The Pontiac

Durham Classics makes diecast models of old cars and I'm on their email list. Though too pricey for my taste the models are true to original and I enjoy seeing the pictures and remembering from my childhood the car models Durham offers. Their latest offering just arrived, a 1941 Chevrolet utility coupe pickup. 

Leaving for World War II service, my father left his seafood business and sold his truck, a 1941 Chevrolet, dark blue with black fenders, that he bought from his Bay High classmate Bubber Nelson. It was a real truck though, not a converted car. I well remember the truck and would love to have it in my driveway right now. The truck was parked in our back yard close to the house, and I recall watching out the dining room window as the man who bought it cranked it up and drove it away. I was six years old.

Restarting his seafood business just as WWII ended my father needed trucks, which were scarce unto impossible to find. New ones unavailable, the first truck he bought was a used one-and-a-half-ton 1937 Chevrolet army ambulance. He painted it silver and had a huge red snapper painted on each side and insulated the body so it could be iced down to haul fish. Bought soon after, the second truck was just like it, a 1937 GMC army ambulance. Almost identical to the Chevrolet but instead of the overhead valve Blue Flame Six the GMC had a flat head six Oldsmobile engine. He put those trucks on the road with drivers delivering fresh seafood to fish markets and grocery stores throughout southern Alabama and Georgia.

Durham’s photo reminded me that my father then bought a vehicle for himself -- a 1936 Pontiac business coupe. He removed the trunk lid, installed a flat wooden deck in place of the huge trunk that business coupes had in those days, and trimmed the back outside edge with angle iron. (A business coupe was like a club coupe except that it had no rear seat, no side rear window, and an enormous trunk). “The Pontiac” as we called it served well for quite a few years and was one of the cars of my early driving experience. Three speed on the floor transmission, and the steering was very loose: the wheel spun nearly a whole turn each way before starting to affect the car’s direction. It was a trip. Our family car was a Chevrolet and I thought a Pontiac was a brand step up toward what I really wanted, a Buick!!

My father was a frugal person and was quite satisfied with The Pontiac. In it’s later years it was rather disreputable looking though and very fishy smelling. At one point, not liking to be taken to school in it, my sister asked him, “Why do you drive this old car? People will think we’re poor.” I thought Gina's comment was hilarious but when I started laughing my mother told me to hush up because our father was quite incensed. In 1948 we got a new Dodge, then in1950 a “real second car” a 1949 Plymouth woody wagon that had been Karl Wiselogel’s demonstrator at W&W Motors. That must have been when The Pontiac disappeared. 

Sabbath is for rest and enjoyment. Shalom.

TW+

All thoughts and prayers are with the people of Japan. The report “walls of water up to 30 feet high” is horrifying. From what we’ve seen on TV the loss of life would seem to be astronomical before it’s all over and counted. Kyrie eleison.