From The Pen Of Joshua Lawrence Breslin-The Golden Age Of The Automobile, Circa 1954

 

There was a madness in this country in the 1950s. No, not the Cold War atomic-bomb-is-going-to-get-us-we-are-all-going-to-be-dead-next-week or “better dead than red” kind of madness although there was plenty of that, but a madness for the automobile, the sleeker, the more airplane-like, the more aerodynamic, and more powerfully-engined the better. It wasn’t just, deafeningly mad as they were, driven by those guys in the now almost sepia-faded photographic images of tight white T-shirt wearing, rolled sleeve cigarette-packed, greased Pompadour-haired, long side-burned, dangling-combed , engineer-booted, chain-wielding, side of the mouth butt-puffing , didn’t care if school kept or not bent over the hood of some souped-up ’57 Chevy working, sweating pools of sweat, sweating to get even more power out of that ferocious V-8 engine for the Saturday night “ chicken" run.

And it wasn’t even driven by those mad faux James Dean-sneered, "rebel without a cause"-posed, cooled-out, maybe hop-headed guys, smelling of aromatic ganga, mary jane, herb, grass deeply drawn , name your name for nirvana twists, either. The guys with the faux leather jackets, black as night and black as their desiccated hearts, short tempers and short knives ready to avenge at the drop of  a hat, or just because they were feeling that way that day, any slight. And it was always guys, who you swore you would beat down if they ever even looked at your sister, if you had a sister, and if you liked her enough to beat a guy down to defend her honor, or whatever drove your sense of right. And, of course she, your sister no less, is looking for all she is worth at this “James Dean” soda jerk (hey, what else could he be), this zen master “chicken run’ hood, or that black-hearted chain-wielder, because this guy is “cute.” Go figure.

No, and forget all those stereotypes that they, the historians, the literary critics, the social commentators, the media-aratti, like to roll out when they want to bring a little “color” to the desperately color-craving 1950s. This car madness was driven, and driven hard, by your very own stay-at-home-and watch the television, water the lawn, if you have a lawn and it needed watering and sometimes when it didn’t just to get out of the house, have couple of beers and take a nap on Saturday afternoon father (or grandfather, I have to remember who might be in my audience now) who always said “ask your mother” to blow you off. You know him. I know you know him he just had a different name than mine did. And maybe even your very own mother (or grandmother) got caught up in the car thing too, your mother the one who always would say “ask your father. You know her too, don’t say no. I hope by now you knew they were working a team scam on you even if you didn’t have the kind of proof that you could take to court and get a little justice on.

Hell, on this car thing they were just doing a little strutting of their stuff in showcase, show-off, “see what I got and you don’t” time. Come on now, don’t pretend that you don’t know what I am talking about, at least if you too grew up in the 1950s, or heard about it, or even think you heard about it. Hey, it was about dreams of car ownership for the Great Depression, World War II survivors looking to finally cash in, as a symbol that one, and one’s family, had arrived in the great American dream, and all on easy monthly payments, no money down, and the bigger, the sleeker the better and I’ll take the heavy- chromed, aerodynamically-designed, two-toned one, thank you. That was how you knew who counted, and who didn’t. You know what I mean.

Heck, that ‘50s big old fluffy pure white cloud of a dream even seeped all the way down into “the projects”, the Acre projects (a.k.a. the Olde Saco Housing Authority apartments up in Maine  although nobody ever called it that except to snicker , just the Acre). And I will bet the same was true over at the Adamsville, Massachusetts “projects” near Boston where my amigo Peter Paul Markin grew up he did too, although I don’t know for sure on that, and maybe in the thousand and one other displaced person hole-in-the-walls “projects” they built as an afterthought back then for those families like mine caught on the slow track in “go-go” America. Except down there, down there on the edge of respectability, and maybe even mixed in with a little disrespectability, you didn’t want to have too good a car, even if you could get that easy credit, because what we you doing with that nice sleek, fin-tailed thing with four doors and plenty of room for the kids in the back in a place like “the projects” and maybe there was something the “authorities” should know about, yes. Better to move on with that old cranky 1940s-style un-hip, un-mourned, un-cool jalopy than face the wrath and clucking of that crowd, the venom-filled, green-eyed neighbors.

Yes, that little intro is all well and good and a truth you can take my word for but this tale is about, if I ever get around to it, those who had the car madness deep in their psyche, but not the wherewithal- this is a cry, if you can believe it today, from the no car families. Jesus, how could you not get the car madness then though, young as I was, facing it every night stark-naked in front of you on the television set, small as the black and white picture was, of Buicks, and Chevys and Pontiacs and whatever other kind of car they had to sell to you. But what about us street car dependents? The ones who rode the bus, back or front it didn’t matter, at least up there in Olde Saco it didn’t matter. Down South they got kind of funny about it.

As you might have figured out by now, and if you didn’t I will tell you, that was our family’s fate, more often than not. It was not that we never had a car back then, but there were plenty of times when we didn’t and I have the crooked heels, peek-a-boo-soles, and worn out shoe leather from walking rather than waiting on that never-coming bus to prove it. And not only that but I got so I had no fear of walking, and walking great distances if I had to, all the way to  “up-town” Olde Saco Center even. That was easy stuff thinking back on it. I‘ll tell you about walking those later long, lonesome roads out West in places like just before the mountains in Winnemucca, Nevada and 129 degree desert- hot Needles, California switching into 130 degree desert-hot Blythe, Arizona some other time, because it just doesn’t seem right to talk about mere walking, long or short, when the great American automobile is present and rolling by.

It’s kind of funny now but the thing was, when there was enough money to get one, that the cars my poor old, kind of city ways naïve, but fighting Marine-proud father would get, from wherever in this god forsaken earth he got them from would be, to be polite, clunkers and nothing but old time jalopies that even those “hot rod” James Dean guys mentioned above would sneer at, and sneer at big time, at. It would always be a 1947 something, like a Hudson or Nash Rambler, or who knows the misty, musty names of these long forgotten brands.

The long and short it was, and this is what’s really important when you think about it, that they would inevitably break down, and breakdown in just the wrong place, at least the wrong place if you had a wife who couldn’t drive or help in that department and three screaming, bawling tow-headed boys who wanted to get wherever it was we were going, and get there-now.  And always dreaming, or maybe pointing out in daytime to anybody in this whole candid world who would listen, of great 1954 this or that “boss” (local, hell maybe nation, among the young then, term of art for primo, numero uno things) Buicks, Pontiacs, and especially that two-toned Chevy just off the assembly line.

But it was those break-downs, those oil slicks under the car, those sick engine sounds that meant no good, that funny rattling sound coming from the rear which meant hard-earned money (and maybe no car for a while if it was a battle between that and kids’ groceries) would have to be spend on repair that ruled the young Breslin family world. Sometimes the only difference between having a car available and not was dependent on the good graces of one Joey Parker, the max daddy of the self-taught local mechanics who, very conveniently, lived in a trailer at the outer edge of the Acre and who, from some unknown beginning , was friendly with my father, the late Prescott Breslin.  (Our “relationship,” my relationship with Joey, if that is the right term, had started when my father had to push, assisted by three young sons, a transmission- busted 1947 Studebaker over to his place for major work and I was totally fascinated by the automobiles strewn in all conditions around his “garage.”) So in the end the golden age of the American automobile turns out to be about the valor of Joey Parker and his mad passion for fixing lame and halting automobiles.   

 

Joey Parker was several years older than me, maybe ten, but that didn’t stop him from letting me hang around his “garage” and watch him turn some stumble-bum wreck of an automobile that had been scrapped off some back road after some midnight “chicken run” into a vehicle worthy of a king. Worthy that is if what you wanted was speed and chicken runs and were not worried like a lot of older guys (and like my corner boys from the stoop in front of Mama’s Pizza parlor over Main Street and me later when our time came about ninth grade when we are already plotting Seal Rock dream dates in some sultry, sexy heap) were about the thing being “girl ready,” especially girl back seat ready. Then you went, just like we did, over to Bill’s Esso and got the thing all dolled up, amped up, and perfumed up, I guess.

Then though all I, ten years of surly snarl and Meme back-bite, cared about, aside from the revival of various Breslin clunkers already mentioned, was Joey turning his wrecks into speed. And, truth, that was all that Joey cared about, at least that s all he talked about. About that ability to pull the throttle down from zero to sixty in about thirty second s flat (wild estimate for I wouldn’t know the exact time it took unless I was told). Here is the funny part though, unlike a lot of guys who had those “boss” engines under the hood to impress the girls (women too, married women from what I heard, although I didn’t put too much credence in that talk at the time. Every guy from about fourteen to four hundred believed that those young married women were just pining away for some sex instead of doing the housework while hubby was at work. Those ideas died hard.) as they zoomed down Olde Saco Boulevard, Joey didn’t talk or seem to take much interest in girls.         

Although they, when he had some speed demon roadster all polished and pretty, flocked to his trailer looking for, well, you know what they were looking for (although I didn’t at the time). One girl, about sixteen, had her brother, my school friend Benny, hang around Joey’s for the express purpose of gathering intelligence about who Joey was, or was not, seeing and dropping hints via that poor brother that she was ready to give her all to sit in the front seat of a Joey-mobile.      

[A few years later long after I had stopped hanging around the garage and moved on to the corner I found out the exact reason why Joey was not interested in discussing girls, or his sex life. We (or maybe, I) thought he might be a fag (a term of, well you know, derision in the Acre and elsewhere in 1950s America). Gay. No way. See Joey had fathered at least two children by two different girls up around Portland way and was laying low, very low on the girl front-JLB]     

Now in case you don’t know, and maybe thought I was some juvenile delinquent-in- waiting, ready, at age ten, to plot out robberies and other mayhems in order to be ready to get my own fixed up wreck when my time came the reason I was hanging Joey’s garage was just because it was located down the end of our family’s street over in the Acre and when thing s got tough at home with Ma mainly (we called her in the French-Canadian fashion, Meme, she nee LeBlanc from the LeBlancs up around Quebec City way) then I headed to Joey’s to cool out. There was always a battle over sometime, mainly dough or no dough stuff, and desires kid know-nothing economic desires, but that is my story (and Meme’s) not Joey’s so I will move on.

Sometimes we, Joey and I, would run around town but mainly I just hung out there with a couple of other guys my age that also had the Ma problem. We did that for a few years until we had to start worrying about girls and cars rather some wrecked cars getting revived but the best years were the first couple when Joey would let us watch, maybe let us hand him some tool and also let us listen to the forbidden (Ma forbidden, Meme strictly forbidden no devil’s music in her pure Roman Catholic home, period, end of story) local radio station, WMEX, that he had on constantly. The local rock and roll radio station (although at first we did not know that term but we sure as hell knew the bounce of the music).Around the house Ma and Dad were strictly tuned into WJDA and the old fogey World War II stuff like Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Peggy Lee and Frank (yes, that Frank) that drove me up a wall even before I hit on Joey’s WMEX.

I remember the first, maybe the second, time Joey let me hang around (it was done mainly, as it was with the other guys, by him not saying “get lost”). For some reason he did not have the radio on that morning before he started working on some 1954 Pontiac that had gotten mashed going 110 MPH, or something like that, over on Gorham Road in Scarborough. So he talked, talked a blue streak for a taciturn, gruff, few words kind of guy, about how he had finally found a wreck, this Pontiac Star Chief, that he could turn into a chariot (his term) that would blow Johnny Blaze, Johnny, king of the “chicken run” Olde Saco Beach Saturday night, away. Beat Johnny so bad that he would thereafter happily have his work done over at Bill’s Esso like all the other squares (1950s term of art for, for, hell, you know, squares, the regular nine to five people, stuff like that).

Even I had heard of Johnny and his exploits. About his almost jet-like cars. About how he totally blew Stewball Stu (named as such for his constant companion whisky breathe but don’t ever call him that to his face or you might have your face mangled at the wrong end of chain whipping) the previous king away leaving him badly injured in some swamp ditch down in South Berwick one rainy early Sunday morning, driving away laughing and with Stu’s girl (they had bet her as part of the bargain). Rough boy. The most famous though was the night he outran the Kennebunk cops out on Route 109, blew them away, and the next morning sat down at the Jeffery’s Diner and smiled, just smiled at the same cops who chased him, while they were having their coffee and. And they, red-faced, couldn’t let on they had been beaten by a civilian. Beautiful. Yes, Johnny was the king in that jacked up Chevy of his and would be hard to displace, very hard I thought.

Then Joey went on and on that morning about the displacement this and that, the wheel base this and that, the fuel pump this and that, the dual carburetors this and that, all stuff then (and now) which I was clueless about. All I knew was that I wished Joey well, that I hoped that he would beat old Johnny (not for any other reason than I knew Joey and didn’t know Johnny), and that I wished he would let me hang around while he was putting his masterpiece together. And he did. Did let me hang around and did finish his masterpiece. It took him maybe two months, in between working on various conditions of my father’s and other’s cars in order to carry the freight for expenses for his souped-up Star Chief.

Word got around; got around small town Olde Saco (and the even smaller part that cared about chicken runs Olde Saco) that Joey was ready, ready for Johnny Blaze anytime, anywhere. As such things go about two days later I heard from Benny, one of the other kids that also hung around Joey’s (and the brother of that girl who was ready to give her all for Joey at the slightest glance, sorry sister Joey was booked, booked solid) that the deal was down for Saturday night June 6^that the far end (the traditional chicken run end) of Olde Saco Beach near Seal Rock and did I want to sneak out of the house and go with him. The sneaking part was necessary since these chicken runs were held at about two in the morning when few people, and cops, were in that area. I said I would try, try in order to give support for our man Joey and because I had never seen a chicken run up close (just some off-hand dueling by strictly week-end warriors, probably drunk, on Route 1, kid’s stuff really).

That trying to get out of the house Saturday night part never happened though. Jesus, it never happened. Here is what did. The Friday before the big run Joey decided he wanted to take the Pontiac on a test run, a run over that same Gorham Road he said that had brought him his “good luck” wheels in the first place. Here is where it got kind of crazy though in the good luck department. Joey had also decided that since I had hung around his place so much while he was building his baby (his term) he wanted me to ride with him on that run. See, I was his good luck. I was thrilled, Jesus was I. So that Friday about eight o’clock, like I was some date, he picked me up at my house so my parents wouldn’t worry and we rode over to the Gorham Road.

I do not know about now but in those days the Gorham Road was nothing but a country road, a road for farmers to get to Scarborough, or maybe try to connect with Route 1to Portland or to head south. In other words on a Friday night not a bad place to test out a car for speed. And we did, jesus, we did. Joey got her up to about 120 MPH fast, faster that I would have believed possible, and got me white as sheet. I almost threw up I was so scared. At that point he slowed down (and so did my pulse rate). But that was not the end of it. Some Scarborough cops were now on his tail, lights flashing. Joey, in what must have been a Johnny Blaze moment, decided he was going to outrun them (he, fortunately, did not tell me that).

And guess what, he did, as we lost them somewhere on that road I don’t remember how far up, maybe about ten miles. Needless to say I wanted no more part of being a co-pilot with Joey Parker, although I later continued to hang around his garage since I still had enough Meme beefs to fill the planet. Oh yah, Joey, Joey beat Johnny Blaze that Saturday night, beat him bad, left him knee deep in the waters off Seal Rock, his car filled with engine-destroying salt water (the chicken runs around Olde Saco were raced on the flats at low tide on the beach but one a car went out of control the damn thing usually wound up in some water). I don’t think Johnny ever turned over a new leaf though and went thereafter to Bill’s Esso. The last I had heard he was serving ten to fifteen for an armed robbery up in Shawshank.

As for Joey, here is the beauty of it, that Sunday morning he went into Jimmy Jake’s Diner III over in Scarborough (Diner I and II were in Olde Saco, I for jukebox teens and II for blue-haired ladies and summer touristas) and smiled, just smiled at the two cops who had chased him on Friday night while they were having their coffee and. So when you think of the be-bop golden age of the American automobile think about those red-faced cops, and think about Joey Parker too.