Pentecost

Pentecost

When I was growing up we called it bugle vine. Websites prefer trumpet vine, but either seems ok. Bugle vine takes me back 75 years. My grandparents in Pensacola had a long driveway, starting at the street and stretching back, hugging the house, thence to the garage all the way back at the property line. It was an early twentieth century house and, unlike today when garages are built into the house, every house in the neighborhood had the garage all the way against the back property line. Maybe that went back to days when the stable was as far from the house as possible, who knows. 

The cars were not often in the garage, but parked under a carport sized trellis. There were two such trellises, the first next to the front porch and the next by the kitchen door. The trellises were covered with fiery red trumpet vine, bugle vine, that bloomed profusely in season. Bugle vine was to me, all my growing up years and to this day, a symbol of the grandparents I loved so dearly. One Christmas a few years ago, Tass and Jeremy and the girls gave me several bugle vine plants, which are now climbing palm trees, cedar trees, and the carport. They remind me of love. Children, grandchildren, grandparents.

At my grandparents' home there were other things too, including lots of love. Any time I was coming to visit, my grandmother -- Mamoo -- always cooked my special food. Pound cake. Fried chicken. Quail and doves fried in a deep black iron skillet, and finished in thick, dark brown gravy. But especially creamed corn. Dozens and dozens of ears of corn, grated from corn on the cob and cooked into a huge steaming pot of creamed corn.

And the cars. There was no playing in the cars at my house. But at Mamoo and Daddy Walt's house in Pensacola, cars were fair game for the grandchildren. Climb in, sit at the wheel and drive. My grandparents’ cars were always lined up in the driveway, unlocked and ready for pretend driving in pretend traffic, including honking the horn when the car ahead moved too slowly. Or honking back if the car behind you seemed too impatient.

My grandfather bought a new car every year, one year trading his car for a new one, the next year trading Mamoo's car for a new one. With one exception, a blog for another morning perhaps, he only bought Chrysler products. My grandfather had the first car in the neighborhood, a blue Maxwell touring car. He started with Maxwell cars in the early 1920s, and when Walter P. Chrysler took over Maxwell, he continued with Chrysler. Chrysler, DeSoto or Plymouth. Usually a Chrysler sedan for Mamoo, a Plymouth for himself. For years his cars were always coupes because of the huge trunk for the hunting dogs. The dogs were kept in a pen next to the garage out back, and nobody but nobody was allowed to pet the hunting dogs. My grandfather was an avid bird hunter. Quail, doves. 

Evenings round the kitchen table there was always a card game going, or else they went out to play cards at friends’ houses. Cards and bourbon. When the cousins and I got into the teen years, there was always one car left under the bugle vine while the grandparents were out playing cards for the evening. We helped ourselves to the keys and hit the road. I know for a fact that a new two-tone green 1952 Chrysler Imperial with a hemi Firepower V8 on nighttime neighborhood streets of East Hill, Pensacola would do zero to sixty in very few seconds and keep climbing, climbing, climbing. Stupid teens maybe, but we never wrecked. 

We never wrecked, the cops never caught us; and in my +Time this Pentecost morning sixty years later, I’m alive to remember the fiery red bugle vine blossoms we always managed to park under before the grandparents arrived home. 

Tom+