A Cobalt Blue Car Is Across The Street

Memories of my grandparents' house. For some reason, my brother and I ended up on the covered front porch; maybe we were getting underfoot inside and our mother needed a reason to get us out. It was a large porch and she sat us in two chairs. Our instructions, in this hurriedly made-up game, were to count the cars going by. My brother got all the black cars, I got all the colored cars. As I recall, we pretty much came out even. You couldn't get away with that today.

Across the street are a cobalt blue car, one that's gray and one that's white. The car I use is some kind of red; my boss lets her son use their yellow car; one friend's is green. Ah, a black car just went by.

At one time, cars tended to have two colors. One of ours, a '55 Chevy, was red and white. A friend, who lived closer to the lighthouse, had pink and gray (popular colors then). I can't remember the last time I saw a car painted in two colors, nor do I notice cars with whitewall tires. They used to have white turn signals; now they are all amber. I remember watching the switchover and wondering how long it would take for all the whites to disappear. You hardly see suicide knobs on steering wheels these days; maybe I would if I looked closer.

Running boards don't seem that popular anymore, now that cars are lower. I remember a Hudson where you stepped in and then down. There was a nickname for it, but I forget what it was. Like the old Studebaker that looked the same, front and back, said to "go through life glass backwards." My uncle Ross had one.

What I really need right now is a two-tone (one of them black) car with whitewalls. Only in a nightmare would I settle for one of those hideous Chryslers, I think, that had three colors; looked like a birthday cake on wheels. A color scheme that lasted one year.