Remember the 1955 Oldsmobile, long, low, and wide, white in front, coral in back... in the Road Trip story? It's the one Daddy drove all the way from Pine Bluff, Arkansas to Los Angeles, California, but had to turn it in to it west coast owner at the end of the trip. It was the first (nearly) brand new car in which I ever rode. I thought it was the most beautiful car I had ever seen.
After Daddy returned to Bakersfield on the bus after turning that sweet Olds in to its owner in Los Angeles, he walked from the bus station to the nearest car dealer and bought the old 40-something Chevy sedan four door, faded green, kind of a gentle family car. I thought it was pretty good, certainly a lot better than the old black '42 Ford with the cardboard window that we had in Pine Bluff. Remember? the one in which we all drove to Mama and Daddy's wedding? (See The Wedding... a Story.) With the Chevy, we had come way down from the Olds, but I thought moved up a notch from the old cardboard window Ford.
Daddy drove that Chevy for a couple of years. When Diane was a little baby, he bought a seven-year-old cream-colored Chrysler sedan, a very comfortable and nice looking car, big enough for the growing family. It became Mama's car. The Chrysler was the road trip car in which we traveled to Oregon when Diane was about six months old. Daddy then bought an old blue International pickup truck, with which he started his mattress business.
I am not sure why we bought a different car about every two years or so. I don't think there was anything wrong with our car. I think Daddy was not very mechanically inclined and whenever something minor would go wrong with the family car, he would rather take it to the dealer and drive away a newer one.
I remember one Sunday afternoon in the summer of 1960, while we still lived in Delano and attended church in Earlimart, Ray and I didn't go home from church with the family but visited with some friends. When we returned to the Sunday evening service, we thought our family must be a bit late, because our car was not there. However, there was a nearly new (1958) Buick Century parked in the parking lot, and we wondered who that belonged to. We went inside to see what strangers were there, and found... our family was sitting in their normal place. The Buick was ours. Wow! We had never thought we would have a car so new since Daddy drove away to L.A. to turn in that Oldsmobile in the summer of 1955.
That Buick was almost luxurious, although not the top-of-the-line. It was long, low and wide, and had the neatest speedometer I had ever seen. Instead of a circle with a needle pointing to the speeds (20, 30, 40, 50, 60, etc. around the circle), the Buick had a red line that zipped horizontally to the right under the numbers. You could set a speed limit with a button and if you reached and exceeded that speed limit, it would buzz loudly.
The Buick was the first of our cars Daddy ever let me drive. We were all out in a remote place, and Daddy set the speed limit on 35mph. The car wouldn't, it seemed to me, go less than 35mph. It seemed to buzz all the time. Not that I was driving too fast, I thought. Oh, well. Finally Daddy changed the speed limit up just a little; I suppose he was tired of hearing the buzzing. (I'm smiling.)
In 1963 I graduated from "Tomlinson Memorial School, a school run by our church in Cleveland, Tennessee. Mama and my cousin Katherine Farrer drove our family's latest acquisition vehicle from Bakersfield to Cleveland to attend my graduation service and take me home. It was a 1961 Chevy Impala, kind of a gray/tan color, a very nice car. Whenever I think of the tragic assassination of President John F. Kennedy, I remember that car. We lived again on Virginia Avenue in Bakersfield. Mama was out shopping when that happened, and I had been in a college class which had been dismissed as soon as the news on the radio had reached the school. I was watching the television, black and white, and heard the Impala pull into the driveway. I ran outside to help Mama bring in the things she had bought, and told her, "President Kennedy has been killed."
"Oh, no! I knew he was shot. They were talking about it in the store. So he's really dead?" She told me, "People were flooding out of the stores and driving away. I guess they wanted to hear everything on the car radio and get home to see it on television..." She came in and watched it with us.
For days, weeks even, there was nothing on our three channels of television but every detail about that tragic event. For several years, people everywhere could tell you exactly where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. I'll never forget the sound of the drums at his funeral. It was the saddest "music" I'd ever heard.
I don't know whether or not that sad event was an "omen" for the Chevy Impala, but the car did not survive much longer and the end of it was a turning point in the Ballentine household, or what was left of it. By that time, Jim was in the Navy; Ray was in the Army; I had left home and moved to the L.A. area to work. So the only kids left at home were Richard and Diane, who were both in school.
Mama and Daddy had bought a beautiful home in a very nice area of Bakersfield. Then in the spring of 1964, they went on a long vacation in the Chevy Impala. They visited relatives all over the country, and started back home with the car full of luggage and purchases, including several large mirrors. Coming back through the mountains in Arizona, they hit some ice on the road and lost control of the car. It capsized, injuring Mama's neck and head, and breaking the mirrors into shards that nearly scalped her. Of course, the Chevy Impala was totaled. With the insurance money, Daddy immediately bought a brand new Chevy station wagon to carry Mama gently home to Bakersfield where she was in the hospital for many weeks.
That wreck was a life-changing event for the whole family. At the time of the wreck, Daddy's back was injured, but he ignored it in his fear for her life. It took Mama years to recover fully from all her injuries. For weeks shards of glass worked their way out of her body. Family and friends came from far and near to cook for Daddy, Richard and Diane and later to help with caring for Mama once she was released from the hospital.
I was living in Downey, California, working at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Los Angeles, and visited Mama as often as I could. I had just met Dave Goins in the Church of God at Compton, California.
But that is another story entirely...
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