melange
Early to be writing about it but never early to be remembering, my first Christmas Eve service, that I’ve written about other years on this blog. I was thirteen, it was 1948, just me and my father. Whether he had gone alone other Christmases I don’t know, or whether our church even had a Christmas Eve service, only that this was my earliest awareness of such. Roman Catholic friends had “Midnight Mass” but I had no idea it was part of Episcopal tradition as well until that magic night.
I went to bed early for a nap, my mother woke me a half-hour or so beforehand with a cup of hot chocolate, or maybe it was coffee, my first cup of coffee, with cream and sugar, I remembered the last time I wrote about it, now I’ve forgotten whether it was coffee or cocoa. I do remember how I was dressed, the blue tweed sportcoat that got wet in that 4th of July rainshower at the fireworks on the Mall in Washington, D.C. summer 1947, when I watched Fleet Admiral Bull Halsey and Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz arrive and leave in Packard limousines. Anyway, I remember we went to church that night in our new Dodge, the green 1948 sedan, and I remember my father calling “Merry Christmas, John” to John Pennel after the service as we backed out of our parking place behind St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church. It was proper Florida Christmas weather, chilly and damp, clear sky is my recollection. Just my father and me, Mama stayed home with Gina and Walt, 10 and 9.
What stirred the special memory? A friend emails me the Historic Vehicle Association eNews, which invariably takes me back somewhere, I myself having become a historic person; not notable, just historic. The December issue of HVA has a piece, “Seven great classic car ads” and I found myself in several of them, but especially in this one of the 1948 Mercury, stirring my Christmas 1948 memory (although the ad was December 1947).
Mercury debuted in 1938 as a gussied up Ford priced above Ford and below Lincoln, to fill that gap and compete with Dodge/DeSoto and GM’s Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick. The 1948 Mercury in the Christmas ad was such, actually a 1942 Mercury slightly freshened for 1946 and then unchanged for 1947 and 1948. Mercury stayed a rebadged Ford until the 1949 model year, when it became a gussied down Lincoln.
and the smaller Lincoln,
whose body was also given to Mercury for several years of totally classy Mercury cars.
My Cove School classmate Tommy Fidler -- who instead of Bay High went to The Bowles School in Jacksonville and then on to The Citadel where he was my later bishop Charles Duvall’s roommate -- showed up at a Bay High bonfire pep rally one night, and my friend Parker Reynolds and I sneaked out to Tommy’s car, his father’s beautiful and covetable car, a 1949 or 50 or 51 Mercury V8 coupe with standard transmission, 3 on the tree
and used a dime to jump the ignition, and moved the car to another part of the parking lot.
This story also has been told here before. Later, when the pep rally was over, Tommy’s car was gone and he panicked that it had been stolen, enraged when he found Parker and I had moved it. The friendship did recover, and the last time I saw Tommy would have been 1957 or 1958, he was in the uniform of an Army 2nd lieutenant and I was a Navy ensign. He said he was going to make the Army a career and I said I was in the Navy for three years and out; but Tommy left the Army and went with the Florida Highway Patrol and later the Bay County Sheriff’s Office. I went Regular Navy and stayed twenty years.
Tommy came naturally by the uniform and law enforcement: for long years, his beloved grandfather was constable in Carrabelle, Florida, a summer of 1953 story that’s been told here at least once, prompting me to check out my green flashing channel marker lights and let go forever. A Carrabelle family, Tommy's father Harvey was a successful fisherman and Tommy grew up in the Cove, just a block from Cove School.
T Weller, Commander, U. S. Navy (Retired)
My Navy and UMich buddy has stirred me to other thoughts, that neither Jim Harbaugh nor Les Miles will take the Michigan head coach job. Harbaugh would be a mistake even though he could be good, but if he left NFL and went with CFB he would soon return to NFL and break our hearts. Les Miles would break our hearts in the first place by turning Michigan down, so shouldn’t even be offered the job; but if undertable negotiations can get him a better salary than Hoke had, Miles would be nuts to stay in SEC when he could have ten years or so in B1G returning MGoBlue to Bo Schembechler status. I fear though that Michigan will get some new head coach we never heard of, and another bust. What I’d love, my dream scene? Spurrier leading Michigan to crush Meyer at Ohio State year after year after year.
T Weller, still retired
The 1949 Lincoln came in two body sizes, the enormous and to me gorgeous Lincoln Cosmopolitan, a red sedan shown below,
This story also has been told here before. Later, when the pep rally was over, Tommy’s car was gone and he panicked that it had been stolen, enraged when he found Parker and I had moved it. The friendship did recover, and the last time I saw Tommy would have been 1957 or 1958, he was in the uniform of an Army 2nd lieutenant and I was a Navy ensign. He said he was going to make the Army a career and I said I was in the Navy for three years and out; but Tommy left the Army and went with the Florida Highway Patrol and later the Bay County Sheriff’s Office. I went Regular Navy and stayed twenty years.