A Fifty-Point Edsel

 

1959.  It was a hot summer, good for porch sitting.  We didn’t have a front porch at our house, but it was just a few steps next door to Grandma Benfield’s front porch.  It was shaded by a big Chinese Elm in front and multi-blossoming roses on one end and a glider swing on the other end of the porch.  In between were metal rockers and a lawn chair or two. There was a magnolia tree in the yard, as well, and the sweet, lemony scent of its blossoms hung heavy over the porch.

On some afternoons and weekends my cousin Terry and I, and maybe a couple uncles and aunts, would do some porch sitting with Grandma.  If the adults got tired of talking about the rapture and how the dead would rise in the second coming, we’d just sit and watch the traffic on Connelly Springs Road in front of the house.  Terry and I usually had a contest.  In a thirty-minute period we could count points determined by the type car we could identify.  The first one to call the car would get the point if he was correct.  If not, the point went to the other person if he could correctly name the model and make.

Chevrolets and Fords of any make or model counted one point each.  Dodges and Plymouths were two points.  Chryslers counted three; Lincolns four; and Cadillacs five.  We didn’t have many Japanese cars back then, but I faintly recall a two or three for them.  Studebakers and Nash Ramblers were a ten, for sure, as was a Jeep.  But the biggest catch of all was an Edsel with its horse collar grill and chrome trim.  The Edsel was a fifty-pointer, with a five-point bonus if it was a pink or coral color, which we thought was rather odd, but worthy of bonus points.

I’m not sure exactly what we did with our points when we got them, other than claim bragging rights.  When dark came to the porch we’d have to stop our car-counting contest and chase a few lighting bugs.  And if we were lucky, Grandma would offer us a Grape “dope,” which was her word for a carbonated soda.  She didn’t offer the “dopes” all that often, but when she did it was even better than spotting a fifty-point Edsel with bonus points.

We eagerly received the sodas and I said a prayer that God would hold off on the rapture business until I spotted an Edsel, or at least until I finished drinking my “dope.”