that Studebaker

My senior year, Linda's junior year, she had a room in a house on University Avenue, the home of Mrs Benton, mother of Dr John Benton of Panama City. His father, her late husband, had been prominent at the University of Florida, where the science classroom building Benton Hall was named in his honor. 

One other student roomed there, a girl from Pakistan who, as I recall, wore the traditional clothes of her country. I wish I could remember her name, but it slips my mind this morning.

That was after summer school 1956, starting first semester, school year 1956-57. One thing I remember about that fall semester was how horns went off all over Gainesville at the end of World Series game 5 when Don Larson pitched a no-hitter for the NY Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers at Yankee Stadium. And, yes, I listened to that game, it was playing on every radio in Gainesville, at top volume!

My first car, bought the previous school year with a friend for $75 (yes, the case I've told any number of Times here, for which the car price was $75 and the assigned-risk insurance premium was $78.80), was a 1947 Buick Special sedan. The Buick had any number of mechanical issues - - a major transmission problem; that we had to have a case of cheap 10W-30 oil in the trunk in order to make it from Gainesville to Panama City and back; that we had to carry a bucket and find a roadside water ditch real quick when steam started pouring out from under the car; that it didn't have rear brakes until my father discovered and fixed that major safety issue - - but it WAS A BUICK EIGHT (OMG, the prestige of it, like Mark Twain or somebody said of being tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail, "if it weren't for the honor of the thing, I'd rather walk), and with a fender skirt on the right side, so I tried always to park it with the right side toward the house so I could see the sleek fender-skirt view. 

My friend and I sold the Buick for $50 when my parents gave me the green 1948 Dodge sedan that Mama and I had chosen over the blue Dodge while both were still in the box car down at the train station. 

The Dodge was our car that final year of college and the first six months of our marriage. 

No, I'm not losing my train of thought.

Now and then something was wrong with the Dodge, and while it was laid up until I fixed it (yes, I could do basic repairs and most any maintenance on cars in those days), Mrs Benton would let us drive her Studebaker (and, yes, I realize that I've told this here more than once over the past dozen years that I've been writing +Time, but the Studebaker that Bert sent rings bells again).

That car (top pic) has one of the "air cooler" cylinders attached to the top of the passenger side rear window. Linda and I tried one of those in our 1958 Ford, but we found that all it did, which was evaporation into the car as the wind force turned a cylinder inside through a puddle of water in the bottom of the device, was make the inside of the car unbearably muggy.

The Studebaker above, and the Nash pic below, have the sun visor installed over the windshield. It was stylish and classy for a few years, but disappeared when air conditioning came along for American cars, and also because it made it virtually impossible to see the traffic light, you had to lean way over, not a happiness for either comfort, convenience, or safety, eh?

And again, no, I'm not wandering, I'm going somewhere in memories. Memories are all we have left of Time as we pass through it, you know. We have Time: the present, which is all there is; and maybe diaphanous hopes for the future; and we have whatever our memories hold and distort of Times gone by.

Including the Studebaker. I remember Mrs Benton's tan Studebaker, which she always called "my little Champion."

It was a four-door sedan. Not a 1950 and later model with the pointy front end, but it must have been a 1947. 

It was a six, I think you could only get an eight in the Commander and the Land Cruiser. And all four door sedans had "suicide doors," as did our Dodge.

And Mrs Benton's Studebaker had "overdrive," three speed standard transmission with clutch pedal down to the left of the brake pedal, and with gear shift lever on the steering column. With OD, when you lifted your foot for a second at speed, shifted into a higher "gear" driving ratio that gave better gasoline mileage. 

A memory, I loved driving Mrs Benton's "little Champion" with overdrive. One thing that I'd discovered the previous year while driving an Alpha Kappa Psi brother's Ford V8 station wagon with overdrive, was that, when the overdrive was "on" (you had to pull out an under dash lever to put it in overdrive mode), I could shift forward gears, from first gear to second, and from second to third, without using the clutch. 

That Studebaker of memory was a lovely car, and the only wonder is that I never owned a Studebaker. Linda and I did stop at a Studebaker dealership in Rhode Island one day in the Fall of 1957 it would have been, to look at the new Studebaker Lark in the showroom. By then Studebaker had joined forces with Mercedes-Benz, and the front grill of the new Lark was styled to look enough like the M-B grill that it was meant to be a subtle suggestion that if you bought a Studebaker Lark you were now in the Daimler-Benz brotherhood.  

But we never had a Studebaker. Never had a Hudson either, nor a Packard, nor a Crosley. Came close to owning a Nash the years we drove Rambler station wagons. 

A memory: marveling at the new 1950 Studebaker in their showroom at the "point" where W. 4th Street meets Oak Avenue

where years later, after we were long gone moved away in Navy life, there was a Chevrolet dealership, if I recall Robert correctly. I remember the new 1950 Studebaker sitting there facing the window at the building's point, and marveling at the new look - - a torpedo look, or an airplane look. 

Studebaker kept that look several model years, and some people even had a propeller attached to the point, a propeller that would spin, driven by the wind as the car moved ahead.

++++++++

Those were the years, my friend, I thought they'd never end ...

What else in those days? Albert Rowell's father owned the Nash dealership on E 6th Street, just east of Jimmy's Drive In, that building, with the N of Nash still showing where the paint had peeled, stood until after Hurricane Michael, next to the package store that's there now. Doing a bit of Google searching last evening, I just found out that Albert died this year, 2024; in my class of 1953, he played football and was a drummer in the Bay High Band. 

I do remember that the new 1949 Nash was, even then, one of the homeliest cars ever introduced to the American public. But they were roomy, and the seats folded down into a bed.

The Kaiser-Frazer dealership was on US98 West in Little Dothan, a block or so west of where Buddy Gandy's Seafood Market is now. The Packard dealership was on Grace Avenue just south of 5th Street, behind Smith's Ladies' Shop on that southwest corner (the A&P was there when I was a boy). 

The Hudson dealership was on W 6th Street almost as far down as Daffin Mercantile, we went in to see the astonishingly beautiful new 1948 Hudson with step-down design, one Sunday after church that Fall of 1947. The Crosley dealership was down there too, I have a story to go with that one, to tell here again some other Time. 

But not right now. Right now I need to get ready to go for my haircut appoinement.

RSF&PTL

T89&c