Bucket of Bolts

Bucket of Bolts

I got married and left my childhood home at the end of 1955. It was six months before my graduation from college, and I had saved some money to live on so I didn't have to work during that six months. My mom and dad had given me a great childhood, a fine education, and a loving send off. They couldn't have been nicer to me, and I couldn't have been more grateful to them than I was (and still am).

After Dad's long career in sales and later management, my mom and dad were comfortable and nearing retirement and my departure lifted one more financial burden from their shoulders. Now they could begin a life dedicated to their own enjoyment rather than to rearing and educating two kids.

Dad had always been interested in cars, and I caught that fever from him. He was a Chrysler fan, and the first car I can remember was a 1935 DeSoto Airflow coupe. That car was rare even in its early years, and in my adulthood after many years of old car mania and trudging through old car shows I have only seen one other example of that exact car. Because in his earlier years he had been a traveling salesman, Dad went through lots of cars, and I loved riding in every one of them. The car he had when I got married was a 1951 Chrysler. That model was the original muscle car as its 180 horsepower was much bigger than any other brand, and a horsepower race was unleashed on the American car buying public. He had had the '51 for a few years when I left home as his traveling salesman's years were behind him, so he didn't wear out cars as fast as he used to.

A few months after I moved out of my parents' home, Mom and Dad came by our house to take us out to dinner, and he was driving a brand new 1956 Chrysler sedan. I was very surprised when I saw it, and it was a far cry from the old '51 Chrysler I had expected to see. The new one was low and sort of angular looking compared with the inverted bathtub look of the old one. And it was the first in a series of Chryslers with tailfins--something that seems silly now, but as modern as tomorrow then. With a two tone blue and ivory paint job and pushbuttons in place of a gearshift lever, it was the epitome of automobiles as far as I was concerned.

Today I know the rakish lines and tailfins are just design tricks that really offered nothing to the motorist. In fact, it would be hard to find a better example of design excess than a '56 Chrysler. Still, I look twice when I see one, and memories of Dad and his cars come flooding back.

Those memories came again in 2009 in Cuba when we went out to visit Finca Vegia, Ernest Hemmingway's wonderful estate south of Havana. We were talking with Ada Rosa Alphonso Gonzales, the Hemingway Museum Director, and our conversation turned to the separate building where Ada Rosa keeps her office. It was a wooden building built as a garage and big enough for at least four cars. I recalled Hemingway had a 1947 Lincoln Continental Convertible in his earlier years in Cuba--truly a collectors' item if you're lucky enough to have one.

"But that's not all," she told me. "We just bought back from its former owners Hemingway's 1956 Chrysler Convertible." I was stunned they had found it after all the intervening years. "It needs a complete restoration, but now we have it." She told me the family that had it knew its history, and before they sold it they held out for a house and some money, which they eventually got. (Cuba's government owns the museum.)

It's a bucket of bolts now, but Ad Rosa told me I could see it. It looked like a very large pile of auto parts under a canvas tarpaulin--the work of a lifetime for a restorer. I was permitted to turn the canvas back and get a better look. There the old convertible top was down, the upholstery was in junkyard condition, but even the pushbuttons were there tickling my memory. I have pictures of this car when it was new in books about Papa Hemingway' years in Cuba. It was a dream machine then, and now it's a mechanic's pesadilla (nightmare). But I felt a connection to the old machine, and I hope I'll be back there to see it when volunteers have brought it to show condition.

We keep going back to Finca Vegia because Nora, Aniplant's President, is like a Godmother to the dogs who live there. She always brings them meds and flea treatments, and Aniplant has conducted spay-neuter clinics in the nearby neighborhoods. The dogs are our link to the Finca, but the old Chrysler stirs me up a little too.

Les Inglis