Moving On

Residents of Belmont Shore have to make peace with automobiles. The density of homes and apartments combined with the influx of visitors means cars, cars and more cars. There are a few oldies but most of the cars I see are reasonably new and many, I suspect, were manufactured in the last decade. My parents never owned a new car in their life, as best I can remember. My father drove a panel truck for his plumbing business back in the day. I've seen photos anyway.

The first car I remember was a white Plymouth station wagon, that car seemed a half-block long to my child-size self and could easily hold five families in it. We "little guys" (me, my younger brother and sister) as we were known back then to my older brother and sister would scramble into the very back and would bounce around at every dip in the road or slide one way then another at every turn. I know I hit my head on the ceiling at least once on particularly bad streets in our neighborhood.

By the time we acquired the Ford Country Squire station wagon with the fake wood paneling on the side, the "little guys" were were our youngest brother and sister  and it was their turn to ride in the 'way back.' In those days a 'car seat' for a child consisted of a small seat with a drop over arm rest, sort of like on a roller coaster type ride restraint. The entire contraption was secured by two big metal hooks that hung over the bench seat of the automobile, unsecured by a seat belt, good really only for containing a child that wanted to be contained. Escape meant only lifting the arm rest above your head and stepping into the jaws of oblivion.

In the short life of a child we seemed to spend hour upon hour in the car going to the drive-thru dairy for milk and eggs, to Alpha Beta, our grocery store, to church for Sunday Mass, to get gas at Uncle Louie's station and to go to Gramma's house, none of these more than three or four miles from our house. I liked going to Uncle Louie's station. If we were lucky, he would put the car on the lift and give us a ride to the rafters, that was both exhilarating and scary at the same time. Plus, his coke machine sold chocolate soda (in bottles, of course). Louie had kind eyes and a shy, sometimes mischevious smile. He doted on his three daughters. 

My oldest brother worked at Uncle Louie's station as a teenager and became a sufficiently decent mechanic. I envied my brother for having a job there. He drove an old Peugot 404, a French car, that had a sun roof. On curves, if you drove too fast, the doors sometimes opened. And I think my brother liked to drive fast (and live dangerously) at the time. It seemed to me that old Peugot required a live-in mechanic. In the days of great turmoil in our house my oldest brother left home and I think he did live in that old Peugot for a while, sleeping at night behind the gas station.

A quarter mile west of Uncle Louie's station was my high school. It was there I learned, among other much more tedious things, that my father and my uncle had once owned a gas station together.  On the corner just west of Uncle Louie's station there used to be an old Signal gas station, the Bulone Brothers Signal station. When one of the priests learned my last name he asked me how I was related to the Bulone Brothers of the Bulone Brothers Signal station. I had no idea they had been in business together.

There was a Carl's Junior hamburger stand next to Uncle Louie's station, that is where his youngest daughter worked while she was in high school. We were the same age and she told me I should get a job there too, so I did. That was the beginning of my historic two-week stint in the food service industry. I'm not ashamed to say I didn't care for it, I never have been all that big on work anyway, being much more the "big picture" person. But, it was there that I met Russell, who said to me, "Whaddya think about that Roseann? Man, I am gonna marry her!"

"Roseann? That's my cousin!"

Funny thing is, he did marry her and they are still married to this day.

My parents also owned an old Lincoln Continental, black, with suicide doors. That was a luxury car they purchased used. It was the first car I had ever seen with electric windows and seat-movers. I was approaching driving age when they had that car and I sooo wanted to drive it, In the end they gave it to my oldest brother, It overheated regularly as I recall and was expensive to repair.

The car I did learn to drive in was what replaced the Lincoln, an old Datsun pick up, a stick. Although the entire vehicle sounded tinny and as though it might fall apart at any moment I did learn the absolute practicality of the pick up truck, a lesson I have retained to this day. Oh the things to be hauled in a pick up, loads for the dump, furniture and appliances, friends and firewood to the beach. Plus, room only for two (possibly three) which meant simple conversations.

I rarely see cars such as these any more. Like old-fashioned tools, they were easily discarded for better, more useful implements. Even if I take in the old car show on 2nd Street I rarely see the station wagons or small pick ups. I still see the odd Continental now and then. I still find it a beautiful machine. In Southern California, sadly, our cars help define us. The cars of my childhood said a lot about the socio-economic state of our family. The station wagon was the quintessential family car for the large Catholic family, the Lincoln was my parent's aspiration for a better life but tempered them about their unreasonable expectations and the Datsun maybe a deliberate attempt to break our family into smaller groups and move on. And move on we did.