1935 Willys 77
with non-OEM carburetor parts from the J. C. Whitney & Co catalog
or found on a booth at Hershey.
It’s still a 1935 Willys, isn’t it.
New windshield wiper blades last spring, what’s next, flat tire, blown muffler, floorboard rusted through? Blown headgasket? Bad transmission? Can’t get a transmission for a 1935 Willis, if it goes bad, park it and take the bus with C. S. Lewis.
Back to the non-point because there isn’t a point this morning, why write this rubbish? Sometimes there’s religious nonsense or a thinly veiled political rant, but It surfaces memories. Still reading Roger Ebert who at this stage could not eat, drink or talk. But he could enjoy the memory of lamb stew with veggies and rice pudding at Frances‘ Deli on Clark Street. Or of love in the front seat his car as a teen. Before chapter 45, “My Romances” he writes, chapter 40, “The Sweetest Set of Wheels in Town,” about his first look at “a 1957 Studebaker Golden Hawk - the sexiest American car ever manufactured.” I have to keep paging back on my Kindle and reading chapter 40 again. It stirs up more than car memories.
During his lunch hour from his job at Johnston’s Sport Shop in Champaign-Urbana, on a rainy, windy winter day in 1956 Roger, who would have been 14 years old, was on his way to the Chuck Wagon Diner for fried chicken, looked in the showroom window of Maxey Motors, a Studebaker-Packard dealer, saw the Golden Hawk and was smitten for life.
Well do I remember that fantasticalistic car.
Roger bought a restored one in 1982 in Santa Monica and a couple months later it was dropped off near his home. Gold with white fins, and “it’s engine was mighty.”
The car brought to mind his 1989 movie review of “Heavy Petting" - "There are a lot of adults around today who will tell you that their peak sexual experiences took place in cars, and that beds will never be the same. Not long ago for example, I took a woman in her 40s for a drive in my 1957 Studebaker, and after sliding across the vinyl upholstery, inhaling the aroma of gasoline and oil, listening to tires spinning on the gravel and waiting for the radio tubes to warm up, she reported that all of these physical associations made her feel exactly as if someone was going to try to take her bra off.”
My nonsense isn’t meant to be the revealing ἀποκάλυψις - literally “uncovering” - as for Roger Ebert who was writing once and had to tell the complete truth because otherwise it wasn't the memory. Mornings when that happens I press “delete” instead of “publish.” Still raised the memory though even if it's deleted because it's none of your alphabet business.
The writing isn’t for anyone but me, though sometimes it turns into a vent, what is meant is like going to an old fashioned well, maybe like Professor Dumbledore's pensieve, dropping the bucket down, letting it sink below the surface, cranking it back up, looking to see what’s in it, and drinking it anyway. Sometimes there are mosquito wiggle-tails, sometimes a bird feather, sometimes the pail comes up with a frog that you know d-well peed in the bucket on the way up, but you take a sip anyway because, after the split second of the present moment, the memory is what you have, and at 78 it’s most of life, isn’t it. Even with a bird feather, even if a frog peed in it, Life is Good.
I loved visiting my Uncle Charlie, who when I was growing up was my grandfather Pop’s only living brother, born in 1868, four years older than Pop. Like his father and older brother Reginald who was bishop of Fond du Lac a hundred years ago, Charles Knight Weller was an Episcopal priest and archdeacon. During WWII, long retired, he served as interim at Christ Church, Pensacola while the rector was away in military service. When I knew him he lived in Warrington and sometimes served St. John’s there. His home smelled like the pipe he smoked. When I turned 14, for my birthday he gave me a red leather prayerbook, which is upstairs. Uncle Charlie died January 1954 when I was a freshman at Florida. One of his sons was George Carroll Weller. So there’s the Carroll but where my Thomas came from, I have no idea except my father said it was for a relative named Thomas Carroll, maybe an in-law of Pop's older sister Hallie Weller Helvenston.
While the grownups would visit inside, I remember playing in the yard and admiring Uncle Charlie’s 1935 Willys 77 sedan, to me an odd looking car. The Roger Ebert style memories were still far in the future.
TW