And most my memories
Have escaped me
Or confused themselves with dreams
I wonder what John will remember about the day he met the angry face car. If he’ll remember anything at all.
I should have known
At your age in a string of days
The year is gone
But in that space of time
It takes so long
I have these vague memories of the Volvo my mother had when I was four years old. There’s an odd vignette in my head of going to see the ’75 Granada my father crashed on New Years’ Eve in ’76 (I think). I would have been about John’s age now. But why did we go to the junkyard? Did that even happen? The replacement car was a Monarch. I’ve long since lost the ability to remember what color it was.
I’m not one to ever pray for mercy
Or to wish on pennies in the fountain or the shrine
But that day you know I left my money
And I thought of you only
All that copper glowing fine
So much of my childhood feels difficult to reach, impossible to remember, not even real. There are days, months, years lost. But some moments are etched with acid. Will this be one of those days for John? When I’m gone, will he have a memory associated with these photos? Or will it come as a surprise to him? If we don’t remember it, did it really happen? Did it really matter?
But for the record, there was a day. And on that day, I found myself under a canopy of trees, with the rain spotting the windshield and the urgency of the big V-6 throwing me forward in a convoy of cars at full speed and no regrets, and I sort of fell in love with a car, and when you fall in love you want to introduce the object of your love to your family, and my family is very small, really, it’s just me and my son, he calls it “our T-Rex family”, and so I brought my love to him, and he said it was the “angry face car”. One day I will be old and lonely and I’ll hold onto this day, until it fades. Then the images will be of something that nobody remembers. Which, when you think about it, is both reassuring, and sad.
Time spent with your young son, is precious, Jack, and it goes so fast.
I remember with sadness the moment I realized my son was no longer coming to sit on my lap, he was becoming a man and to big to sit on dad’s lap anymore. I was in pain for months. But he is a great son, and takes time for me when I come to town, always greeting me with a big smile and hug. And never lets me leave with out another.
Still, there is so much more I could have done with him had I taken more time and not have been so selfish with my personal time.
Precious, Jack… Precious.
Child hood memories are funny things, some solidly etched in our psyche, yet, most ephemeral. Some, like the mist, coming and going, incited by smells, music, sounds…
The special memories that I have are my treasures. Times spent with my parents camping. With dad fishing, on the golf course, or looking at and test driving new cars.
Automobiles are firmly etched in my memories.
Moving from the big city to the country in a Ford Model ‘A’ coupe, me staring at the little light in the gauge cluster at night while listening to the little motor that could, climb the steep grades as we mounted the numerous passes on mostly one lane roads.
The Fastback 48’Pontiac 4-dr with its internal running boards, a straight eight engine running Hollywood mufflers off its split exhaust manifolds, and later, Lakes pipes. The day dad and his brother put on the three carb manifold after shaving the head and putting in a 3/4 cam.
My uncles customized and lowered 49’Ford coupe with the hot Mercury mill and three deuces.
Dad’s Hornet, Starlight Coupe, and Hawk.
Mom’s Austins and Sunbeam ‘Rapier’.
The Bonneville car with its streamlined body, two Straight Eight Pontiac engines in tandem, and later two V-8’s. The Bonneville Salt Flats in the early and mid fifties, and again with my son during the fiftieth anniversary. Like father… like son, like father … like son. almost.
The time we went at night and picked up the 37′ Packard Victoria convertible coupe with the V-12, chrome wire wheels with dual side mounts, and rumble seat. That
V-12 engine sure looked big to a nine year old when it was sitting in the rolling chassis during restoration.
The time dad thought I could drive our John Deere tractor some 20 miles home, and I got stopped by the state patrol… I was only eight and already had a record…col!
The time dad went to the big city and got home early in the morning. Later, when I got up, he sent me out to the storage shed to roust some chickens for some breakfast eggs.
The old dilapidated equipment shed with a definite tilt is where we kept our fertilizers and garden tools, and in the Winter our tractors, at the back, our roosting chickens cubicles lined the wall. As I approached the big swinging double doors, one was partially open, a bright shaft of sun light played across the dark interior revealing a diagonal fraction of a curvaceous silver car body with a bright red interior. That color combination imprinted me forever when it comes to German cars. Despite the smell of fertilizers and chicken poop, I caught the smell of new German leather upholstery, distinctive, like the smell of new English leathers, and Kangaroo hide leather interiors, but different. I was confused, but pleased, this was supposed to be a Gull wing coupe, not a roadster.
The sight and sound on another early sunny morning, when my dad and uncle drove up our long dusty driveway in a new TR-3, shiny red under the film of dust, and again, my eyes following it till out of sight when it went back down the the drive on its way to town, never to be seen again, by me, in that shiny new condition.
There are so many more auto related memories of my own making… some other time… I’m still making them.
It’s hard to remember what life was like for me as a 3-year-old. I do remember getting my first stitches and the smell of the soap when I washed my hands before going in to meet my newborn brother for the first time.
Reaching further back, things dissolve into a fuzzy, hazy fingerpaint portrait. But I do remember being loved, as will your son.
Someday John will look at you and see his father as not a Tyrannosaur, but as an old man - not so much in the shopworn and feeble sense, but as a mortal. That’ll probably be a shock for him. Maybe not.
But anyway, will he remember this day specifically? Hard to say. Likely, it’ll end up as a single pixel, a piece of one of those photo montages that make up a larger image when taken as a whole. Whether or not this day was a milepost for him, the distance has been traveled, and his experience of you has been informed - he has changed and you have changed, and the car has taken you down the road a little further.
That’s the purpose of taking a photograph right? To capture the instant and say, that was a perfect moment. From the sounds coming down the hallway, my kid is waking up now. I gotta tell you, this whole damn thing’s a perfect moment.