52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks - Week 29: Automobiles - The 1951 Packard

This week's blog prompt presented by Amy Johnson Crow, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, is "Automobiles."

When I was about four years old, my family all trooped down to the Packard automobile dealership in Pensacola, Florida, where my father bought a brand-new 1951 Packard convertible.  It was turquoise blue, it was large, it was roomy, and it was the last car my father ever bought.  He died in 1954.

The car took us -- my mother, who drove the entire trip, my sister, my brother, myself, and our teenage cousin Rosanna -- from California, where we had been living, to Florida, where mom's mother and sister lived.  Mom needed the support of her family, and wanted to be with them in Florida.  We set out with not only we five humans, but also with my brother's green parakeet, Pete.  Rosanna, about 16 and a great joker, would try to teach the bird, that was not enjoying the trip, to clasp a claw to its forehead and proclaim, "I am not a well bird."  It never sank in to Pete; he was a bird of few words.

My mother had settled everything my father left behind, all the legal and financial fallout of a family member's passing.  She found a new home for our black Cocker Spaniel, Baby, but the man who took her gave me very bad vibes.  Then, as soon as school was out, we embarked upon our journey.  It was not as easy as the trip can be today.  For one thing, the route we took was U.S. 90, which was two lanes, not the four-to-six lane interstate highways we have now.  Rather than zipping along at 65 miles per hour or so, the speed limit was 45.

For another, we had to cross the desert, and the front of the car was decorated with a burlap-covered rubber bag of water decorated with the title Desert Water Bag, in case the radiator overheated.  I remember my brother and sister and me lying on the back seat with our feet out the windows.  We had all the windows down to bring in what breeze was created by the movement of the car.  Cars in those days were not air-conditioned.  We stopped the second night in Phoenix, Arizona, where the temperature that day was 114 degrees F.  The motel room was air-conditioned, fortunately!

In the desert and through much of the southwest, we slept during the day and traveled at night.  In eastern Texas, we passed through some very lonely territory, indeed.  My mother had bought new tires from our neighbor across the street, who ran a tire store.  He swore they were new, but we found out the hard way that they were recaps -- old tires covered with a new tread; he had charged new-car prices for them.  Not a kind thing at all to pull on a new widow.  We saw almost no traffic on U.S. 90 that night, when the car started making a sound that made us think the engine was going to end up on the pavement any minute.  Mom pulled over, shut off the car, and we sat.  Finally, a tanker truck approached, and seeing us sitting on the side of the road, he pulled over and got out to ask us what the problem was.  Mom told him, and that Knight of the Road turned that huge tanker truck around on that two-lane highway with not much shoulder and fences on either side, and headed back to the town of Snyder, Texas, taking time out from his trip to help us.  Finally, a tow truck came and took us into town.

The next day, my mother discovered from the tire man we consulted in Snyder, that the tires were retreads, and that the tread on one of them had come loose and was flapping against the tire well making the Devil's own noise against the metal body of the car.  The rest of the trip passed uneventfully.

The 1951 Packard lasted until the early 1960s.  It took us on many visits to my aunt and uncle in Orlando, and on countless trips to the beach.  One of those trips had consequences for my sister.  She and her high-school best friend were planning on a beach day, and my sister asked Mom for the car.  Mom allowed her to use the car with one strict order: not to take the car onto the beach itself, where salt would attack the undercarriage with corrosion.  A week or two after the beach trip, my sister went to the drug store to pick up her pictures of that day.  In those days, we had to take the film from the camera to a processor -- usually the local pharmacy -- to be developed.  You paid for all the pictures they developed, whether they were any good or not.  My sister was so proud of her pictures, she couldn't wait to show Mom -- but that eagerness got her grounded for something like a month.  There in the pictures was the car . . . sitting right on the salt-filled beach sand.

 

 

This is a painting I commissioned from a childhood friend, Michael Goettee, who is an accomplished artist specializing in cars and the Southwest.  He has won many awards, and his paintings are in the collections of many galleries across the country.  ('51 Packard, by Michael Goettee)

 

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks -- Catching up Week 21 -- Nickname

I'm catching up on posts for the blogging prompt furnished by Amy Johnson Crow, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks.  The theme for Week 21 (May 20-26) was Nicknames.

My mother's family apparently was big into nicknames.  My Aunt Elizabeth was given, as a child, the nickname "Beffus."  My mother's nickname was "Rid," a play on their surname, Reed.  I don't remember what my uncle's nickname was.

When my father was courting my mother in 1936-37, he probably didn't know what he was getting into.  My mother's family was also big into word play and punning.  My grandfather wrote hymns as a sideline, and occasionally wrote popular songs, as well.  He also would dash off a humorous ditty from time to time.  I call these folks, Perry Wilmer Reed and Mary LeSourd, his wife, my grandparents, but they were actually my grandaunt and granduncle.  Mom was an intra-family adoption after her biological father died in a railroad accident.  And as those things go, it's a long story.

Anyway, Dad was a bit shy around the gregarious and sometimes raucous Reeds.  He wasn't sure how he should address his future mother-in-law.  Should he call her Mrs. Reed, Mother Reed, Mary . . . ?  She defused his confusion and his reticence by stating, "Call me anything!  Call me 'Charlie!'"  That quickly morphed into "Chollie," and that's how she was addressed as long as I knew her and had many visits with her.  

My father attended the U.S. Naval Academy, and to look at the entries in the Academy yearbook for the year he graduated, The Lucky Bag 1934 (the "lucky bag" is the naval services' name for lost-and-found), one would think nicknames were mandatory at the Academy.  My father's nickname was "Smoky," probably because he did indulge cigarettes.  His best friends were Edward "Ned" Worthington ("Playboy") and James Newell ("Sonny").

I was the only one of the three of us children in my immediate family who did not have a nickname -- other than the things my brother called me, like "shrimp."  Not really a nickname.  I adopted the nickname "Blurb" in high school, being of a somewhat literary bent, and like the jacket blurb on a book, I was (and still am) short.  My sister, named Mary Elizabeth, was known as "Betty," after our paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Jane "Betty" [Reynolds] Packard.  My brother's nickname was in honor of our father's Annapolis buddy, "Ned" Worthington, who was killed at Pearl Harbor.

We even give our animals nicknames.  Our present cat, Gabriela, has many, and has earned them.  She is: Gabby, The Baroness von Buttwiggle, Speed Bump, Dances on Bladders, Princess Tail-in-the-Face, and the Maharani of Kittypurr.  She has the best nicknames of all.

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks -- Week 28 -- Trains

 First, a note.  I apologize for not keeping up with my blog in recent weeks.  Other matters intervened.  I'm going to post the current 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks and I am also going to try to catch up on the past 8 weeks of this series, as there are some topics Amy Johnson Crow had selected for those "lost" weeks of mine that interest me quite a bit.

Trains also interest me, as my great-grandfather Francis Harvey "Frank" Reed and a few of his 8 sons were railroad men, including my grandfather Benjamin Franklin Reed and my granduncle Perry Wilmer Reed.

Francis Harvey Reed was a conductor for the Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis Railway Line.  That name was such a mouthful, apparently, that most people referred to it as the Panhandle Line.  This line was part of the Pennsylvania Railroad, handling the bulk of Pennsy traffic to the west of Pennsylvania.  The name Panhandle was used by the Pennsylvania Railroad to identify a group of its smaller lines, including the one currently under discussion.(1)

Perry Wilmer Reed worked also for the Pennsylvania Railroad, on their Union Line, based in Chicago as a freight agent from about 1907 to about 1920.  He was enrolled to argue cases before the Interstate Commerce Commission, representing his railroad in these matters.(2)  By 1920 he and his wife and their children Robert, Elizabeth, and Martha, had relocated to Pensacola, Florida, where he worked for the Gulf, Florida, and Alabama Railway.(3)

Benjamin Franklin Reed, also known as "Frank," was a switchman on the Wabash Railroad, working in the yard at Detroit, Michigan.(4)  He was killed by being hit by a rail yard donkey engine.  His death certificate cites the cause of death as "crushing injuries to head." (5)

My husband's family also has a railroad connection.  His grandfather, Andrew Lewis Rhodes, was a Pullman conductor.  Andrew Rhodes started his railroad career in 1903 as a clerk-messenger for the United States Express Company.(6)  He worked for them in various offices in the upper Midwest until 1912, when he became a conductor for the Pullman Company.  He relocated to Jacksonville, Florida and worked as a Pullman conductor until he retired in 1952.(7)

(1)  Burns, Adam.  "Pennsylvania, Cincinnati, Chicago, and St. Louis Line: 'The Panhandle Route.'" Online: American Rails.com

(2)  Robert Reed, "Little Man," Pensacola History Illustrated, Vol. 1, No. 4 (Winter, 1985), 27-32.

(3)  Letter from Perry Reed to his wife Mary, written on Gulf, Florida, and Alabama Railway letterhead with "Perry Reed, General Freight Agent" on it.  Private Papers of M. K. and K.L. Rhodes.

(4) "Engine Kills a Switchman," Logansport (Indiana) Pharos-Reporter, 22 October 1917, 3.

(5)  State of Michigan, Department of State, Division of Vital Statistics.  Death Certificate, Benjamin Franklin Reed, Registered Number 10695.

(6)  "Record of Employee's Prior Service," (Form AA-2P), filed 27 May 1941.  Andrew Lewis Rhodes pension file; Social Security Number [redacted].  National Archives Record Group 184: Records of the Railroad Retirement Board, 1934--; RRB Congressional Inquiry Service, Chicago, Illinois.

(7)  "Application for Employee Annuity Under the Railroad Retirement Act," (Form AA-1), filed 25 July 1952.  Andrew Lewis Rhodes pension file; Social Security Number [redacted].  National Archives Record Group 184: Records of the Railroad Retirement Board, 1934--; RRB Congressional Inquiry Service, Chicago, Illinois.