Put the Water Here

I am not a collector. I don’t keep things. Haven’t worn it for a while? Gone! Postcards, ticket stubs and wedding invitations? Stamps, coins and seashells? Pressed flowers, souvenir menus and autographs? No.

And I didn’t hang onto that car.                                        

When I would see that jaunty Plymouth coupe coming down the street, and into our driveway, I would light up, because that meant my grandfather was here. It is impossible for me to separate the memories of my granddad from his ride. He bought the car right off the showroom floor for $900 cash in 1948; and when he stopped driving 16 years later, it had under 100,000 miles, the second set of tires, the original battery, and it ran like new.

It had a pointy-nosed hood, big bug-eye headlights on the rounded front fenders, and a running board.  It came in your basic tan.  It featured a straight-six cast iron block, a three-speed column shift and a push-button starter.  When you opened the huge hump-backed lid in the rear, there was a cavernous trunk, because there was no back seat.  The deep trunk was useful for traveling salesmen and their wares, so the model was called a “business coupe.”  It had just the one bench seat of grey woolen upholstery.  It was built for two, but it was not too crowded for three, if it was my grandfather, my grandmother, and me in the middle.

He only took it out two or three times a week, one of which was Sunday church; and there was a ritual.  He opened the garage, opened the hood, checked the oil, checked the water level in the radiator, unlocked the car door, turned the key, pushed the starter button, and listened for the hum.  Then he went back in the house to put on his tie and coat and gather up my grandmother and me.  I never knew him to drive that car without warming it up for at least ten minutes. 

Into his eighties he was still managing his avocado grove and still driving the car, but we were all worried about his driving.  Wouldn’t you be, if one day he got ON the freeway by driving up the OFFRAMP while you were in the car?  He didn’t say a word or acknowledge in any way that he made a mistake.  He just bumped across the median and continued in the right direction as if that was standard operating procedure.  Cars were dodging, and my heart was in my throat. 

That was near the end of his driving, but not of his own volition.  At the age of eighty-seven, he went to the DMV to renew his license; and they might have renewed it, if he had not fainted dead away while waiting in line.  When the State of California said “No,” it was the end of many things for him.  He couldn’t work his farm anymore, because he couldn’t pick up supplies.  He couldn’t deliver the provender of his hilltop grove and garden to the local orphanage.  And he and my grandmother couldn’t hit the road for their bi-annual road trip to visit kith and kin in Texas.  It was hard on him, the loss of freedom and the loss of the ritual.  In the end he sold me the car for $75.00.

On the day I drove it away, he gave me careful instructions.  Although I had driven the coupe a few times, he wanted to make sure that I was truly familiar with the care and feeding and pampering of his “baby.”  He pointed out the hood latch and demonstrated how to safely raise the hood.  He pulled up the dipstick and we noticed the oil level.  He uncapped the radiator.  “Put the water here; it keeps the engine cool.”

I should have paid more attention.  Not that I needed to be reminded where to put the oil and the water; but I needed to listen more carefully to his words, and especially his heart, about this baby of his.  But I did not.

It didn’t take long for the car not to work right.  I didn’t check the fluids every time, and I didn’t always warm her up for ten minutes.  Not only did I drive every day, I drove at freeway speeds, and my granddad had never pushed it beyond fifty-five.  It was spooky the way that car behaved like “The Wonderful One-Horse Shay,” whose days were numbered.  I sold the car and bought something newer. 

Next time I visited, my granddad asked me about his car.  I could not lie to this kind and loving man who told me about radiator caps and tools and avocados, and who put a Bible in my hand for the first time when I was just a little kid.  He did not register disappointment or deal in anger, because you see, he loved me way more than he loved the car.  But he did dearly love the car.

I have driven some cool cars in my life, including a VW “bug,” a powder-blue ’65 Mustang and a classic Jaguar, with those dual exhausts that create the most amazing rumble and roar when you downshift.  But none of them can match the sentiment of that coupe.  I have threatened for years (if I ever had the money) to track one down and bring it back to life.  But I know that even a totally remodeled and tricked-out 1948 Plymouth “business coupe” would not absolve me from my regret and my cluelessness, and how I hurt him.

Oh, how I wish I had kept that car!