Granddaddy's Car

  Tucked away amidst all the news this week is a story out of Louisville, Kentucky about a dude who borrowed his granddaddy’s  1957 Bel Air, took it back to his place and spent the past year restoring it.

  They say the last time anyone drove it was 42 years ago.  It’d been sitting in the guy’s granddaddy’s back yard all that time, rusting away, falling apart.

  This is the week the dude presented the Chevy to the old man…shiny, spiffy, looking like new.  Needless to say granddaddy was blown away, moved to tears.

  I would’ve liked to’ve done that for my granddaddy but he died 42 years ago.

  And I would’ve liked to’ve done that with my granddaddy’s old car but it was totaled in a wreck 49 years ago, and he was driving.

  My granddaddy’s old car was a 1956 DeSoto Firedome.

  Damned if I know all the particulars but I like to say the thing was built back when cars were made of solid American steel, a heavy clunky thing.  I don’t know if the engineers at DeSoto, a branch of Chrysler, even knew the word “aerodynamic” but if they did I reckon it was aerodynamic for its day.

  Granddaddy’s DeSoto was pea-soup green….or would that be chartreuse….and dusty yellow.  It had four doors, no headrest and no seat belts…apparently we didn’t need them back then.  The front seat was a bench seat, individual bucket seats were off in the future.

  Every Sunday my granddaddy would get dressed up in his suit and tie, put on his fedora, get in his 1956 DeSoto and drive downtown to the big Methodist church to go services.  He had retired from the power company before I was born.  In the years after he retired he worked in the office of the church.  I never knew if he volunteered or got paid…we didn’t talk about money in my family.  Money, sex and farts were taboo topics at my house.

  Sometimes my grandmother would put me in a suit and tie and I’d get in the 1956 DeSoto with granddaddy and go to the big church downtown and sit beside him in the pew during services.  Then would come time to sing the hymns.  We’d stand, hold the hymnal and he’d sing in this quavering style of singing from another time….he was born in 1886.  I’d listen and think to myself it must take a lot of work to make your voice do that.

  I don’t say much about words from my granddaddy, he didn’t talk much.  He was a quiet fellow.  My grandmother did enough talking for both of them though.

  I rode up front with granddaddy when we drove around in his DeSoto.  Now my sister for some reason, liked to ride in the back seat…granddaddy driving, sister in the back and he would take her to the high school.  That stopped when, one evening, Dad told sister when granddaddy gave her a ride to school she needed to ride in the front seat.

  “Your grandfather is not your chauffeur,” said Dad with his usual Moses-coming-down-with-the-tablets voice.

  Granddaddy putting on his suit and tie, then his fedora and walking out the door to his 1956 DeSoto waiting in the driveway all came to an end one Sunday morning in the fall of 1969.

  Granddaddy had gone off to church.  I couldn’t tell you why I wasn’t riding with him that morning but suddenly my grandparent’s house was busy, people running around:  Granddaddy had been t-boned by another car just a few blocks from the house.

  “What happened to granddaddy?” I asked my dad.

  “He’s been in a car wreck and is in the hospital,” said Dad.

  “But what happened?” I asked.

  “Boy, I’ve told you all you need to know,” Dad snapped back. 

  Dad never was a good storyteller.

  Well, in the next few days someone, can’t remember if it was my mom or grandmother, told me what happened:  Granddaddy was just a few blocks from the house when he crossed one of the city’s busier two-lane streets.  Did he run a stop sign?  Did he not see the car that rammed him on the driver’s side of his 1956 DeSoto?

  Who knows.

  What I remember is the impact shot the DeSoto’s front bench seat out the passenger side door and granddaddy along with it.  Everything ended up in a vacant lot at the intersection.

  When the rescue squad arrived on the scene granddaddy was sitting on the car’s seat in the vacant lot singing “Little Red Wing,” a song from 1907…

“Now, the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing
The breeze is sighing, the night bird's crying…..”

  Well, granddaddy spent some time in the hospital, I don’t know how long, I wasn’t even a teenager yet but he never was the same after that.  I didn’t know if the wreck sped up his decline or if it was the Parkinson’s Disease he had.

  As the years went on he got quieter and quieter, shuffled instead of walked and seemed to just fade away until late in 1976 he “went on to Glory.”

  Whenever I see an old DeSoto or hear “Little Red Wing” I think of him.

“Now, the moon shines tonight on pretty Red Wing
The breeze is sighing, the night bird's crying…..”

Listen:  John McEuen picks it here....