missing a wheel

 

One of my Chrysler cars is missing a wheel, no problem, probably happened during post-hurricane packing up, which was an enormous help to us. Several of my little cars were unwrapped to disclose pieces missing, but there are no problems in that facet of life. Problems involve living creatures, loved ones; but not inanimate objects. 

Still ... I'm fond of my car models - - and of my linen handkerchiefs, each one of which has a name, and each one of which knows that if I lose him somewhere I'll be back to search for. One summer morning a few years ago I dropped a handkerchief somewhere on the Cove School HNES campus as Robert and I were walking across. Realizing it a few days later, I drove back over to look, and there he was, patiently lying on the soccer field, confidently waiting for me. I think that was Jimmy. 

Linda doesn't seem to take me serious that every handkerchief has a name, especially when I left Henry on the table in Battin Hall after Sunday School, then left church during the Prayers to go searching, and found him. Henry's his name, I usually call him Hank. When I told Linda that his sibling handkerchiefs call him Hanky, she rolled her eyes. No, really.

Seven, I have seven of these little models of 1946,7,8 cars, a DeSoto sedan, a DeSoto club coupe, a Chrysler business coupe, a Chrysler Town & Country convertible, and three Chrysler sedans. Missing a wheel, the maroon Chrysler sedan looks like I backed it into a ditch. These 1/43 scale models exactly fit on the window ledge by the round table that's my desk. 

Other cars are here and there, on the bookcase, in the breakfront. A few of my originals, too big to sit out conveniently, are in a box in my closet. A couple of them went missing while I was away at college, a 1950 Ford fordor (Ford's term) and a 1950 Studebaker starlight coupe, they were plastic, I think my brother took it upon himself to cut them down and "remodel" them. Walt was 9th grade at Jinks Junior High when I was a freshman at Florida. Everything Walt does is good with me.

A few of my scale model cars, maybe four or five, are in my office at the church. Another half dozen or more are gone because I gave them away to kids I was fond of. Little folks move through your life on their way to lives of their own, and disappear in Time. 

People who've loved me gave me scale model cars over the years. In 2000 and 2001 when I was Interim Rector at Grace Episcopal Church, PCB and they were trying to get me to stay on permanently, seriously tempted, I jokingly said that I'd stay if they gave me a Mercedes-Benz S-600, and the very next Sunday, Lisa presented me with an exact scale model! I loved being their rector, and then later loved being vicar at St Thomas by the Sea, Laguna Beach. If you don't know our terms and titles, a rector is the director in charge of a parish church; a vicar is a priest who is appointed to serve in a parish or mission church, "vicariously" by and for the bishop.

Some years ago, when still living at The Old Place, I discovered scale model cars for sale on eBay, bid on and bought several; more than a few. A handful of them I collected as a young teen, mostly from car dealers in Pensacola on Saturdays when I was there by myself, having ridden the bus over roundtrip for my orthodontist appointment with Dr Bell. His office was on an upper floor of the building at the southwest corner of Garden and Palafox. From the bus station at the Time (now Duvall Hall, our diocesan office building), I walked over to Palafox, past the Chrysler-Plymouth dealer, the Ford Dealer, and I think the DeSoto-Plymouth dealer. Pensacola Buggy Works, the Chevrolet dealership, was just a couple blocks in the other direction; so visiting to pick up car brochures and to inquire about scale models that I could buy for a dollar, was the more important part of my Saturday than seeing the tooth doctor. Sometimes instead of doing all that, I went to my grandparents' house and had lunch and a visit before bus time to return to PC. 

During those adventures I discovered Motor Trend magazine, at the bus "rest stop" in Fort Walton: the bus parked in the alley by the side door of a drugstore there, and I bought it off the magazine rack, 25¢ for the June 1950 issue, which I still have. 

Anyway, from those Pensacola visits I still have a larger model 1949 DeSoto, a 1950 Dodge, a 1950 Chrysler New Yorker, and a 1950 Chevrolet, all of them are coin banks. I don't remember where I got the Studebaker, but the 1950 Ford that Walt cut down was from those adventures. Seems to me the dealer name was Muldoon Ford.

Maybe a couple dozen others on display here too, "all my children". 

Why'm I telling this? I'm not telling anything, I'm just remembering some of my life. My mother once told me that she had always been surprised that I'd never owned Chrysler cars, seeing that I'd so loved and admired my grandfather Gentry, who drove Chrysler cars starting with his first car, a light blue 1924 Maxwell touring car.

My first scale model car, which I'm looking at as I sit here typing, is a green 1948 Dodge sedan. Its history is that I kept admiring it on Mr Wiselogel's desk at W&W Motors, the Dodge-Plymouth dealer, where, starting in 1947, my father bought trucks for his fish business, and our world famous Plymouth station wagon, and the green 1948 Dodge sedan that was my mother's birthday present in May 1948. I kept on and on about it until my mother told my father, You've bought enough trucks and cars there that you can ask Karl Wiselogel to give you that model car that Bubba wants so bad, just ask him for it. And he did, and it's been mine since what? 1948 or 1949?, matching the green Dodge sedan that nine years later, in 1956, became my college car my senior year at Florida, and then it was Linda and my first car of our marriage. Linda could easily drive it because of the Fluid Drive.

Late summer or early fall 1957, Walt and a friend drove Linda up to Rhode Island in the car so she could be where I was at Navy OCS. On the drive north, the car stalled on them several times, most notoriously on the George Washington Bridge in New York City during rush hour traffic. Linda steered while Walt & friend pushed the Dodge the rest of the way across the bridge. We had the car fixed satisfactorily by a shade tree mechanic whose shop was open somewhere in Rhode Island one Saturday morning when I was on overnight liberty from OCS. It served us faithfully as a sightseeing car driving around Rhode Island those weekends, and Linda when she was living in Father Damon's house in Kingston, RI while I was in class at Newport all week. 

The Dodge got us home for Christmas 1957; during which visit I traded the Dodge in for a new 1958 Ford from friend Joe Parrott at Cook Motors. Joe Parrott had quite a cackle when he laughed. There was a while there in the late 1940s early 1950s when Mr Parrott was in the fish business and cooperated with my father's fish business. Joe had a fish house on where is now the StAndrews Marina; from our fish house on 12th Street across from where the Shrimp Boat restaurant is now, Joe Parrott's cackling laughter came loud and clear across the water all the Time, causing me to laugh too. He was a character.

That new 1958 Ford that I bought from Joe Parrott in December 1957 did not have power steering, but Cook's added it, per contract, during January 1958 while I was back in Newport on TDY as a new Navy ensign.

There's more, eighty-six years worth, even if the Chrysler isn't the only one of us here missing a wheel. No matter. My friends, life IS short, and we HAVEN'T much Time to gladden the hearts of those who travel with us. So be quick to love, and make haste to be kind ...

T