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The Twelve Cylinder Packard
by
Harry Buschman
Uncle Fred came to live with us when I was less than a year old, and until I
was old enough to know better I thought I was the only kid on the block with
two fathers.
Fred's estranged wife, Margie, put up with him for five years and finally
threw in the towel. He was my father's brother, "but no more like my father than
I to Hercules," as Hamlet once observed.
Fred slept in the bedroom that would have been mine, and when I was old
enough to sleep alone, I found myself on a fold-out horsehair davenport in the
parlor with a Kranach & Bach upright piano for company. Fred paid rent for his
room, and with money as tight as it always seemed to be with us, I was
sacrificed. If he had redeeming qualities I could have forgiven him, but uncle
Fred
welcomed every temptation he stumbled over along the primrose path.
During the Great War, (we called it that to differentiate it from the Spanish
American War) uncle Fred was a steam fitter in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, thus
he avoided the draft and made a lot of money. He never had money before the
war, and the only thing he could think of to do with money was spend it, and the
only way he could spend it as fast as he made it was by drinking and gambling.
So he gambled, drank and celebrated women with the enthusiasm of a Diamond
Jim Brady. His devotion to the primrose path was what drew the attention of his
wife, Margie, in the beginning, but after their son was born she found it
impossible to keep up with him, so she walked out. He came to us later, my
mother
said, "with nothing but the clothes on his back." That might have been true,
but my mother knew very well that uncle Fred was pulling down $150 a week at
the shipyard, which in those days, was a fortune.
With Margie gone, it wasn't long before Fred added scarlet women to his
drinking and gambling habits and there would be periods when he'd be away for a
while. When he dragged himself back he would be stretched out pretty thin and in
dire need of a home cooked meal and regular hours. He would lick his wounds
for a week or so, then when the bell sounded again, he'd roll up his sleeves
and get back into the game.
For someone devoted to gambling he was a surprisingly bad card player -- my
father beat him regularly at pinochle, and by the time I was ten, I could beat
him at cribbage. He bet on fights, baseball games ... and to prove his
complete lack of critical judgment, he even bet on wrestling matches. There were
times he didn't collect on the bets he won because he'd either lose the ticket
or
forget the bet, but the scars and bruises he bore on his body were evidence of
the ones he lost and forgot to pay.
The bedroom mirror above his dressing table had an oval mahogany frame in
which he would wedge hundreds of stubs of past raffles lost and pending. When my
mother cleaned his room she would throw away the dead stubs, and as luck would
have it, one in particular caught her eye. It was a book of chances on a 1920
Packard touring sedan he bought at a VFW dinner a month ago, and for some
reason the raffle rang a bell with her.
There was an item in the morning paper concerning a raffle, and it pointed
out that the winner still hadn't claimed the prize.
I was doing my homework on the dining room table and my blood froze when I
heard my mother shout. She stood in the middle of the kitchen with the book of
chances in one hand and the newspaper in the other.
"Look," she gasped, "the number's the same -- uncle Fred's won a Packard!"
Nobody had a car in those days, certainly not a Packard. For an instant my
mother's face turned sharp and calculating.
"You know," she said, "your father and me could go down to the VFW, Fred
doesn't even know he's got the winning ticket." Then her face softened as she
thought it through. "What would we do with it?" She was a practical woman and
automobiles were not very practical. If the prize had been a fur coat, it would
have been a different story.
When uncle Fred finally rolled in for supper that evening we broke the news
to him. He had not only forgotten the book of chances but he couldn't remember
having been at the VFW dinner. He and my father decided they would go down to
the VFW right after dinner, claim the prize and drive it home.
Neither of them knew how to drive. You didn't need a license to drive in
those days, if you owned a motor vehicle it was assumed you could drive it or
you
wouldn't have bought it in the first place.
The rest of the family sat out on the front stoop waiting for them to return
and it was nearly dark when a long black behemoth of a machine with my uncle
at the wheel cruised up to our front door -- and then passed by.
"It won't stop, dammit," my uncle shouted at us. They continued down the
street and made a left turn at the corner.
"They'll probably go around again and give it another try," my mother
observed. They were more successful on the second pass, the car shuddered to a
stop
with two wheels up on the sidewalk.
The 12 cylinder Packard was every inch a behemoth. It had to be housed in a
public garage and it demanded constant and loving attention. These were not
qualities uncle Fred possessed. To begin with, the vehicle was not exactly new,
it had been used as a general staff car in France during the war and bought for
a song as surplus war material. A coat of black paint had been hastily
brushed over the original olive drab, and when you looked under it you could
still
see the muddy fields of France stuck to its underbelly.
We had our first and last ride in it that evening -- from then on it was used
as a love machine for uncle Fred.
In spite of its war record and Packard's reputation for rock solid
dependability, it didn't last out the year. No one is crueler to a finely tuned
machine
than the man who doesn't understand it. It soon became dented and dusty.
Within a month it had gone through more abuse than it had in its eighteen months
at
the front. Fred was forced to abandon it in the parking lot of a hotel in
Patchogue, Long Island where he'd gone for the weekend with a lady friend. The
two love birds had to take the Long Island Railroad train back to Brooklyn.
As far as I know the twelve cylinder Packard is still gathering dust in the
parking lot of a hotel in Patchogue waiting for uncle Fred to come and get it.
©1996 Harry Buschman
(1210)
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