Old Studebakers, from a while ago

The clinic exit door is glass, so I can see out to a slice of the parking lot from the hallway in front of the exam rooms. A variety of cars and trucks, and the occasional motorcycle take their turns in the two slots closest to the door. I check them out, like I always do. Some are more interesting than others, just like the folks who arrive and depart in them. Such is life. Much of life is routine, and perhaps will become a blur in memory, and then there are those unforgettable moments, and the people with whom you share those moments.

I don’t know if cars remember much from their past. Like us, they probably pass through their time in a colorless rush to the next place, and they pass by without seeing the bulk of things. But I’m sure they remember some. And when you see an old car parked in a driveway or garage, and you realize that it doesn’t get out on the road as much as it used to, or perhaps it doesn’t get out at all, don’t ya wonder if it doesn’t reminisce about the special times and places it has seen, while it quietly sits there? Surely it now has the time to do this. And like us, as we mature, old cars spend more time with, and savor, the memories. 

A while ago I looked out the glass door, and sitting there was a 1963 Chevy. I did the math quickly in my head. Forty –eight years old. That is older than Norm’s Studebaker. 

Norm was my best friend through high school. I’ve lost touch with him over the years. He wanted to be a concert pianist playing for the assembled masses, and he tried really hard for that. He ended up running his dad’s lumberyard in our little town instead, and he did well enough at that to buy a concert piano, a twenty-foot long or so Bosendorfer I think it was, and it sat in his living room and he played it every day, for himself.  Alone.

Anyway, back in the late 60’s Norm bought a ’27 Studebaker. In the 60’s you could go to the Sears catalog and find any part for an old Model T Ford you wanted, and if you were trying to rebuild an old one you just wrote a check and the parts came and you rebuilt the car. Studebakers were just a bit less ubiquitous than Model T’s, and in the 60’s, if you wanted to fix one old Studebaker you needed another old Studebaker from which to cannibalize parts. So even with a few friends helping, that old Studebaker never regained its former glory. I think Norm finally ended up giving up and selling the car to someone else. Poof…gone.

I recall that driving that old car around was really neat for us. Cars had changed a lot from ’27 to our time. I loved the old pinstripes we found when we took off the old paint covering the older paint, cause that told of the proud past of this car. And I remember how forlorn the car felt. 

That old Studebaker had an aura of sadness about it. I didn’t realize it at the time, but that is what I now remember most of it.

And I got a completely different feeling from that ’63 Chevy in the parking lot.

Now, this Chevy was not one of those absolutely perfectly frame off restorations you see at the custom and classic car auctions on TV, the ones that sell for a king’s ransom. Far from it. In fact, it died in the parking lot, and if the car parts store wasn’t walking distance away, and a new battery was thus forthcoming, it wouldn’t have made it home that night. And the folks who owned this old car were as far removed as you can imagine from those people who write six figure checks to buy restored vehicles with the same ease as the rest of us buy a sandwich down at Togo’s . Heck, this guy could have spent his few discretionary dollars on teeth, and no one would have minded.

But with the new battery, the engine fired right up, and settled into a contented idle. I told the guy that it sounded happy. He agreed.

Turns out this car had been in his family since day one. Through forty-eight years of the evolution of the nation, and the progression of a family, this car had stuck around, and the folks in this family have kept it alive and part of things. And the car felt happy.

Somewhere in this there may lay a lesson. I started writing about something way different than this, when I began this thing rather late last night. And I ended up here. Don’t know why. The fun columns always seem to end up way different from where they start. Maybe next week I’ll write the column I started this week. Meanwhile, I’ll just think some more about where this one went.