Sam's Turn

Last week as I was driving my dad to get his blood checked, the conversation turned to government housing projects. I have no idea how, but it did. Anyway, we talked about his Aunt Verna who lived in Elyton Village when I was young. I loved going to her apartment because at the time, I didn't know anyone else who lived in an apartment. Her apartment was so cool because it had an upstairs. I also didn't know anyone else who had a two-story house. I remember playing on the steel barrier poles that kept cars from driving on the grass between the apartments. I remember the little courtyard off the kitchen. Everything about it was small and wonderful to a small child as myself.

I didn't know that my mother's sister, Aunt Agnes, also lived in government housing at one time. This led Daddy into telling the story of how he met my mother. He said that the night before my Uncle Buddy, my mother's only brother, and my Dad's best friend, Roland Lucas a.k.a "Runt", left for boot camp during WWII, they both went to Aunt Agnes and Uncle Gene's apartment to eat dinner. My mother was at the apartment that night as well. My Dad was already serving in the Aleutian Islands. After both my Dad and Runt had been overseas during the War, they were both home on leave at the same time. Runt had used some of the money he earned in the Navy to buy him a new car. He and Daddy were driving around Montevallo showing off Runt's new car, when Runt saw Agnes and my mother coming out of the Dime Store in Montevallo. The Dime Store was in the building where Smitherman's Pharmacy is now. Runt said, "I know them," and turned the car around so to show off his car and introduce my Dad to Agnes and my mother. My dad said when he saw my mom, he thought, "I want to get to know that pretty gal." Runt told my mother that when she met my Dad she started at his feet and moved her eyes from his feet to the top of his head. My mother was relatively tall and wanted a tall man. She found one. Runt, as you might have guessed, was quite small in stature, probably no taller than 5' 5" and my dad is a full foot taller. Well the rest is history as they say. My mom and dad began dating and got married in 1948 at the parsonage of Enon Baptist Church.

Cars by the Creek 2011

Today we took Walter's Corvette to the 10th annual Cars by the Creek car show.This is a car show in Orr Park in Montevallo, less than five miles from Walter's house. I told him last year that we should have shown the car last year. So, when I saw that the show was coming up again, I asked him if we could show it. He agreed that we could, if we could figure out how to do it. David called the organizer and Kathy took Walter to Columbiana to get a tag for the car on Friday because Walter was afraid to take the car on the road without a tag even thought it is less than five miles from his house. I come by my rule-following honestly.

Walter arranged to have the man who works for him, Roy Smith, drive the car to the car show. I don't think he trusts anyone else with the car even though I assured him that David or I could handle it. David was excited about maybe being able to drive the car. I was a little nervous about that because David has very little experience driving a straight shift car and no experience driving a car without power steering or power brakes. I had confidence that I could handle the driving part, but was a little fearful that something unexpected might happen and I know that the car is not insured for the full value of the car. I would die if something happened to that car when David or I was driving it. However, all turned out well. David got to drive it a little way to move it close to the trees so that the photographer could take a picture of it, I got to drive it back to Walter's from the park and the car won second place in the '70-'79 stock car division. Honestly, I am not sure how many cars were in that category, could have only been two, but Walter didn't seem to mind.

The history behind the car is what makes the car special, not the fantastic restoration job that he paid dearly to have done. Walter bought the car through the PX in Saigon when he was overseas during the Vietnam War. When he got back stateside, he and Jackie picked up the car in St. Louis and drove it to Leavenworth, where he was going to be stationed for the next few years. He said driving that car with that big engine was something else on all those straight, flat roads through Missouri and Kansas. Of course, back then (1970) the price of gas was about 25 cents a gallon and gas mileage was not even a consideration. He ended up driving the car for a number of years including two or three when he was working on this PhD and teaching at University of Alabama. He drove the car from Bessemer, where they lived, to Tuscaloosa every day. Finally, about 20 years ago, he parked the car in the barn and covered it with a cover, where it stayed for the next 15-16 years. The tires were rotted, the brakes didn't work, and the car had not been started in all those years. In 2007 Jackie talked Walter into getting the car restored for her to tool around Montevallo in. He found a man in Alabaster who restores cars and had it towed to him. The process took many months. Unfortunately, Jackie became ill and died before the car was ever finished.

He is not sure what he wants to do with the car after he is gone. His current plan is for Delores and me to decide what to do with it when the time comes. At one time he had thought about donating the car to the American Village because Jackie volunteered there before she died. He has recently changed his mind about that because he knows that they would just sell it for the cash.

I am not sure what the final resting place for the Corvette will be. David, Steven, and Bill would love for it to be our garage, but I am not feeling it. I am glad that Walter got to show off his car a little today. He seemed to really enjoy it. I know I enjoyed driving that car back to Walter's house. On the straight part of Hwy. 25 between Montevallo and Calera, I admit that I punched it a little just to see what the old, big muscle cars feel like. My best comparison is the same g-force feeling you get when you take off in a speed boat and the bow of the boat comes up out of the water and the stern seems to sink a little. Maybe our garage wouldn't be such a bad idea after all.