Ordinary Time
The summer of 1952 I spent at Camp Weed, the summer camp of our Diocese of Florida. Managing to finagle my way onto the staff so as to remain all summer with my best friend Jack Dennis, I was variously a counselor for Junior Boys, a counselor for Father Fred Yerkes’ Choir Boys camp, and on the kitchen staff. The most fun always was Father Fred and his camps. Archdeacon of the Diocese of Florida, the Venerable Fred Yerkes was from the Jacksonville end of the diocese, and he, with his younger brother Francis Yerkes who assisted him as a layman, held down about six small mission churches for which he was the pastor, and in each of which he held services every Sunday morning. I don’t know how many miles he drove a year, but he wore cars out and at least in the years I knew him, he always drove Chevrolet cars, always black. Father Fred was one of my heroes in my teen years.
The summer of 1952 Father Fred arrived at camp with a new 1952 Chevrolet. It was a Fleetline DeLuxe two door sedan, the fastback model, black as he probably felt befitted his priestly role.
He was quite generous with the car, letting Jack and me drive it, not only around camp when none of the campers were out, but also into town to Carrabelle from time to time to pick up stuff. For two sixteen year old boys, this was the biggest deal and privilege imaginable.
That was a year when the Korean War was in full force, and a great deal of industrial production was diverted to the war effort. It included cars, such that there was almost no change in styling, the 1951 Chevrolet
was identical to the 1952 Chevrolet except for two things. The 1952 front grill had notches in it,
the only means of visual ID for those two years. Wartime, materials were short, and also quality. Some 1952 cars arrived with wooden front bumpers that were to be replaced later when production caught up; but the main thing, not noticeable for a couple of years, was the quality of the chrome work: the 1951 cars were of good quality, but on 1952 cars the chrome (no exterior plastic in those days) soon discolored, rusted and peeled.
It wasn’t just GM cars, my grandparents’ 1951 and 1952 Chryslers had different quality in the chrome, the bumpers, the grills, and the trim around the taillights.
But I was at Camp Weed. One day a second 1952 Chevrolet, black Fleetline DeLuxe sedan drove into the camp. It was my Cove School friend Tommy Fidler, driving his grandfather’s new car over from Carrabelle, where Tommy’s grandfather was the town constable. It was identical to Father Fred’s car except that it had PowerGlide, the new automatic transmission that Chevy started out with. A single-speed/single-gear in D for Drive, PowerGlide was slow getting up and moving from stop, so much so that we nicknamed it WeaklingGlide. Father Fred let us use his car, but only with permission, asking first. On this day, I drove down the camp road in Tommy’s grandfather’s car, and thinking it was his car used without permission, Father Fred burst out the front door of the staff building, furious.
The 1952 Chevy was the last year of the sleekback Fleetline body style, the notchback Styleline
having proved more popular on the market.
For 1950 and continuing for many years, Chevrolet had introduced a new body style, the Bel Air, a hardtop coupe,
so called because it was a convertible body with a fixed metal roof and no pillar between the front and rear window.
Over the years to come, the hardtop style was used not only for coupes, but for four door cars and even for station wagons. Less rigid than pillared cars, it was prone to developing rattles and squeaks, and it went out altogether as safety and roof strength became a major concern in auto design.
The hardtop was first introduced as a high end model, with GM for their 1949 models as the Cadillac Coupe DeVille, the Oldsmobile Holiday, and the 1949 Buick Riviera, available only in the Roadmaster line.
But 1950 saw the market flooded with hardtop coupes across the board. A 1949 Buick Roadmaster Riviera coupe:
On this model,
Buick used the swoop chrome style that called to mind the 1946, '47, '48 Buick Super and Roadmaster, with the unique swooping fender line that came to be a Buick trademark
Buick used the swoop chrome style that called to mind the 1946, '47, '48 Buick Super and Roadmaster, with the unique swooping fender line that came to be a Buick trademark
My last summer with Father Fred was 1953, sixty years ago this summer. The next and last time I saw him was at the Diocese of Florida sesquicentennial celebration in Tallahassee in 1988, more than thirty-five years after our summer camps together.
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