I don’t believe my dad ever owned a new car in his life. He wasn’t partial to any particular brand, but he hated Chevrolets. I never knew why. He enjoyed nursing long term grudges, so likely he felt someone associated with Chevrolet had somehow slighted him.
He bought used automobiles and drove them forever. Big chunks would fall off the car and he would have some piece of metal bolted on to replace whatever was missing. We had a 1954 Plymouth for what seemed like at least 10-12 years. The car would never get above 40 miles per hour, so any extended trip took forever.
My dad insisted on perfect silence while he drove. He had three knucklehead boys in the back seat, who were commanded to be quiet or he would pull over and “beat the mortal hell out of everyone”. You ate and used the restroom when we stopped for gas. He smoked his pipe with the windows rolled up and we never thought it was strange or cruel. However, we felt the idea of suggesting a stop other than than to fill the tank, was the same as requesting to be killed.
The floor board in the back was rusted through. We could move the mat over to see the road rushing by at our feet, in a hole about the size and shape of a 15 oz. can of Ranch Style Beans. My little brother, Bob, decided he HAD to pee and whispered to me he could relieve himself through the hole in the floorboard. I panicked because I knew he would splatter all over the back seat as the car rocked along on bad shocks and rough road. I implored him not to do it and explained my rationale. To placate me, he pulled his pants down to his knees and quietly lay flat to the floor with his little penis reaching into the hole in the floor. It seemed to take forever and I held my breath as he drained his bladder, finally pulling up his pants and sat back down. He was very pleased with himself and whispered it added an entirely new dimension to an otherwise routine task. I was so frightened I knew I could never attempt this trick…I did not share his sense of bravado or daring.
We would visit my grandparents in Whitesboro, TX, and one Sunday afternoon I requested some string and a piece of bacon to catch crawdads. Their backyard was filled with mounds where the crayfish had dug into the ground. One drops the bacon, affixed to the string into the hole, the mud bug grabs hold and you gently lift them out. I filled a Folger’s coffee can with water and a dozen crawdads. I can't remember what I thought I would do with them when I placed the coffee can in the trunk of the same ’54 Plymouth, promptly forgetting about it.
The intense Texas heat beat down for the next couple of days and one morning when my father left the house to go to work, he couldn’t get near the car. The stench was powerful and nauseating. He held a handkerchief over his nose and mouth as he looked through the car and finally opened the trunk. The crawfish had burned up in the Folger’s coffee can and cast a foul smell that covered a 20-yard radius around the car. I do not know what he did to attempt to get rid of the stench, but it remained to a lesser degree with the car and in our family folklore for years.
As a point of reference for the rest of his life, anytime my dad was telling a story and it involved something dreadful, he would say, “It was horrible, but not as awful as the smell of 12 sunbaked, decayed crawfish, incinerated in a Folger’s coffee can from the Texas heat, in the back of a green, 2 door, 1954 Plymouth”.
I remember sleeping in the foot well in the backseat with a pillow on the hump of the driveshaft fitting perfectly curled up feet toward the door.
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