Not Cosmetology

For anyone who was hoping to get saved by reading my blog this morning, my inclination is something about cars instead of being a religious nut. 

Cars, or maybe cosmology. Not cosmetology, cosmology. As in astronomy: they’re finding out what causes spiral galaxies to form.

My grandparents and family left this house a couple of years after Alfred’s death and moved to Ocilla, Georgia, where Pop owned a Ford dealership several years. It was the early twenties, Model T Ford was the car of the era. The new cars arrived from Detroit by train disassembled and my father and others went down to the Ocilla train depot, put the cars together, and drove them to the Ford garage. 

Mom, Pop and family (EG, Ruth, my father, and Marguerite) drove away from here in two cars, a Model T and a Hudson touring car. It’s too late to know exactly, because I never thought to ask my father, but here’s my vision of the Hudson. This is a 1916 Hudson touring car.

One side undoubtedly had a side mount spare tire like this. 

My father said the other side, running board and front fender, was loaded up with Mom’s chickens, in cages. When they left Georgia a few years later and moved to South Florida they still had the Hudson touring car and a Model T, both loaded up with chicken cages again, Pop driving the Hudson and my father age eleven, driving the Ford. No highways, mind you, they wound their way on rutted roads through the woods from Georgia down into Florida. My father always told me it wasn't very sagacious or percipient of Pop to sell Model T Fords but himself drive a Hudson.

Hudson was a classy car in its day. The prettiest and classiest Hudson ever was the 1948 Commodore with step-down design. It was gorgeous, the only problem being that, when you stopped for gasoline, the boy who filled your gas tank would sweep out your car, but the new step-down design made sweeping out impossible. 

Hudsons haven’t been made since 1957, but those last models, offered by American Motors, weren’t Hudsons at all, they were Nash cars with Hudson trim. At least what AMC did to the Hudson was not as hideous and shameful as what Studebaker did to the Packard. 

Hudsons may still be found hiding away. It’s my calling to study Torah, but if Linda didn’t waste so much time gardening, ironing, cooking, and running the vacuum cleaner, and would take a course or two in auto mechanics and car restoration, I could have a nice Hudson Commodore like this one.

TW+

Thanks, Bonnie!