They Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To

Occasionally at a car show I hear someone say, "They just don't make 'em like they used too!" I couldn't agree more.  But I'm glad they don't make 'em like they used to. I remember those old cars so very well.

Take a little ride with me in one of those old cars down memory road. One thing that sticks in my mind is how they always seemed to need maintenance. You always had to change the oil, check the water level in the radiator and the battery. And the older it was, the more it needed. Now some cars use the same oil for 10,000 miles. I was never fortunate enough in my younger days to own a new car.  Most of the time I financed someone else's trouble.  I remember, on one Ford I had, part of the rocker panel fell off and I read a New Jersey newspaper that fell out. Those with memories like mine will remember vacuum powered  windshield wipers.  When you drove up a hill the wipers would almost stop. In a downpour you were blind. Headlights and taillights didn't have very long lives either.  Seems like one or the other was always burning out.  Sometimes on the manual transmissions, a.k.a. straight drives, the linkage would would jam up and you would have to raise the hood to unjam it. All the radios in those days were AM.  At dusk reception was garbage.  Zilch.  Then about eight o'clock those powerful stations like WLS Chicago, WABC New York, and the stations across the Rio Grande  came in loud and clear. When I was a teenager, some of the guys installed 45 rpm record players in their cars. They sounded real good unless you hit a bump. There were no power options on the average Ford or Chevy. No power windows or seats or steering or brakes.  No anti-lock brakes either.  You could lock up the brakes and skid. Easy on wet pavement. If the driver stopped quickly you could bang you head on the dash.  The dash was all steel and not padded.  No seat belts either to restrain you. Automatic transmissions were an option. Most of the fellows I knew wouldn't be caught in a car with one. There were a few good things about them though.

When I was about nineteen years old I was working the night shift in a woolen mill.  I got off work at eight in the morning and by nine I was snug as a bug in a rug in my bed sound asleep. On a particular morning in early November my mother knocked on my bedroom door telling me that some of  my friends, Frankie and Joey, were outside. I never did like being waked up before getting at least six hours of sleep. I wouldn't be able to go back to sleep and my rear would drag through my eight hour shift that night at the mill. Momma said they had insisted so she gave in and woke me up. After having pulled on my jeans and a flannel shirt, I grabbed my jacket and was out the door. The morning sun almost blinded me as I stumbled down the front door steps into the front yard. It was not unusual for people to park on the hard packed clay in the front yard when visiting. And there were my friends leaning on the hood of a brand new blue 1964 Chevrolet Impala Super Sport. "Look at Joey's new car!" Frankie said enthusiastically.
"Yeah," was my groggy response.

"He just got it late yesterday," Frankie added.  Joey has said nothing.  He just smiles.
"Bet you ain't rode in anything this fast before," Frankie was still running off at the mouth. "Joey's got a hunnert dollar bill he'll put on the dash.  If you can reach it when he pops the clutch, you can have it. Show him the hunnert, Joey!"
Joey digs deep into the pocket of his Levi's and pulls out a crumpled bill.  I felt like it took him half and hour to make the picture of Ben Franklin appear.

"Let's go!" Joey said.  And looking at Frankie he added, "Tony has to get back to his beauty sleep!"

"You get to ride shotgun," Frankie said to me as he climbed in the back seat of the coupe.

I noticed the number four hundred and nine under the crossed flags directly behind the front wheel well as I opened the car door.  It had that new car smell and the interior felt plush. The bucket seats and console with the shifter made me feel like this was going to be a ride I would not soon forget. The crumpled c-note was on the dash. Joey deftly backed over three thousand pounds of Detroit's finest * onto the asphalt and pointed the car toward the crossroads. We lived in the last house on the country road.
"Joey," I cautioned, " in little over a quarter mile, just over that rise and around a slight bend, is the crossroad and the road turns to dirt." He nodded.  There was a rumble under the hood as the four hundred and twenty-five horses got ready to run.
The driver moved the shift lever forward into first gear and slid his foot off the clutch pedal. The rear tires screamed, scratching for traction, as the engine roared, I heard the two four-barreled carburetors gulping air, and the interior was filled with the odor of burnt rubber. The tires got a grip as I lunged for Mr. Franklin on the dash. The man from Philadelphia was unreachable. I tried again as Joey's hand moved the lever to second gear in what could best be described as a blur. Once again the c-note avoided capture. We were approaching one hundred miles-per-hour when the crossroad appeared in front of us. Joey reined those horses in just in time. And the boys dropped me off to get some sleep. I climbed back into bed and turned on my transistor radio for a little music to sleep by. The first tune up: 409 by the Beach Boys. Sleep eluded me just like Mr. Franklin did on the dashboard of that 409.

No, they don't make 'em like they used to.

* If you were of the Ford or Mopar persuasion you might not agree with my assessment!

"!@#$%^&*" sorry 'bout that photo!

CORNBREAD

Occasionally on the farm Momma would run low on cornmeal. It was a staple in her kitchen. Cornbread was always on the dinner and supper table at our house. When cornmeal was low it became my job to shell the corn to take to the miller. 

The corn crib formed part of the boundary around the lot which is how we referred to as the barnyard. It was a small building about twenty feet wide by fifteen feet deep. It had one door secured by an iron hasp made in the farm blacksmith shop.  I would take my place on my knees beside the corn sheller. The device was made of cast iron was mounted on a wooden box which measured about 18 inches wide 12 inches deep and high. The kernels of corn were removed from the cob as you turned the handle. I would shuck the corn before I shelled it.  When I had about fifty pounds of corn shelled Daddy and I would take it to the mill. It was Shinburg Mill on Hard Labor Creek in McCormick County. The miller was a man named Shepard. I never knew his first name. Everyone called him "Shep". He was shorter and older than my dad and sort of pudgy. He had almost white hair which was thinning on top. Mr. Shep always looked like he had bit into a green persimmon. That sour expression stayed on his face. Once Shinburg Mill was powered by water power from the creek but I remember it powered by a Ford tractor. We did not have to pay for Mr.Shep to grind the corn into cornmeal, he took his tole, a small amount of meal, for payment. We did not have the corn ground into grits which are really just coarsely ground corn. Maybe because we had yellow corn for cornmeal and always ate white grits. You could make corn into hominy to eat without grinding it.  It took a lot of work because the corn kernels had to be soaked in water with lye to make them swell up and then the husk had to be removed by hand.  It was then cooked and served for dinner. I like grits better and they're easy to fix, just add twice as much water as grits to a pot and cook until soft.  I could not wait for supper that night. Momma would bake a big hoecake of cornbread in her big iron skillet. That hot cornbread would be buttered and crumbled into bowls of cold buttermilk. I could hardly wait. We only ate yellow cornbread but my great granddaddy, Eldridge Dorn, would only eat white cornbread. He had a special corn patch just for white. And we never put sugar in cornbread. 

I don't know exactly where cornbread came from. Some say the term "hoecake" for a small cornbread cake comes from the African-American slaves who baked it on the old plantations. In my life I've used a hoe a lot but have been unable to determine how you can bake cornbread on one. The Europeans don't eat cornbread. Only the Italians eat any corn and that's in the form of polenta.  In most of Europe corn is only used as food for animals.There is a story told about how the Americans sent the starving French after WWII a ship full of corn. They let it rot. They wouldn't eat it. I think the Native-Americans invented cornbread.* They cultivated corn, had mortar and pestle to grind it and fire to bake it. I think my Scots-Irish ancestors got cornbread from the Cherokee Indians in the backcountry of South Carolina in the early eighteenth century. 

And I still love it today, but I don't have to shell the corn any more. 

*After I wrote this I found that Wikipedia verified my speculation about the origin of cornbread.