Part 12 (1/2)

XXI

ENTER FRIENDLY FRED ENTER FRIENDLY FRED Flick sucked noisily at a hollow tooth as I stood up stiffly to get the kinks out of my legs. Bar stools are not good for the knees. Not only that, but my conscience was beginning to bother me. Here I was, frittering away an afternoon chewing the fat with Flick, when I should have been out filling up my blue-lined notebook with acute observations on the evolving life of the Industrial Midwest, not to mention the impact of Automation on the day-to-day life of the solitary citizen. Also, I was on an expense account, and there wasn't much to squander it on in Flick's. I enjoy living to the full.

I stalked to the end of the bar, flexing my shoulder muscles and jiggling my feet. This is known in Indiana tavern circles as ”Shaking Down The Suds.” Flick moodily changed his ap.r.o.n. It was getting late in the afternoon now, and the big rush of steelworkers was due shortly after four when the s.h.i.+ft at the mill changed.

Again the entranceway swung open with a puff of frigid air. This time a tall, thin, natty customer displaying a formidable set of store teeth and a dour piercing gaze strode resolutely to the bar. Flick glanced up and, without a word pa.s.sing between the two, took a bottle of bourbon down off the mirrored shelf behind the bar and poured a double. Neat. The man quickly tossed it off, threw a dollar down on the bar, said: ”Be seein' you,” and was gone. Flick rang up the buck as I returned to my stool.

”Well?” I asked.

”Oh, him? That's Fted. Friendly Fred. He runs the Used-Car lot across the street.”

I looked over at the lot. A touch of twilight gloom was beginning to dull the surfaces of the s.h.i.+ny fenders and grinning grilles. The banners fluttered jauntily, snapping and cracking in the breeze.

”He sure has some great-looking junkers over there,” I remarked, dredging an expression out of my misty past.

”Yep. Sure has.”

Next to bowling, automobiles are probably the single most important fact of a Midwesterner's life, after his job, of course. The family heap, the weekly paycheck, and a decent bowling average are all they ask of Life.

”What are y' driving these days, Flick?”

”Olds 88.”

”How's she do on gas?”

”Oh, seventeen, around town. Maybe nineteen, twenty on the road,” Flick lied.

”Can't ask for more than that.”

I found myself sinking into the laconic conversation that I had almost forgotten existed. I had become completely acclimated to the martini-drenched, impa.s.sioned, self-pitying monologues of the French restaurants and expensive bars of New York. Here, the Ego-if it existed at all-was barely discernible. They had never even heard of the word ”Career.” Job, yes. Career, no.

”Olds 88. Hydromatic?”

”Yep.”

”Four-door?”

”Nope. Hardtop.”

”What color is it?”

”Dark blue. 'Bout the same color as that old Graham-Paige your Old Man used to have.”

”The what?”

”The four-door Graham. With the V-grille.”

Now I remembered. Of course! The Graham-Paige. In Hohman, cars were never forgotten, any more than old love affairs are ever really erased in other cultures. Family histories are measured in terms of cars, such as: ”Clarence got the whooping cough when we had the w.i.l.l.ys-Knight,” or, ”Alex ran away with the Ledbetter girl right after we got the Hupmobile.”

”You know, Flick, there's something I never told you about that Graham-Paige,” I said.

”Well, if you're gonna tell me about the bad clutch it had, forget it. I know about that.”

Flick was showing off again.

”No, Flick, there's something that's been on my conscience for a long time. It has to do with that Graham-Paige.”

XXII

THE PERFECT CRIME THE PERFECT CRIME My father loved used cars even more than he loved the White Sox, if possible. A Used-Car Nut is even more dedicated than the ordinary car wors.h.i.+per. A true zealot never thinks in terms of a new new model. His entire frame of reference and system of values is based on acquiring someone else's troubles. It is a dangerous game, and the uncertainty of it appeals to the true Used-Car model. His entire frame of reference and system of values is based on acquiring someone else's troubles. It is a dangerous game, and the uncertainty of it appeals to the true Used-Car aficionado aficionado the same way that Three Card Faro draws on the profligate. the same way that Three Card Faro draws on the profligate.

My father, in company with other Used-Car fanatics, loved to spend long Sat.u.r.day afternoons roaming the Used-Car lots on the South Side of Chicago, beating the bushes for hypothetical great buys and spectacular deals in w.i.l.l.ys-Knights, Ess.e.xes, and Hudson Terraplanes. And when the Used-Car type actually tracked his car down and made the buy, it was a total commitment. All the way. And if the car turned out to be actually functional, his love for it far transcended the love and involvement of the lesser men who simply went to a dealer and bought a new car.

Anybody can buy a new car and expect to get a fairly operative machine, but it takes guts, knowledge, and a reckless sense of deadly abandon to come home with, say, a Lafayette Six previously owned by other shadowy drivers that had gone through G.o.d knows what h.e.l.ls, and to feel confident of victory. A used car, therefore, is a far more powerful love object than a new one. And my father played this deadly game to the hilt. Each succeeding used car was loved and babied, petted and honored in its turn. can buy a new car and expect to get a fairly operative machine, but it takes guts, knowledge, and a reckless sense of deadly abandon to come home with, say, a Lafayette Six previously owned by other shadowy drivers that had gone through G.o.d knows what h.e.l.ls, and to feel confident of victory. A used car, therefore, is a far more powerful love object than a new one. And my father played this deadly game to the hilt. Each succeeding used car was loved and babied, petted and honored in its turn.

Some of the great emotional scenes of his life occurred on Used-Car lots when he was deserting the Pontiac Eight for the ”new” DeSoto. He would even go back day after day to see if they were treating the Pontiac well, and then would get moody and morose when it finally disappeared forever off the lot.

The new DeSoto-he always referred to each used car as ”new”-at first would seem strange and formal to us, vaguely unfriendly, like living in someone else's apartment. On Sat.u.r.days, when we cleaned the car, we'd find foreign hairpins and other people's lost papers under the seats. But gradually the DeSoto or the Pontiac or the Hupmobile would become Ours.

Of course, at that time cars had distinctive personalities and characteristics in themselves and did not all come stamped out of the same mold, painted with the same paint, and advertised by the same agency. A Terraplane man was a completely different breed than, say, a Buick type. John Dillinger drove a Terraplane, which said a lot for the Terraplane type-an angry, rakish, wild machine. It was not a matter of Status then, but of att.i.tude and personality, and the Used-Car man had the fiercest loyalties of all. He was usually not only dedicated to certain makes of cars but to specific years within the breeds. I remember spending long afternoons with my father, hunting for a particular Graham-Paige that reputedly was of the finest of vintage years.

The day we found that beautiful midnight blue four-door Graham, with its stark Gothic radiator grille, was one of the true Festival days of that epoch. She sat bracketed between an elderly Plymouth and a stodgy LaSalle, glowing darkly with a sort of prim, contained politeness-a true aristocrat unaccountably cast in with the rabble. She had more than a few years on her, but was spotless and ageless.

The old man lit up like a Christmas tree and immediately went into his cagey Used-Car Buyer's cool, calculating bargaining character. It was exciting, in several ways. The contest between Father and his his Friendly Fred, the imminent loss of the trusty old Pontiac-did the Graham have a sponge-rubber transmission? The lurking reefs of disaster were always there. Friendly Fred, the imminent loss of the trusty old Pontiac-did the Graham have a sponge-rubber transmission? The lurking reefs of disaster were always there.

Later, the first time he wheeled the midnight blue Graham up the driveway and around the back, was just the beginning of it-the week-long Festival of Love for the new Graham.

At the time I was just below the legal minimum age limit for driving. And I used to sit in the back seat and watch my father s.h.i.+ft gear, casually make left turns, back into parking spots, and wheel the Graham around like a second skin.

In the Midwest driving is like breathing. Kids living on the Maine coast learn to sail at a certain age. They all do. In the Midwest, driving is simply part of life, and they are serious about it. Afternoons, when the car was parked in back, I would sit in the front seat and practice s.h.i.+fting gears, working the clutch, and mentally whistling down US 41 in the center lane. And once in a very great while, when we would be out for a drive on a Sunday, my father would maybe let me back the car out of the driveway, or on the really really great days he'd say: great days he'd say: ”You want to take over?”

Do I want to take over! What a question!

He'd sit next to me: ”Easy on the clutch now.”

I'd ease the clutch out.