”Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car.”
The morning is spring. The nighttime is still waiting for spring. When I wake up, the house is cold. Outside is warmer. I wear my sweatshirt inside and short sleeves outside. The weather is quirky this time of year.
I am no longer house bound. This morning I bought a used Honda Civic. I waved good-bye to my pedestrian life. I reentered the world.
When I was growing up, every family I knew had only one car. It was used every day mostly by the fathers to go to work. My father was a salesman. His job was on the road. He worked for a company called J.P. Manning. It sold tobacco products. I remember going with him once to the office in Boston. The name J.P. Manning was on a sign across the top front of the company. The background of the sign was red. His territory was mostly south of Boston, a distance away. He was never home for dinner. In my memory drawer, I have a picture of him coming in the front door of our house. I can see him wearing a top coat and a fedora. The first thing he always did was hang his coat in the closet near the door and put his hat on the shelf. In my hat collection I have a fedora. I bought it as it always brings my father to mind.
My mother walked uptown to shop the different stores or she waited until Saturday when my father could drive her. She did grocery shopping Friday nights. My dad would wait in the car or stop to visit his parents who lived right down the street from the First National. In the summer, one of my uncles would sometimes pick us up, and we’d spend the day at Revere Beach with uncles and aunts and cousins. I remember when I was really young, one uncle’s car had a running board. At the beach, we’d swim and play in the sand. The adults took turns running across the street to have a few drinks. One or two stayed behind to watch us, to keep us safe. We’d leave for home in the late afternoon. I usually fell asleep in the car.
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