Innholdsfortegnelse for August/September 2022 i Reminisce

Our cover story this month commemorating the 120th anniversary of Cadillac generated an enthusiastic response from readers. I was struck by the varied backgrounds of these luxury-car owners. In contrast to the rarefied world the company perpetuated in its advertising (see Vintage Ads, page 44), our Cadillac lovers are from every walk of life. We heard from Luke Miller (page 30), whose first car was a used Caddy convertible that he got as a teenager. And we have Robert Boyd (page 25), who grew up in a Cadillac family where the daily driver was a Caddy that Dad loved so much, it prompted him to buy another one and another one. And more again. We even have a former missionary, Pat Cochran (page 31), who was lucky enough to drive…

■ Two couples pooled their resources to buy the big-bodied horse with a small tail at a yearling sale in 1975. Karen and Mickey Taylor and Jim and Sally Hill spent $17,500, which was $2,500 over their budget. ■ His right front foot curved outward, which made him sway to the outside while running. But it didn’t slow him down. At his first race at Belmont in 1976, Slew won by five lengths. ■ Seattle Slew cut his mouth at the start of the Kentucky Derby. Bleeding and in 14th place, he gradually overtook the field to win by 1¾ lengths. ■ One of just two undefeated Triple Crown winners, Seattle Slew was the first auction bought horse to win the Crown. He died May 7, 2002, the 25th anniversary…

Carol and I married in 1955 while I was serving a tour of duty in the Coast Guard. In August 1956, our daughter Susan was born, and five days later I received orders to go overseas to Rhodes, Greece. Carol and our new daughter would be able to come to Greece, too, but Susan had to be at least 6 weeks old before the military would transport her. I left without my family, departing New York on the troop transport the USS Patch. In Rhodes, I was stationed aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Courier, the radio ship for the Voice of America. Carol was 19 that October, when she and Susan headed for Norfolk, Virginia; from there, the Navy flew them to Greece. She had little travel experience, and…

My father’s first Cadillac was a gorgeous 1954 dark gray four-door Series 62 model. When I got my driver’s license at 16, I was a bad boy: I used to take the hubcaps and air cleaner off the car and drag race on the streets of Syracuse, New York. Of course, after a lot of this treatment, the Cadillac needed some serious repairs. Even though I am sure that my father knew the cause of the problem, he never reprimanded me. Dad had owned an Indian motorcycle in his youth and was mischievous, too. But I felt guilty, so I polished the car at least once a month—so much that I eventually wore down spots to the primer. My father sold that car to a friend, who drove it for…

1902 Henry Martyn Leland, engineer and inventor, recasts the failing Detroit Motor Co. to build luxury cars. 1903 Naming his company after the founder of Detroit, Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, Leland rolls out his Model A, left. By 1908, he has five models. All use parts that are interchangeable—a key to efficient manufacturing that Leland learned working in the gunsmithing industry before the Civil War. 1909 William Durant of General Motors buys Cadillac. Now in his mid-60s, Leland stays on to run production. Six years later, Cadillac builds the first production car with a V8 engine. 1930 Cadillac comes out with the first V16-engine production cars, including the stylish 452 Fleetwood roadster, left. The engines produce 160 horsepower and, with luck, can reach speeds of 100 mph, a technical…

DAD NEVER OWNED A NEW CAR. Money was tight in our family, but my father was a master mechanic who could keep old clunkers running. In early 1953, he shocked my mother, my brother Jack and me by bringing home a 1941 Cadillac Series 61 four-door sedan. Mother was not pleased, saying we couldn’t afford it. “We aren’t Cadillac people,” she said. Jack and I thought it was one of the most beautiful cars we’d ever seen. It was dark metallic green with the torpedo body style, whitewall tires and acres of glittering chrome. After a couple of Sunday drives, my mother changed her mind. She said the ride felt like “floating on a cloud.” Jack was two years older than me and already had his driver’s license. He started…

AT MY HIGH SCHOOL IN 1963, maybe a dozen kids owned cars and drove them to classes each day. I was one of them. I had a 1947 Ford Super Deluxe sedan. I was lucky enough to have a steady job at a hardware store after school and on Saturdays making $1.25 an hour, which was good money. I delivered the newspaper to one of our customers who worked at the hospital. On the way, I’d stop to admire a cool 1956 Cadillac Coupe DeVille hardtop in the parking lot. I tried to imagine what it would be like to drive it, never dreaming that I would ever get the chance. I knew who owned it, and one day she came into the store. As I waited on her, I mentioned…

OH, THE GOOD LIFE EARLY ON, CADILLAC zeroed in on the lifestyle that its luxury line of vehicles represented. The carmaker spared no expense to attract the right buyer. Its ads featured work by known and up-and-coming artists in full color—a pricey novelty in print before World War II. The elegant ad from 1932 of Great Gatsby look-alikes, with the slogan “The Standard of the World” (1), is by Robert Fawcett, whose meticulous technique earned him the title “the illustrator’s illustrator.” The 1940 ad (2) is by Jon Whitcomb, a sought-after illustrator who created memorable campaigns for Statler Hotels and Oneida Community cutlery. Through the 1950s and into the early 1960s, ads showed gold or jeweled V’s—a reference to the engine type—under the Cadillac crest or crown, and wealthy couples…

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The sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s reshaped hairstyles, leading to longer, fuller coifs for both women and men. The carefree look of figure skater Dorothy Hamill’s popular wedge cut and the natural, feathery layers famously worn by actress Farrah Fawcett were in fact high maintenance, requiring extensive blow-drying (and gobs of styling product). Merriam-Webster gave blow-dried an entry in 1977, the year after Hamill’s Olympic championship and Fawcett’s single season on TV’s Charlie’s Angels. For more, see “Good Hair Days,” page 44.…

Whenever I see a Caddy from the ’50s, I get nostalgic for mine.MICHAEL TEVAULT, MURFREESBORO, TN At age 21 in 1981, I’d worked all summer as a grocery carrier at the local IGA, saving enough to buy this splendid land yacht, a 1965 Cadillac DeVille convertible, from my neighbor. It was a real beauty, painted in silver metallic with a red leather interior—boy, did I think I was something! My first adventure in it was a trip north to visit my brother in Minneapolis in September. I got lots of looks from older folks—What’s that kid doing in a Caddy?—but mostly I remember barely making it home. The big engine drained the tank faster than my meager budget could fill it.…

A cousin of mine, Bob, had a 1903 Cadillac, with wood body, padded seats, chain drive and a one-cylinder engine. It also had carbide lights, but as far as I was concerned, it was strictly a daytime, fair-weather mode of transportation. Naturally, it was a crank start, which was my job. Most of the time it even started. Two mysteries I never solved as an 8-year-old were how the car stopped and how it backed up. It could do both. I’ll give that old Cadillac one thing: It got a lot of smiles per mile.…

Dad promised that if I kept my grades up, he’d buy me a car. He kept his word. In my senior year of high school, I became the proud owner of a white 1963 Cadillac convertible. The car was almost as old as me, but that’s what made it special. My Cadillac had a 390 V-8 engine, with power seats, power windows, red leather upholstery and, best of all, tail fins. What more could a car-crazy teenager ask for? My Caddy had some rust, so when I went away to college, I jumped at the chance to buy rust-free doors and fenders at a Florida junkyard. I had to store them in my dorm room until my buddy Boo could install them. Fortunately, my roommate Rob was also a classic…

The University of Alabama football team played in its first Rose Bowl in 1926. By the mid-1930s, the Crimson Tide under coach Frank Thomas was a football powerhouse, ending its 1937 season undefeated, and set to return to Pasadena, California, for its fifth bowl game. Here are some of the admired players from the era—a few are still among the sport’s most famous names. Paul “Bear” Bryant Part of the team that won the Rose Bowl in 1935, Bryant described himself as the “other end” opposite star receiver Don Hutson. As a coach, he’s a legend—Bryant compiled a 323-85-17 career record and led Alabama to six national championships. Joe Kilgrow Kilgrow lined up on both sides of the field, primarily playing halfback, but also throwing the ball. He was a…

My husband, Jim, was principal clarinetist in the Tucson Symphony Orchestra when Benny Goodman was a guest soloist with the orchestra in October 1960. Goodman performed “Clarinet Concerto in A Major” (Mozart) and “Concertino for Clarinet” (Weber). Goodman asked Jim to organize a jazz ensemble for a swing music encore. Partway through the 30-minute encore, Benny introduced Jim as his “friend who plays beautiful clarinet in the orchestra and also plays jazz.” Jim remembered feeling as if he was walking on air as he went onstage to play “Moonglow.” By the second chorus, Goodman had the audience clapping to the beat—then he joined in playing with Jim. The audience didn’t want it to end. While Goodman was in Tucson, we gave him a small dinner party. He was charming and…

By any logic, Saturday Night Fever should have been a flash in the pan. Based on “Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night,” a 1976 New York magazine article by Nik Cohn that depicted Brooklyn’s discotheque scene, the movie was a showcase for a sitcom star—John Travolta—and a musical trend—disco—that both peaked in the 1970s. There is no reason the film should entertain audiences today. And yet it does. From the opening shot of Tony Manero (Travolta) strutting to the beat of the Bee Gees song “Stayin’ Alive,” this 1977 cinematic artifact still delivers. Making the movie’s entertainment value even more unlikely is the fact that the story is surprisingly downbeat. One of Tony’s friends falls to his death, another tries to prove her worth with sad attempts at seduction,…

1956–2016 Long before Carrie Fisher became the female lead of the Star Wars universe in 1977, she was born into the rarified air of Hollywood royalty. Her parents, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, were known as America’s sweethearts before scandal ended the marriage. Carrie Fisher found her own kind of fame, best known, of course, for her role as Princess Leia Organa. And like her movie character, she learned to speak up, sharing the realities of her life with humor and grace. She hated the buns “To put more hair on either side of a round face is going to make it even wider,” Fisher said. “So that was my problem with that.” She didn’t finish high school Fisher dropped out of Beverly Hills High in 1973, moving to England…

Carmen Angelo Caruso, my father, immigrated with his parents and younger brother to America from Bianco, in southern Italy, in 1920. They joined family in Niles, just northwest of Youngstown, where cousins provided them with temporary housing and taught them new ways of life. Carmen began first grade when he was 13; in his second year, he breezed through third and fourth grades. He eventually dropped out to work and help support his family. My mother, Mary Ann Palumbo, sailed from Gallo, Italy, in 1927 with her mother and older sister. Seasick, Mary Ann got her first taste of soda crackers, which were distributed to the ailing passengers. The long wait in the lines at Ellis Island, New York, to pass inspection was traumatic for her. Enrolled in a parochial…

Matthew and I married in November 1980 under a full moon. We spent our enchanted honeymoon in St. Thomas, sailing, snorkeling and dancing under the stars. We were off to a grand start. Then circumstances began to go south. During our first year together, we both lost our jobs and health insurance. Shortly after that we found out we were expecting our first child. What should have been a joyous time filled me with fear. How would we survive? We moved in with my mother-in-law and worked odd jobs. By the spring of 1982, when I was seven months along, I had to have an emergency appendectomy. Fortunately, the operation didn’t affect the baby, and in July I gave birth to a healthy little girl. She was the first grandchild…

In 1974, when we were about 19, my buddy Jim Neforos and I bought a 1962 Cadillac from a guy named—no kidding—Joe Cadillac for $125. It was black, with four doors and two sets of fins. It needed some work, and we weren’t exactly car guys, but we thought it would be fun. We wrote “Cadillac” on a dollar bill and ripped it in half. That was our contract. My grandfather, a carpenter, helped us repair the fenders with two-by-fours and a lot of Bondo. My grandmother sewed red curtains with black tassels for the interior. (I have no idea what we were thinking there.) We kept it for a year or two before selling it for $425. We each still have our half-dollar today.…

It was just Mom and me when I was a girl. One Saturday, we heard a scream from across the alley, and saw a man working on a big black Cadillac clutching his arm. The engine had caught fire and burned him. Mom dressed his wound with iodine and bandages, and he asked her out as a thank-you. Long story short: That man became my stepdad—the best in the world. I even got two brothers out of the deal. We called that car the Cupid Cadillac. It was the best thing that ever happened to Mom and me.…

While I was a freshman in college during the winter of 1959, my father died suddenly. My mother and I decided to move to York, where we found an apartment in a three-story house two doors down from a volunteer fire station. After settling in, I volunteered to be a firefighter—it was then that my Cadillac adventures began. The first thing that caught my eye on my first day was the station’s ambulance, a 1947 Cadillac. I was young, but because I lived the closest to the station, I became the overnight ambulance driver. My shift ran from 10:30 p.m. to 10 a.m. I quickly found out that the ’47 Cadillac did not have power steering, and only vacuum-assisted brakes, which were not the most reliable. The transmission was another…