Dad, can I drive my girl to the prom in the Packard?
Saturday morning, 74° out here on 7H porch, with a roast beef sandwich for breakfast, rare and thin sliced from the deli, extra thin ww bread spread with mayo, large mug of ice water, the black and dark having been shared in the dark over an hour ago.
A roast beef sandwich: my earliest memory of one is from a time in the middle 1940s when mama was in Pensacola visiting her parents and family, and maybe Gina and Walt with her, and I was home with my father. We came home from work, so maybe it was during the summer, either that or Saturday like this, and as he started to make our supper he asked me, "Do you want a hot roast beef sandwich?" I remember saying yes, that I didn't know what that was. Turned out delicious, on a slice of bread, sliced roast beef swimming in warm brown gravy.
Food items can stir memories seemingly out of nowhere. In the late 1940s there was a house way out on 15th Street, with a screen porch all the way across the front, that had been turned into a fried chicken restaurant. Sometimes we'd go there after church for Sunday dinner. Not sure, but my recollection is that they brought your platter of chicken to the table, "family style." It was about across from the Forestry Service location, on the north side of the road. I recall 15th Street as a wide road of grassy area with a pair of ruts heading east and a pair of ruts heading west, and as far north as Panama City went. Our family friend and my father's sometime fish business partner Alvin Cook, and Gracie, built a nice brick house out there, story and a half with dormers, also on the north side of the road. Alvin had a large cooler building built next to their house and a bit back from the road, as the ice house for his seafood business. Mama used to comment that she would not have a fish house next door
While memories are stirred, my father had, at first right after the War, converted WW2 ambulances, a 1937 Chevrolet and a 1937 GMC, for his fish business trucks to run their routes up into Alabama and Georgia. Then, after waiting a couple years for his friend and Bay High classmate Bubber Nelson to get him a new Chevrolet truck (this was after the War when new cars and trucks were in great demand and short supply and waiting lists were long), my father gave up and went to Karl Wiselogel at W&W Motors, the Dodge Plymouth dealer, and bought a new 1947 Dodge truck, and we were all Dodges from then on except for one Chevrolet that he bought from someone who was, I think, going out of business.
I was not thrilled because the Chevrolets had a smooth new postwar body style, and they rode smoother and, as I found out later, steered much easier than the Dodges. But especially was I not thrilled, because now we got a new 1948 Dodge car instead of the 1948 Buick Super I was mightily lusting after, although without having made that shift we would never have had the Plymouth station wagon that saw us as the major dating car through high school and college.
But I was talking about 15th Street and Alvin and Gracie Cook. In 1948, I've told this story here before, but who cares, my father bought the new green 1948 Dodge sedan for mama's 36th birthday. We had a choice, two new Dodges still sitting unloaded in the box car at the Bay Line, mama and I drove down there, walked up onto the ramp (this was behind, east side of the Depot building), looked at the blue car and the green car, decided we were tired of blue (our 1942 Chevrolet Fleetline Aerosedan was dark blue), and chose the green Dodge. Totally a pre-war design "suicide doors," roomy, quiet and smooth, with Fluid Drive, as soon as my father brought it home, the Buick faded from my mind. Nine years later, when I was a senior at UFlorida, mama finally got the Buick, a gorgeous, hot Century V8 coupe, and my parents let me choose between the Dodge and the station wagon. Having been involved in sanding down the wood and revarnishing it every year without fail, and in taking it to the cabinet shop for new woodwork over the years, I chose the Dodge, and it was Linda and my first car when we were married starting June 1957.
But oh yes, Alvin and Gracie. In 1948, Alvin copied my father, buying a new 1948 Dodge sedan, ours was dark green, theirs was maroon, a beautiful burgundy. The spring of that year we drove over as families in two cars, to Bellingrath Gardens in Mobile to see the azaleas in bloom. Went early and attended Christ Church, then to Laritz Cafeteria for Sunday dinner, then all afternoon wandering among huge azaleas, a beautiful memory. A year or so later, maybe the next spring, we drove over to Tallahassee to see the azaleas at Killearn Gardens. But it was just us, by then Alvin and Gracie Cook had a new, black Packard sedan and went somewhere else.
There is a story about the Packard, Walt and Gina probably remember, that brought Alvin as a father of two good sons, way, way down in our esteem. But I won't tell that this lovely Saturday morning. Years later, mama told me, Alvin and Gracie Cook were killed in an automobile crash while away on a vacation trip. PCNH 01Oct1977. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/15500235/thomas_alvin_cook_obituary/
Hot roast beef with brown gravy, fried chicken for Sunday dinner, and away we go.
T
A roast beef sandwich: my earliest memory of one is from a time in the middle 1940s when mama was in Pensacola visiting her parents and family, and maybe Gina and Walt with her, and I was home with my father. We came home from work, so maybe it was during the summer, either that or Saturday like this, and as he started to make our supper he asked me, "Do you want a hot roast beef sandwich?" I remember saying yes, that I didn't know what that was. Turned out delicious, on a slice of bread, sliced roast beef swimming in warm brown gravy.
Food items can stir memories seemingly out of nowhere. In the late 1940s there was a house way out on 15th Street, with a screen porch all the way across the front, that had been turned into a fried chicken restaurant. Sometimes we'd go there after church for Sunday dinner. Not sure, but my recollection is that they brought your platter of chicken to the table, "family style." It was about across from the Forestry Service location, on the north side of the road. I recall 15th Street as a wide road of grassy area with a pair of ruts heading east and a pair of ruts heading west, and as far north as Panama City went. Our family friend and my father's sometime fish business partner Alvin Cook, and Gracie, built a nice brick house out there, story and a half with dormers, also on the north side of the road. Alvin had a large cooler building built next to their house and a bit back from the road, as the ice house for his seafood business. Mama used to comment that she would not have a fish house next door
While memories are stirred, my father had, at first right after the War, converted WW2 ambulances, a 1937 Chevrolet and a 1937 GMC, for his fish business trucks to run their routes up into Alabama and Georgia. Then, after waiting a couple years for his friend and Bay High classmate Bubber Nelson to get him a new Chevrolet truck (this was after the War when new cars and trucks were in great demand and short supply and waiting lists were long), my father gave up and went to Karl Wiselogel at W&W Motors, the Dodge Plymouth dealer, and bought a new 1947 Dodge truck, and we were all Dodges from then on except for one Chevrolet that he bought from someone who was, I think, going out of business.
I was not thrilled because the Chevrolets had a smooth new postwar body style, and they rode smoother and, as I found out later, steered much easier than the Dodges. But especially was I not thrilled, because now we got a new 1948 Dodge car instead of the 1948 Buick Super I was mightily lusting after, although without having made that shift we would never have had the Plymouth station wagon that saw us as the major dating car through high school and college.
But I was talking about 15th Street and Alvin and Gracie Cook. In 1948, I've told this story here before, but who cares, my father bought the new green 1948 Dodge sedan for mama's 36th birthday. We had a choice, two new Dodges still sitting unloaded in the box car at the Bay Line, mama and I drove down there, walked up onto the ramp (this was behind, east side of the Depot building), looked at the blue car and the green car, decided we were tired of blue (our 1942 Chevrolet Fleetline Aerosedan was dark blue), and chose the green Dodge. Totally a pre-war design "suicide doors," roomy, quiet and smooth, with Fluid Drive, as soon as my father brought it home, the Buick faded from my mind. Nine years later, when I was a senior at UFlorida, mama finally got the Buick, a gorgeous, hot Century V8 coupe, and my parents let me choose between the Dodge and the station wagon. Having been involved in sanding down the wood and revarnishing it every year without fail, and in taking it to the cabinet shop for new woodwork over the years, I chose the Dodge, and it was Linda and my first car when we were married starting June 1957.
But oh yes, Alvin and Gracie. In 1948, Alvin copied my father, buying a new 1948 Dodge sedan, ours was dark green, theirs was maroon, a beautiful burgundy. The spring of that year we drove over as families in two cars, to Bellingrath Gardens in Mobile to see the azaleas in bloom. Went early and attended Christ Church, then to Laritz Cafeteria for Sunday dinner, then all afternoon wandering among huge azaleas, a beautiful memory. A year or so later, maybe the next spring, we drove over to Tallahassee to see the azaleas at Killearn Gardens. But it was just us, by then Alvin and Gracie Cook had a new, black Packard sedan and went somewhere else.
There is a story about the Packard, Walt and Gina probably remember, that brought Alvin as a father of two good sons, way, way down in our esteem. But I won't tell that this lovely Saturday morning. Years later, mama told me, Alvin and Gracie Cook were killed in an automobile crash while away on a vacation trip. PCNH 01Oct1977. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/15500235/thomas_alvin_cook_obituary/
Hot roast beef with brown gravy, fried chicken for Sunday dinner, and away we go.
T