For a year of my childhood, a huge 1966 Meteor sedan was my window on
a continent. A journey through 1960s America
It was enormous. Because North American cars were, then. Folks liked
their cars big, with engines
to match – great lazy V8s that would not look out of place in a
small freighter. Today, many
Americans are
quite happy with
European-size cars, and even
the big ones are not really that big anymore.
Fifty years ago it was different. The befinned extravaganzas of the
late 1950s had gone, but many quite ordinary cars were still
land yachts so vast that the driver peered out over a massive forward
flight deck the size of a small African republic. The other day I
passed an ancient Chrysler in the street. It startled me.
I am surprised my father bought a land yacht. We had lived in North America before, in the late 1950s, and he had owned a quite modest Plymouth station wagon. He was unusual in this. There was the odd Beetle around, of course, and in the 1950s Americans could even buy a Morris Minor, though I don’t think many did. But most disapproved of such un-American devices. A few even had bumper stickers that read “Stamp Out Small Cars”. (A friend of my father’s, very unusually, had an Isetta bubble car. It had a sticker reading “Stamp Out Large Dogs”.) Still, the modest Plymouth had carried us from Columbus to Colorado and to Miami and back, although a wheel came off somewhere in Georgia. I do not remember that. I was only two and must have slept through it. Then in 1968 we returned to the Americas, this time to the Canadian capital, Ottawa. My father again bought a car. But this time he decided to go large.
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| An identical car (Wikimedia Commons/dave_7 Lethbridge) |
His new aircraft carrier on wheels was Canadian, and was almost
certainly built at the Ford plant in Oakville, Ontario. Ford had
built cars in Canada since as early as 1904. It still does. The car
was a two-year-old Meteor Rideau 500 Sedan, a 1966 model that had
Ford Galaxie underpinnings but got its front and rear styling from
the US-market Mercury S-55, also introduced that year. There were
three engines, starting with a 4-litre inline six. This had 150 HP
(148 BHP) – not bad for 1966, but it must still have struggled in a
car that size. Most Canadians will have chosen a V8; either the
4.7-litre small-block V8 with around 200 BHP, or – at the top of
the range – a completely different V8 lifted from the Ford
Thunderbird, which was just over 7 litres and produced about 340 BHP.
As my father intended to drive us all over North America, he will
have chosen a V8. I don’t know which.
He was clear why he’d chosen a Meteor, however. US-market cars were
not only enormous; they were very softly sprung, and in corners they
wallowed like whales. Canadians, it seems, liked stiffer suspension
and better handling. They also liked subtler colours than their
southern neighbours. Ours was a discreet mid-blue metallic. The
interior was blue too, and – a novelty for me – it had a radio.
There was a metallic feel to the upholstery, and a metallic smell –
not unpleasant. (Actually all cars have a distinctive natural scent
inside. If you blindfolded me and sat me in a 1950s Morris Oxford or
Minor, I would know at once from the warm smell of the carpets and
upholstery. Old estate cars used to smell of wet labrador. All
smelled of cigarette smoke. Modern cars have an anodyne, chemical
odour.)
Within a week or two, the Meteor took us south into New York State to
see the fall colours. And almost every weekend that winter, it
carried us across the Ottawa River to Quebec, past the francophone
city of Hull and into the Gatineau Hills, where we would ski –
sometimes downhill, but more often on trails. In the week, it took my
father to his office in Ottawa. At night it sat in a communal garage,
partly underground, where an electric flex ran from the wall to each
car to keep the engine warm. It was easy to see why. In midwinter the
temperature could drop to minus 6 deg F (about minus 14 deg C). You
did not want to wait for a huge 7-litre V8 to warm up before the
heater started working.
Then in spring it was time to drive further.
*
That car was my window on a continent. We travelled south through New York State and Pennsylvania, the rain
beating down on the huge flat hood almost all the way until we
arrived in Washington DC in a burst of sunshine. We would stay for a
week in Arlington, Virginia with a friend of my father’s who worked
for NASA. They would go to the office together and talk endlessly of
remote sensing and photogrammetry. And the rest of us would
sight-see. It was April 1969. We swept past the Tidal Basin with its
cherry blossoms and onto the Arlington Memorial Bridge, the entrance
to Arlington Cemetery ahead. As we crossed the bridge, my father made
the sort of slight grunt he made which meant he was about to say
something important and we should all shut up.
“This is a country at war,” he said. He paused, then added: “It
is proving hard for them, and your opinions on the war are not needed
here. Do you understand?”
I suppose I did, and I know my sister, who was older, will have done.
In 1969 the United States was as deeply embroiled in Vietnam as it
ever would be; the bodies were coming home and the war was deeply
divisive. It had already done for Lyndon Johnson, who had ended his
bid for re-election the previous year after a poor showing in the New
Hampshire primary. Richard Nixon had become President in January.
In that strange year of war and Woodstock, crew cuts and dope, Cold
War and counterculture, a country drifted past beyond the Meteor’s
windows; clapboard houses and white picket fences, small towns, great
cities, country roads, Interstates. There were Holiday Inns – posh
then – and quiet motels, basic but friendly; breakfast and lunch in
diners bright with chrome and Formica and red plastic seating; my
favourite drink (7 Up) and fries. Very rarely, a McDonald’s. My
parents did not approve of McDonald’s. Aged 11, I adored them. I am
sure they tasted better then, and the restaurants themselves were
always classic roadside ones, complete with big Golden Arches. But
the best fries we had were in Canada, in a remote roadhouse in
British Columbia; a great wooden bowl of crisp fresh fries, washed
down with Coke as the mist and rain cloaked the green wooded hills
outside.
Near Cambridge, Massachusetts, we stopped at another friend of my
father’s. (He worked closely with Americans for over 30 years.
There were many such friends.) They had a 100-acre farm. We spent a
wonderful day during which I was taught how to shoot a .45 that
deafened me, and slammed back into my shoulder. We blasted away at
Budweiser cans. The kids had a 1956 Buick Eight they had bought, as
scrap, for a dollar. They let me drive it. Aged 11, I craned my neck
to see over the rim of the steering wheel and bumped around a large
field at 20 miles an hour.
We went to Vermont to visit the Baroness Maria von Trapp. Well, to
stay at her ski lodge near Stowe. She was warm and welcoming but
looked nothing like Julie Andrews, being rotund and rather jolly. My
sister came in red and flushed after a day’s skiing. “My dear,
you look very mountainous today,” boomed the Baroness. She
found out it was my sister’s birthday and bore a big cake with 16
candles into the dining room, preceded by her sons in lederhosen. The
trail skiing was wonderful. One night at dusk we skied around the
Baron’s grave, a peaceful place on a forest path.
*
But the Meteor blotted its copybook. The old-fashioned automatic
choke failed and my father spent some minutes in the snow outside the
von Trapp lodge, holding it open with his finger so that the engine
could warm up. It was not the first or last time. A week or so after
he bought the car, it suffered some malady and went back to the
dealer. (They gave him a rather smart new green Mercury coupe in the
meantime.) One spring day as we cruised up the New Jersey Turnpike,
the muffler (silencer) fell off with a nasty clatter; it was still
attached at the manifold end. A New Jersey mechanic assured us he
could fix it, then found that Mercury parts did not fit Meteors. “I’m
sorry, there’s nothing I can do; it’s Canadian,” he said
mournfully. “I understand,” said my father, sounding as if he
did. The muffler was tied back on with electric flex. Of course this
burned through. The next garage fixed it with a wire hanger from the
closet. This bodge got us back across the border. Meanwhile I had
constantly to keep my legs away from the back of the front bench
seat, as there was a wire that stuck out at knee level.
The Meteor’s various mechanical diseases frustrated my father. Yet
it cannot have been that bad, for in early summer we hit the road
again, and went further than ever – to the far west. For the first
leg, the long journey across Ontario, the car was loaded onto a
Canadian National train and we took berths with it, to be unloaded in
Winnipeg in a warm summer midnight. The next day we drove south to
the border and west into the Dakotas, across the Badlands, and tried
to find a motel in a small town off the Interstate where the only
option had swinging Western-style doors. The road signs on the way
back to the Interstate were peppered with bullet holes; clearly
target practice from a moving vehicle was the chief recreation here.
On to Billings, Montana, and an overnight stay in a Holiday Inn.
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| The Beartooth Pass (Wikimedia Commons/Phil Armitage) |
The next day was a magical one that is still in my mind over 50 years
later. Billings is on the plain. Actually most of Montana is, despite
the name. But as we left the town, a line of silver appeared on the
horizon, and drew slowly clearer as we passed through gently rising
land, the Great Plains turning to orchards and farms. In due course
we reached the foot of the mountains, and started the steep climb to
the 11,000ft Beartooth Pass. The ground dropped away to the right of
the car, the road twisting this way and that as it reached for the
sky. Some time after leaving the hot summer plain below, we came out
on the summit to find people skiing in June. Then the road dropped
slightly and we came into Yellowstone, and a world of bears. We
stopped and sat awhile above the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone,
forty miles long, a thousand feet deep; a spectacle dwarfed only by
the Grand Canyon itself. After that, on to the Grand Tetons, one of
the most beautiful places in the Americas. Then on across Wyoming,
its great grassy plains dotted by nodding donkeys; there was oil here
– and finally to Boulder, Colorado, where my father had business.
Then back north through nameless small towns of white fences and
flags, to Glacier National Park.
Day after day the swaying of the enormous car, the burbling of the
big engine, the tangy smell of the upholstery, the endless horizons
beyond the bonnet and the towns and hills and plains through the
window became the rhythm of my life. One day we drove north through
Idaho. The towns and villages were smaller and poorer here, the
houses a little unkempt; elderly cars stood in the front yards,
sometimes on bricks. Then we crossed the Canadian frontier near Grand
Forks, British Columbia, and suddenly there were narrow roads and
high hedges and green fields and a woman in Wellington boots driving
a herd of cattle to milking down a country lane, as she might in
Devon – from which, indeed, she might have come. We turned left and
drove for a day and reached the Pacific. Then we turned back to
Penticton in the Okanagan Valley, with its semi-arid climate and its
cherry orchards.
Later the Meteor carried us across the Rockies as far as Banff
Springs, where we met relatives staying at the palatial Banff Springs
Hotel. Some time in the afternoon of July 20, I walked through the
lounge, where many people were watching TV, despite the sunshine
outside. Suddenly there was a flurry of applause. A dim, ghostly
figure in a space suit moved on the screen, planting the Stars and
Stripes on the surface of the Moon.
*
The Meteor’s last task was to take us back to Ottawa, where my
parents would arrange their affairs before returning to England; my
father’s work in Canada was done. On this last, longest journey
from Banff to Ottawa, we thrummed steadily for what seemed like days
across the Great Plains, passing Regina and Winnipeg, stopping but
briefly in roadside motels – I remember little of them. At last we
left Manitoba and crossed into Ontario, leaving the plains behind for
endless pines, skirting north of the Great Lakes, a long journey that
made one understand what Siberia might be like. The scenery continued
to move past, but now it was monotonous. We were on the Trans-Canada
Highway, over 4,800 miles of road. In 1969 it was not quite all
sealed yet; around Sault Ste. Marie we ran for miles over gravel, at
a steady 15-20 MPH, following other cars at a wary distance to avoid
the plumes of dust. Around there I remember noticing an odd Canadian
habit: on a long journey, younger children would sleep on a sedan’s
parcel shelf. We crossed north-east to the mining city of
Sudbury, with its enormous monumental nickel coin on a plinth; and
finally we arrived at Ottawa.
I do not remember when I last saw the Meteor. Some time in mid-August
my sister, mother and I left for Montreal, where we boarded the
Empress of England for the voyage home. My father, who hated
ships, followed us a week or so later by air. During that week he
must have disposed of the car; perhaps he took it back to the Mercury
dealer. I can’t imagine that I expected to see it again.
The voyage home was rough and I was as sick as a dog. We tied up in
Liverpool’s Gladstone Dock in the pouring rain. A few weeks later I
was back at school, and there were no more turnpikes and towns,
cities or shacks, mountains, plains, bears, nodding donkeys, deep
gorges, huge trucks, mile-long trains or McDonald’s, all seen from
a huge blue car. There was only the family Vauxhall Victor and a
smaller, meaner world.
*
I suppose I had a restlessness instilled in me by those journeys; the
voyages across the Atlantic (I described them here)
and the long hours in the back of the great blue car watching a
continent speed past me. As a young man I did a number of media jobs
in London, but never really settled. I wanted to be out in the world.
In 1987, aged 30, I became a development volunteer in Sudan. But this
is not the place to write of that. Save, that is, for one incident.
In August 1988 I and five colleagues made the eight-hour run from our
base near Gedaref to Khartoum. It was the wet season, but the rains
no longer reached Khartoum. That night would prove an exception. An
hour from the city it was raining so heavily that we saw cars
abandoned, at least one slewed off the road completely. The beefy
diesel Land Cruiser managed all right as the water reached its sills;
the exhaust was routed above the driver so that it did not get
blocked in mud or floods. By the time we reached Khartoum we were
bumper-deep; a long bow-wave came from the few cars left moving. One
came towards us on the wrong side of the road. Our driver honked
angrily, then we realised there was no-one in it; it was being swept
away.
We reached our destination. But over the next week or two it was hard
to get around in the aftermath of the floods, which had left a
million homeless. Buses were always uncertain anyway; by the time the
bus to town reached my lodgings it would be so full that I had to
hang on outside the door, my rear exposed to any passing lamppost
that came too close. Now they were more packed than ever, and all
vehicles had to skirt the enormous puddles left by the floods. The
Blue Nile was rising, and it was thought it might burst its banks,
causing a further disaster. Every night I would go, alone or with a
friend, to the May Gardens near the confluence of the Blue and White
Niles and look at the water level. Day by day a small cargo boat
moored there would rise and rise, and the water was just below the
bank.
One day I hitched a lift to town on the back of a small pickup, the
sort that carried everything from groceries to sheep. There were many
people in the open rear, and I balanced precariously on the tailgate.
We hit a bump and I grasped the metal hard to steady myself. As I did
so, a very large metallic blue car crossed the junction ahead of us.
It seemed unmistakeable.
For a moment I was taken aback, then told myself to be silly; the
Meteor would now be over 20 years old and had certainly died, in
Canada, a long time ago.
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| The driver's office (Wikimedia Commons/dave_7 Lethbridge) |
That night, after dark, we went to the May Gardens as we normally
did. The air was hot and close, and there was the usual smell of dust
in the air. Several cars were parked beside the park. One of them was
a metallic blue Meteor Rideau 500. It was too much of a coincidence.
Even in Canada, they had been rare, sold in that exact style for only
a year; I could remember seeing only one other, a pale green one –
it had passed us in Montana and when we saw each other’s Ontario
plates, we honked and waved. I never saw another blue one. I peered
inside. Was it my imagination, or was there a wire sticking out of
the front seat? I think there was.
Of course I can’t be sure. The car had been rare even in Canada,
but it wasn’t unique. One of the pictures I have posted here shows
an identical vehicle, albeit looking a little rough. But we’d never
seen another quite like it that year; and it had been sold in Ottawa,
the capital, where it could perhaps have been bought by a Sudanese
diplomat and brought home to Khartoum. I have always believed that it
was the same car. I wonder if it still exists. I doubt it; it would
be 54 years old now. But it is possible. Ten years later I lived in
Aleppo, Syria, where high import duty meant that cars were almost
literally never scrapped, and the streets were full of beautifully
kept Buicks and Dodges and Packards from the 1950s and late 1940s. A
friend had a Studebaker from 1955. So I think the Meteor might still
be alive, in a hot dusty land, far from home.
At that moment, anyway, I was convinced. I stepped back. The big car
stood there in the half-light, its bodywork gleaming dully. Just for
a moment I remembered the billowing Great Plains, the endless pine
trees of Ontario, the Tidal Basin passing to our left with its cherry
blossoms, Beartooth Pass with its vertiginous road, the snowy peaks
of the Grand Tetons and the journey down to the Pacific. I looked at
it for a moment or two, and then turned away. I never saw the car
again.
Mike
Robbins is the author of a number of fiction and non-fiction books.
They can be ordered from bookshops, or as paperbacks or e-books from Amazon and other on-line retailers.
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