Roads We've Taken

CAROL J. ANTHONY

Release

In a nest of nature

we wrap you.

Vestiges of dog fur

mingle your bones.

You lie on a bed of

Spanish moss

magnolia leaves

pine needles.

A fir cone

steadies your ash.

Trailing ends

tie the knot.

You are beautiful,

Man of the Arts.

Your nest is gently placed

as if putting the baby down.

The Black River

envelops you.

Lingering for a bit,

you change color

to brilliant orange gold—

as if an ember.

Bits of you trail out

dissolving in black tea.

Sinking, you send us

tannin bubbles.

Formations of

cluster

string

heart.

You are gone.

Free, where you

wanted to be.

You returned

to Lowcountry—

your childhood sea.

Photo: Carol J. Anthony

BOB BANCKS

My Green Plymouth

Every young man remembers his first car or pickup truck. It’s a sign of being a man and not a kid anymore. You own something.

When I turned sixteen, my mother and I rushed to Muscatine’s courthouse to get my driver’s license. Although I’d been driving for two years with a driver’s permit and had several years of tractor-driving, I was a nervous wreck.

The highway patrol officer walked with me to our family’s big blue Pontiac. For some reason, I’d locked the car before I took the test, which was rare in the 1950s. I was so nervous I couldn’t get the key to work. The officer was patient and told me to try again. Heck, I had the key to the trunk and not the ignition key. I unlocked the car, reached across the seat, and unlocked the passenger side. We drove for about three blocks and back to the courthouse. When I parked, I pulled ahead too far and was not lined up with the parking meter.

The officer said, I believe you are not in the proper space.

I backed up and shut the car off. I figured I had failed. The officer wrote on his clipboard and handed me a slip of paper.

He said, Congratulations. You’re a good driver, but next time, watch where you park.

I thanked him, presented my paper to the lady inside, and received the precious license. For the rest of the school year, I drove the big Pontiac for school activities and dances. I was quite popular because most of my friends were much younger than I was. I still had to ride the school bus to school since Mom needed the car during the day.

The next summer in 1957 my older sister, Mary, became engaged to be married. She had a teaching job and needed a more reliable mode of transportation than her new husband’s car. My mother decided to buy the couple a new vehicle as a wedding present. The couple went car shopping and found the perfect two-door Chevrolet. When Ron, my sister’s husband, offered his auto as a trade-in, the salesman told him it was only worth $99 and that he should try and sell it himself. Ron was dejected. After all, it was a green 1949 Custom four-door Plymouth sedan with only 80,000-plus miles. I had no car, but I had $99. I bought Ron’s Plymouth and I had my first car.

It was reliable with its flathead six-cylinder engine and stick shift. Now, if you are not familiar with this engine, it means all the spark plugs sat on the top of the engine block and not on the side. The stick shift meant you had three gears forward plus reverse. You changed gears with a clutch. It had an AM radio, wool fabric seats, and disc hubcaps on the wheels. The tires were black, not the fancy whitewall tires of Mom’s Pontiac. Air-conditioned cars were for the very rich; a Plymouth owner wasn’t offered such a luxury. 

The first thing I did was to polish it until the car shone like a mirror. With a couple of hours of elbow grease and a can of Turtlewax polish, it was a dark green shining jewel. The car paint of the 1950s was not as good as today’s, so, I had to polish twice, maybe three times a year.

The best thing was I had wheels. When high school started in the fall, I could drive instead of riding the bus. I could stay after school for activities and still get home for chores. Most of all, I was independent of my mom.

By the end of that year, many of the guys in my class turned sixteen. Most had cars much fancier than my Plymouth. Ford introduced the Fairlane and Crown Victoria. Chevrolet had the Impala and Nomad. Plymouth introduced the Fury with its high tail fins. Power and V-8 engines were in. You customized your car if you were good with motors and other car amenities. Chrome hubcaps with star-shaped spinners, whitewall tires, dual exhausts, and four-barrel carburetors feeding the engine with cheap gas were the norm. If you ever saw the play or movie Grease, that’s my era.

Since there was no possibility of upgrading my Plymouth with its six-cylinder engine, and its owner was always strapped for cash, my amenities included just two things. I installed fake whitewalls called Port-o-Walls between the rim and tires and a chrome exhaust diverter that was nothing but an ornament.

The only problem I had with my car was that when I drove through fog or a light mist, moisture would collect around the spark plugs on top of the engine and short out. Soon the engine would start missing and losing power.

One evening, after I had taken a date home, I was on a road with dips and hills. The dips were filled with fog and the dampness caused my engine to misfire and lose power. I would barely make it to the top of the hill, then the spark plugs would dry and the engine purred. I thought I would never make it home. As I drove up and down the undulating pavement, the Plymouth misfired in the dips, then dried out on the hills. I was close to my uncle’s house, so I thought, I’ll just pull into Uncle Jim’s and borrow his car. I can get my car tomorrow.

As I approached Uncle Jim’s, the fog miraculously lifted. The engine dried out, and I never had to wake Uncle Jim or borrow his car.

In the winter I installed tires on the rear wheels with an aggressive tread that could plow through the snow. When spring came, I changed back to regular tires. One spring night, I hadn’t had time to change my tires, so I was still riding on the mud-snow tires. I had two other classmates riding with me as we cruised Second Street in Muscatine. At a stoplight, we were challenged by another group to a game of car tag. It was a fun challenge I knew I would not win. The other driver had his dad’s huge Chrysler New Yorker. Yet somehow my buddies and I were in the lead. We tore around town and were close to a section where a tree nursery was located.

One of the guys in my car, Gary, said, Turn in here. We’ll ditch them in Walton’s Nursery.

Although we were trespassing, I pulled into the maze of lanes in the nursery. The big Chrysler followed.

The lanes or paths were all dirt. I had an advantage because of my higher ground clearance and my mud-snow tires. We drove through the nursery until we hit an area where the owner was watering his trees. I didn’t slow down and plowed through the mud, while Gary looked out the rear window.

The big low-slung Chrysler hit our muddy ruts and sank into the mire. We exited on the other side of the nursery.

Gary yelled, Slow down! Turn here! Then he started to laugh. Charlie is stuck in the mud. I can see his car. Boy, is his dad going to be pissed!

My Plymouth may have gotten muddy, but it proved it was a good mudder.

On a Friday night in July of 1958, my Plymouth registered 99,998 miles on the odometer. I was in Muscatine cruising with a couple of pals.

One said, Let’s drive around until you hit one hundred thousand.

So we drove up Second Street and down Third Street in Muscatine until the odometer started to turn. At the stop light on Iowa Avenue and Second, the meter started to roll over. By Sycamore Street the bottom of the 0 started to appear. Finally, when we drove one more block to Cedar Street, the full 100,000.0 miles could be read. We all cheered. It was almost midnight, and every hangout was closed. There was no place to celebrate. I drove my friends to their homes and continued to my place near Blue Grass. By the time I parked in the machine shed, the odometer read 100,018 miles.

Now the good part of all the cars of the ’50s and ’60s was the front seat had no console in the middle. Seat belts were not required until the mid-’60s. This meant your girl could ride sitting right next to you. There were times the girl rode so close to her boyfriend that from the back of the vehicle they looked like a two-headed person. If you had an automatic transmission, you could drive with one hand on the steering wheel and the other around the girl’s shoulders or, if you were romantic, her knee. Unfortunately, with a stick shift, you had to shift with your right hand, so no extra petting was allowed.

I drove my Plymouth until November 1958. I had accumulated some extra cash from my 4-H projects and work. I would be going to junior college the next year and needed a more dependable vehicle. The ’59 models were arriving, so dealers were anxious to sell their leftover ’58s. I decided to buy a new car. I bought a brand new six-cylinder, straight-stick 1958 Chevrolet Delray for $3,000. It was another bare-roots car with no air or fancy radio, but with its Blue Flame engine spark plugs located on the side of the engine, it was much more dependable.

Once again, the dealer didn’t want a 1949 Plymouth for trade. I put a free classified ad in our electric company’s newspaper. I sold my wonderful green Plymouth for $100. I made a dollar and a lot of memories. My 1949 green four-door Plymouth Custom Deluxe sedan with fake whitewall tires gave me freedom to roam, independence from the family auto, and access to a high school social life that included girls. Especially the girls.

TERRI BAUSTIAN

More Room

One dollar got me forty minutes of