Airplanes in the Attic #T

Stack of books in the attic.  Corner of a yellowed pamphlet showing between two red books.  Pulled it out.

And my postprandial walk is taking me along a narrow street in what is clearly a small town.  To the west and to the south sunlight reflects from the granite of the mountains which darken to blue in the distance.  Nice little patch of sweet corn to my left.  Someone will have some good eating in a few weeks.

Two small boys, eight, perhaps nine years old are standing at the edge of the corn patch.  They look to the sky, one of them points.  The other riffles through the pages of a pamphlet.  I look up to see what has riveted them.  An airplane, clearly a military aircraft.  This village is at least forty air miles from any military base, remote one might say, nestled next to the mountains as it is.  Not many airplanes of any kind fly over this burg.

"What's going on, Son?"

"We are spotters, Mister. We are watching out for enemy airplanes.  We can't be too careful, you know."

Yes, I know.  The world is in total chaos, what with the Axis pushing across Europe and North Africa, tearing up the South Pacific and our Naval forces. Indeed it is an ugly world, and the Allies are hard-pressed to repel the evil ones. We have so immersed ourselves into the patriotic fervor that two small boys in a remote village, fifteen hundred miles from any ocean and those oceans between us and the action are involved in the "war effort."  They are doing their part.

"It's not a Nazi plane, is it, Sir?"

"No.  Look!  You can see the stars on the wings.  She's all-American.  I think it is a B-25.  I've not seen one of those over here before.  Check that in your book."

"I think you got it right!" The boy shows me the silhouette drawings of the B-25.  "We saw a P-38 yesterday, and a P-51 last week."

Then I hear the roar of a single-engine prop plane as it banks away to the left above me.  There are no little boys, no cornfield.  There is no World War at the moment, but there shall always be conflict somewhere.  I am back in the twenty-first century, and the days of my juvenile, "war efforts" return to their nook in the attic of my memory.

My neighbor's restored P-51 starts its climb into the eastern sky.  Bill does a fly-over about once a month.  That's how he keeps his memories alive.

©2015 David W. Lacy

The '41 Chrysler #T

Shelly suggested that I might present a story about the Chrysler I mentioned a week ago.

My father made his 1936 Ford tudor last throughout the war years.  But he very nearly ran the wheels off it, and thus by 1946 he was feeling the need for a better vehicle.  I am sure he would have liked a new car, but since Detroit had made no cars since early 1942, now that production was beginning again, everybody wanted a new car.  There were waiting lists at all dealerships which had the names of those who thought they could afford to buy new.

Someone of his acquaintance had a 1941 Chrysler Royal Club Coupe. It carried six passengers comfortably.  Father bought the car.  I think I am correct in recalling that he paid $1500 for it, or it may have been that he paid $1300, then had to spend another $200 for repairs.  According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that is equivalent to $18,176 in today's money.  Dad's salary that year was one hundred dollars per month, and thus he spent his income for a year and a quarter on this set of wheels.

The car was a beauty.  The picture shows the correct color, although it was not two-tone, but rather all green as the lower body.  This was the first car I ever drove.  I still remember cutting a corner too short on a right turn, running over the curb with the rear wheel.  Dad, in his calm voice, observed, "You cut the hind leg off on that one."  Good times.  My father was an excellent teacher, economy of words his style.  And that is a good thing, for I do not remember ever being "yelled at" while behind the wheel and he beside me.  He taught me how to parallel park in one lesson on a street in downtown Boulder, Colorado.  By following his instructions, which I still follow to this day, I parked it correctly on the first pass.  Still can do.

This was to be the story of the '41 Chrysler, and look.  I have already made it about me.

It was, I think, in summer 1949 and Mother and Father were on their way to Pueblo for a church meeting.  I was working, so my knowledge of the incident is second-hand, as I got it from Dad.  They were almost to their destination when they came to the intersection of highway 85, on which they were traveling, with highway 50.  The stop sign made it clear that it was Dad's responsibility to allow right-of-way to the cross traffic.  He started to slow, gauging his speed and the distance, applied the brake to stop, but instead of stopping, the car skidded right in front of the car coming from his left.  This event is referred to as a collision.

According to the parent, the newly-laid pea gravel on the surface of the tarmac served the function of marbles beneath his tires, and the rest was his responsibility for failure to yield.  The car was in the shop for quite some time, and hence the borrowed '39 Nash became a part of our daily routines.

Finally, though, the Chrysler returned home, and Dad was never happy with it from that day on.  First of all, though it had a new paint job, the color was not quite right.  It was green, yes, but it seemed to have a sort of aqua tint.  But that was not the prime reason for discontent.  No.  The problem was, that in spite of all the subsequent efforts by the mechanics, the car ran down the road crooked.  Oh, it stayed in its lane, but its rear wheels ever after tracked to the right of the front wheels.  It looked, how can I put it?  It looked like a cattywampus old hound running down the road.

It was not long before the car was traded away.  Dad got his first-ever new car, a 1950 Ford Custom fordor.  This car became my first car in 1955.  I traded it in 1958 after it had traversed more than 123,000 miles.