So What Else Is New?

So ...

So going outside for the PCNews-Herald, it’s a lovely spring morning. Cool here on St. Andrews Bay, pleasant. No wind. Notice, it’s a habit with some folks to start a sentence, or a conversation, with the word “so.” Harry Golden did it with one of his books, So What Else Is New? and in an essay inside said it was a common speech mannerism for Yiddish speaking Jews where he grew up in the Lower East Side. Anyone who hasn’t read Harry Golden has missed a folklore treasure.

Most of his books, in paperback, are here. One is hardcover. Years ago in Apalachicola I mentioned Harry Golden in a sermon, commenting that I hadn’t been able to find Only In America for my collection. That was pre-WWW when if you wanted a book you had to go from bookstore to bookstore and looking through stacks of old books in yardsales. Whereupon, a dear friend, Odin Anderson, found one for me. Helen’s husband, Odin was himself a treasure, retired professor from University of Wisconsin and University of Chicago, retired from Madison, WI to Apalachicola because daughter Kristin was there. All of them treasures at Trinity. 

But books. Wheels of the World by Douglas Brinkley is another treasure, a detailed history of Henry Ford and Ford Motor Company and what Ford did to put the USA on the road. At least to me, Henry Ford resembled Mr. Cook who was owner of Cook Motor Co., the Ford dealer during my growing up years in Panama City. Oddly enough, Henry’s grandson who took over after him also resembled, at least to me, Mr. Cook’s son Bill who took over from him. 

Henry Ford died at age 84 on April 7, 1947, 66 years ago this week. I was eleven, long a car nut even then, and remember reading about the rainy, dreary day at Fairlane, the Ford family home in Dearborn, Michigan. There was flooding, and the electricity was out, and their house was being heated by fireplaces. That day, Henry had been out with his chauffeur for a ride in their 1942 Ford. So reading about it put an picture of his car in my mind in April 1947, an image that’s still parked there.

Everybody’s mind is cluttered. Mine is even more cluttered than most. Want to know the differences in the Fords of that model, 1941, 1942, 1946, ’47, ’48? Body styles, engines, where the parking lights were and their shapes, chrome stripes on the trunk. This clutter is why I can’t remember Bible verses.

On the jacket of Brinkley’s book there’s a dark blue 1949 Ford. One of my favorites because Pop, my grandfather, took me down to Cook’s showroom to look at the brand new postwar design. 

And because our next door neighbors had two 1949 Fords. Mr. Guy had a green Custom fordor sedan. Mary Guy had a red convertible that became Bill’s after she died and, story that's been told here before, car that I kept for him and drove all the early 1950s summer Bill was away visiting his aunt Maggie in St. Paul, MN. 

Other reading at the moment, The Acts of Jesus by Robert W. Funk et al, HarperSF.

TW+