The Sunday Drive

Our first car was a 1936 Ford sedan. Henry Ford said something about offering customers any color they wanted as long as it was black - so ours was black. Nearly all cars in those days were black. I don’t remember any other color before WWII. We drove the Ford until 1947 when Mom and Dad bought a new Pontiac. New cars were not available throughout the war years, so there was a great demand and long waiting lists while the industry shifted from war to domestic production.
Our new Pontiac was a two door sedan, and had a two-tone grey paint job. It sported a neat spot-light on the driver’s side like you saw on police cars. I still remember its new-car smell. There were very few models produced in 1946, and we were lucky to get a 47 model so early in the year. Uncle Joe and Aunt Gail ordered a Chevy from a Kokomo dealer because they could not get one out of Connersville. Their dark blue two-door sedan arrived shortly after our Pontiac.

Brother Don and I were of the first generation to be born with a car in the family. Dad and Mom, born in 1912 and 1913 respectively, grew up with horse and buggies, homes without electricity, and outhouses in the back yard. They were of the first generation to see cars appear on the road, and to own one as adults. So, the car was more than just transportation. It was a family entertainment center, and the greatest entertainment for our family was the Sunday Drive.

Our Sunday drives occurred between 1946 and the early 50s. I can not say for certain when they ended. They just faded away as Don and I got older, but mostly the excursions took place in the late forties. As far as I can remember there was never a plan, we just took off in the Ford, and later in the Pontiac, with no destination in mind. Usually we headed north of Kokomo because most trips south were to visit relatives in Connersville or Versailles. Mom and Grandma Frank packed a picnic basket that included a couple of wide-mouth thermoses filled with fried chicken, and we piled into the car, Grandma, Don, and I in the back seat, Dad and Mom in the front.

I have few specific memories of those drives. Dad probably had a vague idea of where we were and where we were going, but from my youthful perspective it was a magical wandering over unknown county roads, passing by blue lakes, and going through small towns. Once we stopped for our picnic by an abandoned one-room school house. The door was unlocked so we went in. It gave us an eerie feeling to step into that old school. Everything was in order. We were not able to guess how long it had been since students sat at the desks, but the neatly shelved school books seemed old - of an earlier vintage. The desks were the same type as I sat in through elementary school. Each unit had a desk top with room for books on a shelf below, A folding seat was attached to the front of each unit. There were several rows of these desks facing the teachers desk. Behind that was a clean slate chalk board. We were so enchanted by it that I remember we came back a year or so later. The school had been vandalized. Books littered the floor. We closed the door and never went back. It wasn’t the same. The place had been violated - the spell broken.

We had other drives that had destinations, but they were entertainment also. To go out on the open road was just plain fun. Every Memorial Day we loaded the car with flowers and planting tools and headed south for Connersville, and Versailles to decorate graves. We made frequent trips there to visit Aunts and Uncles, and my Grandmother Buckingham. Once we went down into Kentucky to Catawba where Mom was raised. It use to be a station stop for the L&N Railroad, but it wasn’t even a ghost town anymore. Nothing remained. She indicated where the church use to stand, and where her grandfather Jacobs might have lived. She pointed in the direction of the Licking River and told us that her grandfather Frank use to pilot the ferryboat there. There had been a store and a Post Office, but now we were mainly looking over empty fields of tall grass. In 1946 or 47 we traveled to Norfolk, Virginia to visit Dad’s older brother Tom. I think that was our last trip in the Ford. In 1949 we took a grand tour to California and back. It seemed that it lasted all summer, but Don told me years later that it all occurred in just three weeks. There were trips up into Michigan and Canada, fishing trips to Wisconsin and Minnesota, and one south to Miami. I remember Lookout Mountain in Tennessee, and passing share-cropper cabins in Georgia. I remember everyone laughing at me after I wandered into and out of a “Colored” restroom. I didn’t know there was a difference, but got my first understanding of separate but unequal facilities. It was filthy.

The travel bug bit me in my youth, and to this day I have a raging fever, and suffer a delirium in which I hear the distant call of the open road. That’s one reason I went to Alaska. It was the longest road to the most distant place in North America, and it goes both ways.