I was born in 1967 in South Bend, Indiana, and my parents brought me home from the hospital in my dad’s 1966 Ford Galaxie 500 coupe in Springtime Yellow.
Dad had only ever owned Fords — a ’63 Galaxie before this one, and before that a “’57 Ford Police Interceptor,” as he always called it. I loved some of the details of that ’66, especially the round interior lights inside the C pillar and the squarish taillights, which I still think are the coolest tail lights ever.
Mom hated the color. After some convincing on her part, my famously frugal father had it resprayed in a pale blue.
We lived on the south side of South Bend in a solidly working-class neighborhood of small, prefabricated homes built in the early 1950s to meet the deep housing shortage after World War II. It attracted young families. The place was overrun with children, and the parents all called it “Rabbit Hill.” Our street was indeed a hill, a steep one.
From about age three, I could tell you the year, make, and model of every car my neighbors drove. There was Mrs. Johnson’s turquoise 1968 Chevrolet Impala hardtop sedan across the street and her husband’s 1968 Pontiac Catalina coupe, which he parked out front and started every morning by coasting down the hill until he had built up enough momentum, and then letting the clutch out. The Bassets next door drove a pale blue 1966 Impala wagon. Mr. Denny had his 1968 Cadillac in a champagne color, and his wife her polar opposite car, an early 1970s VW Type 3 fastback in red. Mr. Batten had a red 1963 Ford Fairlane that “he ordered direct from the factory!” his son Darin proudly proclaimed. Mrs. Gish up the hill drove a flowing and elegant 1967 Buick LeSabre coupe in white with a red interior. Across the street was Mr. Graczyk and his silver 1970 Impala sedan. Mr. Dieu down the hill had a purple 1965 Ford Mustang. Mr. Wells even farther down the hill came home in his city police car every night.
Dad worked in a farm-equipment factory and Mom stayed home raising my younger brother and me. Dad’s family came from the hills of West Virginia. His father and a few of my uncles came to northern Indiana in the 1950s to find work; they were glad to get the construction and manufacturing jobs that were abundant then. When Dad finally opened up about his West Virginia childhood in his later years, I got a picture of considerable chaos and loss. His mother had died when he was four, and his father drove a truck, so his grandmother raised him. She loved him but didn’t want that burden. When my dad’s dad settled in South Bend, she sent Dad and his sister Karen straight up there to live. Then Karen died of cancer, and his father died in a construction accident.
Mom grew up the daughter of a mechanical engineer who designed train brakes and airplane landing gears. In her teens they lived in South Bend’s most prestigious downtown neighborhood. But her father was an alcoholic and neither of her parents were smart with money. Mom described a childhood of never answering the phone because it could be a bill collector, and of not wanting to bring friends to the house because she couldn’t count on her dad being sober.
My parents were determined to create a stable, traditional family. They managed it, but they did it out of fear and through control. My brother and I were better off than they had been. But the strong control began to chafe during our teenage years. By the time any of us saw the damage it was doing, it was too late.
Dad sold the Galaxie in 1973 and came home in a 1971 Chevy Impala Sport Coupe in white vinyl over a dark blue that could have been either Command Blue Iridescent or Bridgehampton Blue Iridescent — I don’t know for sure because there are no photos of our actual car. “Film and developing were expensive!” Mom said when I asked her why the heck there weren’t.
The main thing I remember about the Impala is the time I shut my brother’s fingers in the door. The other main thing I remember is it being in our driveway, hood up. Dad was always adjusting this or that to make the car run right. He told me later that there were problems with the vacuum lines that neither he nor his mechanic could ever sort. It’s why the Impala was the car Dad owned the shortest amount of time in his life — just a couple years.
Selling a car after such a short time was anathema to Dad. He liked to drive them for as long as the inevitable mounting repairs didn’t outweigh the cost of buying another used car. But the Impala was just too frustrating to keep.
Dad traded it in late 1975 on our family’s favorite car, a white-over-white 1974 AMC Matador, Oleg Cassini edition. What a stylish ride! We didn’t know or care that swoopy Coke-bottle styling was out and that our nation’s Broughamification was underway. We felt great riding around in that white whale.
Except in the summer. The car lacked air conditioning and had an all-black interior. Worse, in the center of each seat tuft was a brass button with the Oleg Cassini logo on it. On hot days, clad in shorts, those buttons would brand your legs.
The Matador came to us rust free, but within months rust started bubbling through the paint. The rust progressed rapidly, and after a couple years the bodysides featured several large holes. Dad issued my brother and me wet-or-dry sandpaper and buckets of water, and the three of us sanded the rust out. Then Dad took the Matador to the farm-equipment factory where he worked and welded in fresh steel to fill the holes. Off to a paint shop for a fresh coat of white. The car looked good, but only briefly. After another year, holes were starting to form in the body again.
By this time we’d outgrown our little house on Rabbit Hill and had moved into a much larger home in a nicer neighborhood. Mom and Dad would live there for 38 years. Unlike Rabbit Hill, there were essentially no other kids around, as the neighbors were mostly empty nesters. Several of them were thrilled to hire my brother and me to cut their grass and shovel their sidewalks, though. Good money, and we were glad to get it.
The new house gave Dad the space to build a basement workshop. He started doing small woodworking projects for fun. His best friend ran the art museum at Notre Dame, and soon Dad found himself building cabinets, pedestals, and benches for the museum as a side job. For decades, if you sat on a bench in a gallery there, it was one Dad built.
Dad’s cabinetmaking saved our family’s bacon in 1981 when the farm-equipment plant folded. South Bend is firmly in the Rust Belt, and manufacturing was more than in decline, it was in free fall. Dad picked up jobs, sometimes very good ones, in various area manufacturing plants. But none of them was stable for the long term. Dad kept the roof over our heads by building furniture, a great deal of it for Notre Dame.
The Matador wasn’t suited to hauling lumber, so Dad went van shopping. Trouble was, the van he bought had only front seats. Dad got a back seat from a junkyard and just leaned it against the side wall in back, unmounted. We rode around that way for several years. More than once when Dad took a turn too hard, the seat slid across the back of the van with us in it, and we banged our knees.
I got my first driving lesson in this van. I was utterly unprepared for its manual brakes and steering, which was extremely stiff. At least it had an automatic transmission.
We all came to call this van the Iron Maiden after some nighttime vandal sprayed the name of that heavy-metal band across the driver’s side in green paint. Dad drove it around that way for months before having it painted over.
By this time I was in high school. I learned German there and had become good enough at it that I was selected to spend the summer after my junior year in Germany on an exchange program. I still can’t believe that my dad found the money to send me. I’m still grateful. Not only did my trip massively deepen my German language skills, but it was also an early taste of freedom that I handled well.
Dad may have been content for his teenage sons to rattle around loose as he drove us around town in his van, but a 120-mile Interstate trip from South Bend to Chicago’s O’Hare Airport was something else again. He borrowed my grandparents’ car for the drive.
Having realized the downside of his van plan, while I was gone he bought a car and relegated the van to lumber duty. They surprised me at the airport with the new car. I’ll tell its story next time.
Thank you! I’m writing on this site now as typopete after a few years of comments on your blog site, which I found because of your stories on this site. This is a great story and your dad, like mine, was a woodworker.