy about Brother’s further criticism of “Old Faithful.”

So we all piled in.  Kids in back.  Where else?  We didn’t bother to make a request to sit in the front, as we did with Mama and the aunts.  And while Mama and the aunts never gratified our petitions, we could make them feel guilty.  Guilt failed to register on Daddy and the uncles, so we didn’t bother with that line of attack  with them. 

During the ride we were ignored.  We’d terrorize each other by threats to cut out the other’s tongue, pound kindling sticks under their fingernails, or drown their pet cat in the toilet.  One daring cousin upped the ante once with the crème do la crème of shockers, saying  “God stinks.”  Nothing happened except a muttered remark about gasoline prices.

Now this kind of talk about God, around Mama and the aunts, would bring an aunt or Mama twisting around over the front seat and flailing out with swats at us that invariably missed their mark, along with a lot of scolding.

“What kind of kids are you?  Did you hear that, Agnes?  Can you believe one of our kids said that?”

“Yeah, I heard.”
            “What kind of kids are we raising anyway?  It’s those schools.  Or those delinquents they associate with.  Which do you think?”

“Probably both.”
”What did we ever do to deserve such brats?”  And on and on.  With Daddy and the uncles—nothing.    All remarks and behavior ignored.  No leisurely cruising, up one street and down the other looking for some special shop, with these guys as it was with Mama or the aunts.  This was serious business.  Everyone was listening to the engine.

            “Do you hear that knock?”

“Yeah, what do you think it is?”

“Can’t say. How about that ping?  It’s been there for a long time.”

“If it’s been there for a long time, you probably don’t need to do anything about it.”

            And they’d analyze, these young, innocent men in their twenties, who hadn’t been raised with cars, but were eager to understand them.

            When Daddy got home from these spins with the uncles and/or friends, he’d head for the back porch and get one of his bootleg beers, then return to the car and peer for a long time under the hood, giving instructions to the nearest kid to fetch a screwdriver or wrench.

            The one constant about the car that needed fixing was the flat tire.  About once a month Daddy had a flat tire.  We’d watch him pull out the inner tube, look for the nail or whatever had caused the puncture, then finally, triumphantly hold up the culprit that caused the puncture. 

            If Mama was in the house, he’d have to bring it inside and show Mama, who’d politely say, “Wow!”
            He’d patch the inner tube and refill it with air.  I liked to push the pump up and down and watch the inner tube inflate.  This monthly ritual was performed with the same painstaking attention to detail as that of a medieval cardinal performing the last rites for a Pope.

            What love we had for cars—all cars.  We lived on a street where cars seldom traversed, so when a car came by, it could be the oldest clunker around yet we’d yell, “Hey, a car’s coming,” and all the kids and adults in the neighborhood would traipse outside and watch the car  go by, speeding by at twenty five miles an hour, spraying gravel, as it raced down the street.

            “Did you see how fast it was going?”

            “Yeah, WOW!”

            If Daddy was home from work, he’d come out to take a look and would say something like, “Well, what do you know, an old Essex,” and we’d be happy we’d notified him it was coming-- especially as he took such joy in recounting the merits and demerits of an Essex to Mama.

            He’d follow Mama around the kitchen.  “And Selma did you know blah-blah-blah?”

            “Uh huh.” Her reply.

            “And they blah-blah-blah.”
            “Hand me that frying pan.”

            “But I’d never, on a bet, have an Essex.”

            “Neither would I.”

            But the car above all cars that impressed Brother and me were the hearses.  I’d never before seen such little curtains and advised Daddy that little curtains would certainly add a note of class to our Model A.  My suggestion was given the cold shoulder.

“Selma, did you know Wil’s getting a Packard.  Now, I ask you, who’d want one of them gas-eaters?  Nothing but trouble.  I don’t know what’s the matter with Wil?  He gets a few bucks in his wallet and he has to spend it.  And on a Packard of all things!”  We all knew that Daddy would die happy if he owned a Packard.

After the Model-A we got another Ford.  Daddy didn’t desert Ford until he reached his forties.  In fact the way Daddy disparaged any car, except the Ford, I grew up thinking anyone who owned a Chevrolet –or Packard was little cretinoid.

And while Brother felt compelled to set kids right about the inferiority of Chevrolets and that person’s inferiority by association, as a girl, I kept my mouth shut and merely classified Chevie owners as out of the flow.

Eventually, Daddy, after he got ahead in his work, bought a Cord for $600.00.  He told Mama someday this baby  will be worth a lot of money.  We all thought he was bonkers.  So there it sat in our back yard for years, until Mama got tired of walking around it to hang up clothes, on the clotheslines, strung nearby  and insisted he sell it.  He sold it for $600.00.  Today, I saw a Cord, the same kind Daddy owned, at an auto show for $100,000.

How Daddy would have loved that auto show.

“Look Selma, can you believe it?  I knew I!  I knew it!”  And Mama would suffer in silent depression all the way home, while Daddy would bask.  He had been right and all of his critics had been wrong.  There it was—proof.  Daddy knew his cars.

Will we ever love cars, as we did then?  Love with the humble adoration those young men, fresh off farms, had for machinery?  Will we ever be as infatuated with technology again, as we were with our first ones.