Daddy's 1938 Packard

In summer 1951, Daddy had four cars in the yard at the house near Maud.

One car Daddy drove daily to and from work at Red River Army Depot, the others he was trying to sell. He had bought the three cars for a little bit of money and hoped to sell them for a little more. The cars were a 1939 Ford, a 1938 two-door Pontiac and a 1938 Packard.

The Packard was not something you would call just another car; it was an automobile – long body, black paint, covered spare tires that fit into the front fenders, huge chrome bumpers back when bumpers were real and weight was a thing added to a car, not taken away, because if a driver was going to be in a wreck, he wanted his car to have more mass than the other car.

The Packard was sold to be chauffeur-driven, not owner-driven. The Packard had two jump seats, just behind the divider between chauffeur and passengers. And, the divider had a roll-up window.

Daddy’s 13-year-old Packard looked like this:

http://www.oldcarmanualproject.com/brochures/Packard/1938/pages/1938Packard05_jpg.htm

To a 5-year-old boy, a car that size and style meant only one thing: Hours behind the wheel, driving wherever I wanted, and times just sitting on the tan, cloth passenger seat or one of the jump seats, rolling up the dividing window and rolling down the window.

It was a marvel, big and American, the car foreign potentates and sheiks and rajahs owned in China and Arabia and India.

The Packard had a radio, too, and I listened to as many AM stations as were in range during the day. I always remembered to turn off the radio. Back then, radio power was independent of ignition keys. Many a battery ran down because people forgot to turn off the radio after shutting down the motor.

One day, after listening to and then turning off the radio, I decided to climb over the divider. For some reason, I had the ignition key in my hand. While climbing over the divider, I dropped the key into the window slit. I could see the key, but I could not get my hand into the slit, and my arm wasn’t long enough to reach that far anyway.
That afternoon, Daddy checked the cars after he got home from work. He came into the house and said, “Anybody seen the Packard keys?”

I said, “I was playing in the car and dropped them in the dividing window.”

Surprisingly, Daddy did not get mad. He said, “How do you expect me to sell the car if I can’t start it?”

I said, “Maybe you can hot wire it.”

“I can,” Daddy said, “but I can’t expect a buyer to do that.”

I’ m pretty sure he got the key out, because he never mentioned it again. He did tell me to stay out of the cars, though.

He sold the Packard not long after. I missed that car.