The Packard Dies on the Road to Tybee

The summer I turned seven (it was after the war), I helped my father (we called him “Honey”) paint our Packard Coupe. We had just moved back to Georgia. Dad was supervising the construction of a rayon plant nearby as synthetics began to rival cotton. We were living in Dublin, Georgia, upstairs in a two-story brick apartment.

Dad had bought the Packard from a widow. Her husband had been killed in the war and she did not know how to drive. Dad was proud to own a Packard, even an older one. Everything about the car looked expensive, especially the chromed bumpers and the headlights that were mounted on top of the fenders. And the grill was the size of a refrigerator with huge chromed radiator vents, reminding me of the cars I had seen in Life magazine and Police Gazette, cars driven by gangsters and movie stars. 

Almost nobody drove Packard automobiles anymore. Dad said they were too heavy and drank a lot of gasoline. The widow had left the car parked outside under a pecan tree during the war. The paint was ruined and the primer and rusty metal showed through the dull, cloudy purple paint.  Dad was always talking about getting it painted, but we could not afford to do that.

Then we got a letter from Dad’s army buddy, George Adamous, and his wife Iris. George was Greek. Dad always laughed when he mentioned George and said “George believes the Greeks invented everything.” They had been in the Army together during the war. They were coming to see us, coming all the way from Philadelphia. I had no idea what a Greek was, so the humor was lost on me.

All of us called my mother by her nickname, “Baby”.  Baby and Honey were excited. They had not seen the Adamouses since the war. They wanted to show George and Iris a good time, so they planned to drive them to Tybee Island to spend a few days at the beach.

Dad wanted to make a good impression, so he decided he would paint the Packard himself. He bought the finest automotive paint and the finest brushes from the hardware store. The Packard would be beautiful again. First, he parked the Packard under a shade tree so we would be cool and could take our time doing a good job.

It took a while, but we cleaned her up in preparation for applying the expensive paint. I loved to wash the grill and hood ornament. Dad said the ornament represented the “Goddess of Speed.” She was naked and had wings. I liked that. Her arms were stretched out in front of her and her hands held a wheel, a flying wheel.  I took my time with this part of the job. My dad was sure that with a fresh coat of paint the Packard would look brand new.

Naturally, I wanted to help. Dad gave me detailed instructions on brush- stroke techniques and judging how much paint should be applied. And, as we began, we started at opposite ends of the car. By the time Dad had painted the headlight bonnets and front fenders, it was getting hot. He stopped for a drink of water and to check on my progress. At my six- year-old height, it only made sense to paint the bumpers first. When Dad discovered what I had done, the paint was already too dry to wipe it off.

If he was irritated, Dad did not show it. Still, somehow, I knew that this was not what he had in mind. So, green bumpers it would be. As it turned out, events on our drive to Tybee would erase my mistake .

Iris was a large woman and she and George had a funny way of talking which my mother explained was the way people talked in Philadelphia. Iris was very jolly and jiggled a lot when she laughed.  George’s voice sounded harsh to my ears. But these were fun- loving people, reunited with old friends. They were eager to get to the beach and ready to make the drive to Tybee Island near Savannah about a hundred miles away. In those days, that sounded like a long trip. On the other hand, George and Iris had just driven 600 miles to see us and did not seem to mind. They likely were not really prepared for a hundred mile drive in 100 degree weather in a car loaded with four adults and two children,

 It was the middle of the summer and “hot as the hinges of Hell,” as my Dad would say. Almost nobody we knew had air conditioning in their car or homes in those days. To make matters worse, the Packard was a coupe, meaning it only had a small rear seat with little headroom for grownups. The view along the old river highway was a monotonous one of row-planted pines.

Then, bad luck struck. The Packard engine “slung a rod.” Dad would later explain to me in great detail that this meant that one of the rods connecting a piston to the crankshaft had broken loose when the cylinder misfired and the broken rod slammed through the engine block. Oil went everywhere. The engine would have to be replaced.

Alarming as this was, it affected our journey not at all. My father’s luck held as usual and we coasted into a Gulf Oil service station conveniently located only a hundred feet from where the Packard’s engine had blown up.

In those days, gas stations were more than gas stations and the owner often was also a shade tree mechanic as well as a used-car salesman. Service station operators were kind of like land pirates, Dad told me latter, preying on those unfortunate enough to break down in the middle of nowhere. They just kind of sat there like a spider in its web, selling gas for 16 cents per gallon until somebody was unlucky enough to have a breakdown or a flat tire nearby. Then they sold off the old cars they had fixed up or sold a tire they had salvaged from another broken down car. That’s how they made their real money.

Dad went into the station to talk to the manager and came out shoulder to shoulder with him after about two minutes. They walked to the side of the station where a 1947 Buick was parked. It was emerald green, the very shade my father had hoped would come from the can of paint he had bought at the hardware store for the Packard.

With a flourish of his wallet and an exchange of money for a paper signed by the manager, they shook hands and Dad came back to the Packard and announced, “Let’s get our stuff into the Buick. We are changing cars.” George and Iris had turned white as a sheet and sat kind of paralyzed in the old Packard while the purchase of the Buick was taking place. Honey was lucky as usual he had dodged a bullet. We were on the road to Tybee, again.

It was late at night by the time the Buick arrived on Tybee Island. We hurriedly piled our suitcases and our grocery bags of towels and food on the beds and headed for the beach, past the strip of darkened stores and empty parking places , across the wooden boardwalk, down wooden steps to soft sand and into the dark of the night that seemed empty until our eyes adjusted. We all cheered and laughed. We could hear the sound of waves, smell the salt air. At last, away from the streetlights, we could see the endless starry sky and the white crests of the nearest waves.

The excitement I felt was delicious, and as you see, unforgettable. We all walked for what seemed like miles, close to the surf where the sand is hard-packed and smooth, and where the water skittered up in a warm wash over our feet.

The next morning, we made two important discoveries: my swimsuit from last year was too small; and, Iris did not own a swimsuit. Our shopping options were limited. There were several restaurants and souvenir shops open, and half a dozen soft-serve ice cream and snowball stands, but only one department store, Choo’s.

I found what I needed in the front window- white trunks with a black stripe on each side. As we would discover later, the trunks had probably been on display for months if not years in the sun. Most people likely were smart enough to bring a bathing suit to the beach. Iris found only one swimsuit large enough for her generous shape, so we did not waste much time at Choo’s.

It took a lot of coaching to get Iris unwrapped from her towels and straw hat and into the water in view of the audience on the crowded beach. Suddenly, attention shifted from Iris’ laughing protestations to me! Once I was in the water, my swim trunks disintegrated. No kidding, they fell apart, my mother said they had been in the window of Choo’s too long and were “eaten up” by the sunlight. So, we would have to go back to Choo’s and negotiate for a new pair of trunks and hopefully a refund on the shredded ones my mother carefully replaced in their original cellophane wrapper.

As I sat on the beach wrapped in a towel, Iris created a sensation on the crowded beach as she came in from the surf. Her backless, one-piece suit was covered in sand and she bent over low to splash water on herself to wash it away. She washed it away alright, right along with the top of her swimsuit. The over-sized cups filled with water and fell almost to her knees. I was not the only person who noticed this. Before Iris could adjust her suit, everybody on the crowded beach had a good look.  You can imagine that I was relieved no longer to be the center of attention.

Iris recovered her composure in a flash, emerging from the water smiling and laughing. So, we all laughed. Iris was good that way. She turned out to be someone who never judged anybody else, and never judged herself. My mother, however, seemed mortally embarrassed about my suit coming apart, though of course at six, almost seven years old, I only knew that if my mother was embarrassed, I should be embarrassed.

Thankfully, that lesson did not take. I hit on the solution of cutting off a pair of old jeans to wear into the water. My mother kept the tattered remains of my swim suit for years, pledging to return it. She never did, though we seemed always to find our way back to Tybee at least once in every summer.

Honey had spent his ready cash on the Buick. That meant our stay at the beach ended too soon. The next morning we went for a  last swim, picked up a few shells, chased a crab out of a salt puddle under the old pier and stared into the expanse that was the sea, saddened by our leaving, knowing a long hot trip awaited us, as did the uncertainty that haunt those who have little. We carried dreams of the beach with us and laughed again and again, recounting the story of the swimsuits from Choo’s. Thank you, God for reminding me of these things.