GM, Je t'aime

My grandfather Raymond was an emigre from Kentucky. He came as a child with his family to the Cincinnati area, where great-Grandpa George bought hundreds of acres of land that eventually became farms. George was renowned in the area for his ability to pick a winner, in terms of land, and anybody who was thinking of buying called him to walk the land with them, before any final decision was made.

Ohio represented the Promised Land to my hillbilly ancestors, who left home and family in a tiny holler called Olive Hill for the rich and rolling lands of Ohio. That part of Kentucky is so full of hills and valleys and creeks and whatnot that the only thing you can really farm is tobacco.

As far as I know, Great-Grandpa George was not disappointed. Farming is not an easy life, but it has its rewards, and even the mere ownership of so much land gave my family a sense of security, the same way I feel today on my measly 36 acres.

George made a daring move, even though it might not seem so today. But back then, to pack up kit and kilter and move to another state to seek a better life was risky. I suppose it was in the blood. There is evidence that one of our ancestors, a Welsh prince named Madog, was actually the first to discover America, back around 1000 A.D. Of course, everybody would like for their ancestor to have discovered America, and to be a prince, and you can doubt if you want.

But if you had ever met my grandfather, you would not have been able to doubt that he was the descendant of a monarch, because he was a gentleman--a gentleman farmer, as it happens.

He eventually took over the main farm, after having married my Grandmother Olive. They had everything: livestock, and soy, and fruit trees, and grain. And when they had established some kind of economic stability, they got a Buick.

A Buick was the only kind of car I ever knew my grandparents to drive. I asked my mom if they ever drove anything else in her memory and she said that she thought they had a Pontiac once. It must have been a midlife crisis type thing for my Grandpa because that was the only non-Buick anyone ever heard of.

I asked why they didn't buy Cadillacs instead and she shook her head. "Grandma felt they were too flashy."

According to my father, my grandfather never actually got rid of any of his Buicks. He said that, when it was time to get a new car, Grandpa would just drive the old one up onto a particular spot on the farm and park it there, like a faithful horse being put out to pasture. This would be in keeping with my grandfather as I knew him. He didn't like waste, and when he sold the farm and built a house on the housing development that took its place, a lot of what other people might call junk was transported to the new location. You never knew when it might come in handy, was Grandpa's idea.

I might be giving the idea of the stereotypical Hillbilly with an old refrigerator and a hound dog on the front porch, but my grandparents were not that way at all. Of course, they might have been suppressing the Appalachian instinct, like I do. I had to stop myself at the last minute from turning my old toilet into a planter. Blood tells. But my grandparents' house and grounds were immaculate, and if Grandpa did have a retired fleet of Buicks parked somewhere on his 500 acres, they were not visible to the casual glance. Grandpa's bent and rusty nails were very neatly categorized in old tin cans.

I think that in every woman's life, there is one man who has such an enormous influence that she spends her whole life trying to find him again. If you would have taken a casual glance at my grandfather, you never would have thought he could be such a man. He was quiet, unassuming, and seemingly subservient to my grandmother. He wasn't particularly handsome, but he gave a sense of solidity, with the sturdy stature and the broad cheekbones of a Welshman. I was a very shy child, more accustomed to women than men, and my grandfather had to exert all his subtle charms to win me over, which he did, successfully and definitively. One of the principal Moments of Glory in my life was when I got to "drive" my grandfather's enormous tractor over to Uncle Clyde's farm, half a mile down the road.

Grandpa was a Libra, and somehow managed to manifest only the good traits of that sign. He was slow to decide and to act, but when he made a decision, it was always the right one. Thanks to Grandpa's business acumen, his offspring has lived a good portion of our lives on Easy Street. He was fair. If one kid got something, the other two had to get something of equal value. There was none of the robbing of Peter to pay Paul that happens, unfortunately, in so many families. Anybody who knows Libras at all knows that you can't catch hold of them. If you try and grab on to a Libra, you will find yourself with a handful of air, but when you let go, the Libra is there again. You can't make them do something, but if you give them enough space, they will do what needs to be done. And they don't go away.

So without even getting into the whole Libra thing, which is a definite theme in my life, I will say that I am happiest when driving Buicks.

I had a '96 LeSabre in Oakland, which I named "Fatty." Fatty was baby-blue, with a matching velour interior, and had a few scrapes where the elderly owners had accidentally driven up on medians and the like but was otherwise in fantastic condition. My mother, who drives a Mercedes, said Fatty was the most beautiful car she'd ever seen. When I left Oakland, I had to leave Fatty (with a Libra, of course) and in Ohio, I've been driving a Nissan Truck, which fills me with an overwhelming sense of indifference. I've been keeping my eye out for a car like Fatty but none has presented itself, until yesterday.

I am now the proud owner of a golden-beige 97 Park Avenue. My mother and her Benz are once more on the analyst's couch with the sense of inferiority that my new old car has produced. Because it's in her blood too. She's like the rebel kid, trying to break away from Mom and Dad by buying a foreign car, but inwardly convinced she's made a horrible mistake, as we all are when we break tradition.

I can't get my Grandpa back, but I keep trying. And driving the Duchess of Fat down Mogadore Road today, I felt like I had almost succeeded.

So GM is in the doldrums, and nobody knows what will happen next, but I hope they get a bail-out. Because a GM car is not just a car, it's a symbol, to those of us who weren't always middle-class (and I'm not talking about when we ruled Wales, but rather of when the middle-class was somewhere at the end of the rainbow, somewhere across the Ohio river) of dreams come true, and good times that aren't quite gone, as long as you're driving a Buick.