In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [69]
Of course, at that time cars had distinctive personalities and characteristics in themselves and did not all come stamped out of the same mold, painted with the same paint, and advertised by the same agency. A Terraplane man was a completely different breed than, say, a Buick type. John Dillinger drove a Terraplane, which said a lot for the Terraplane type—an angry, rakish, wild machine. It was not a matter of Status then, but of attitude and personality, and the Used-Car man had the fiercest loyalties of all. He was usually not only dedicated to certain makes of cars but to specific years within the breeds. I remember spending long afternoons with my father, hunting for a particular Graham-Paige that reputedly was of the finest of vintage years.
The day we found that beautiful midnight blue four-door Graham, with its stark Gothic radiator grille, was one of the true Festival days of that epoch. She sat bracketed between an elderly Plymouth and a stodgy LaSalle, glowing darkly with a sort of prim, contained politeness—a true aristocrat unaccountably cast in with the rabble. She had more than a few years on her, but was spotless and ageless.
The old man lit up like a Christmas tree and immediately went into his cagey Used-Car Buyer’s cool, calculating bargaining character. It was exciting, in several ways. The contest between Father and his Friendly Fred, the imminent loss of the trusty old Pontiac—did the Graham have a sponge-rubber transmission? The lurking reefs of disaster were always there.
Later, the first time he wheeled the midnight blue Graham up the driveway and around the back, was just the beginning of it—the week-long Festival of Love for the new Graham.
At the time I was just below the legal minimum age limit for driving. And I used to sit in the back seat and watch my father shift gear, casually make left turns, back into parking spots, and wheel the Graham around like a second skin.
In the Midwest driving is like breathing. Kids living on the Maine coast learn to sail at a certain age. They all do. In the Midwest, driving is simply part of life, and they are serious about it. Afternoons, when the car was parked in back, I would sit in the front seat and practice shifting gears, working the clutch, and mentally whistling down US 41 in the center lane. And once in a very great while, when we would be out for a drive on a Sunday, my father would maybe let me back the car out of the driveway, or on the really great days he’d say:
“You want to take over?”
Do I want to take over! What a question!
He’d sit next to me:
“Easy on the clutch now.”
I’d ease the clutch out.
“Wait now, don’t shift to Second yet. There, get it moving. All right, into Second now. Well, for crying out loud, push the clutch all the way IN before you shift! YOU’RE GONNA STRIP THE GEARS! Here, lemme do it!”
Next thing I know I’m sitting in the back with my kid brother. Flubbed it again!
I was always trying to curry favor with both the Graham and my father by surprising him, especially on Sundays. The surprise consisted of washing the Graham or polishing the chrome with some pink stuff that my father used.
I was in the garage, working on the front bumper. It was Sunday. The family was going out that night, and I was about to surprise everybody with a spectacular job on the chrome. I polished the rims on the headlights, and it’s a tough job. My knuckles were scraped, my fingernails torn, the pink stuff soaking into my skin, but the grille was beautiful, just beautiful. And then I decided to back the car out of the garage by myself, to really surprise them. So that when they came out on the back porch they would see this blinding vision flashing chrome. In my mind’s eye I could hear them say:
“Why, what has happened to the Graham-Paige? It looks better than new!”
And I would just stand proudly, modestly by and wait for the praise and the honor that would be due me.
I finally finished the job. The Graham was glistening. I scrunched down in the driver’s seat