outa here

Three evenings, two hours, 8/7c Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, History Channel. But that a friend told me, I’d have missed my only kind of program. As well as fascinating car pictures, highway and street scenes from early 1900s right on through the 20th century, interesting observations of typical History Channel that remind me of things I learned in seminary about OT Bible stories: don’t let it bother me if plausibility, details, chronology and historicity are overshadowed by enthusiasm, fascination and imagination, because such didn’t in the least bother those who first told, heard, and later wrote it down. The story was the thing, not its minutiae.

The program I loved, all three evenings. What did I notice. Not only evening to evening, but clip to break to clip to break to clip there was an enormous amount of backing up and coming forward, like dancing the two-step in grade school, two steps forward, one step back. So many scenes played numerous times. No matter, I loved them all. Poor old Louis Chevrolet the Francophone Swiss race car driver, totally missed out. I enjoyed the story of Henry Ford cheating the Dodge Brothers. They covered the Edsel car but no mention of Ford bringing in Lincoln and Edsel creating Mercury. Hank Ford’s first act upon taking over from his grandfather was to fire Harry Bennett the hoodlum, but Hank didn’t boldly fire Bennett to his face as shown in the program, rather, Hank (Henry Ford II) had John Dugas hand Bennett his walking papers. 

About 1952, Ed Cole persuades Al Sloan of the necessity to overtake Ford’s obsolete flat-head V8 by moving Chevrolet from the straight six engine to an OHV V8 — Ed does this on History Channel by taking Al for a ride in a sleek, hot 1955 Mercury two door hardtop with continental kit. 

Using a 1955 car in a 1952 scene, History Channel doesn’t mean one to notice the out-of-chronos, but it did answer my earlier question of how History Channel thought a 1955 Mercury Montclair changed America. 

Anyway, the scrumptious 1955 Chevy with small block V8 was the result, Chevy’s first V8 since 1918: I saw my first one parked on a street in Gainesville the fall of 1954, my sophomore year at UFlorida, basically the car that moved America into the magical V8 age. 

And History Channel overdid the alcoholism of HFordII by showing him pouring himself a new glass of whisky to open every scene in his office where, unlike his artistic father and his mechanical grandfather, he did nothing but give orders and take another gulp of gold. 

Where might I this moment go back to in my lifetime if I could? Maybe to that crisp 1954 fall morning in Gainesville when I admire that brand new turquoise and white 1955 Chevrolet Bel Air with the V8 emblem beneath each taillight, and marvel that anyone would pay $4000 for a Chevrolet. Nineteen years old, I'll take life from there. 

What car had I completely forgotten? Plymouth Cricket, that was to compete with Chevy Vega and Ford Pinto. I no thank you.