Pink Cadillac

     Can't begin to say out of which blue Uncle Emil's '57 Chevy Nomad arose. That blue is beyond my ken. Simply put, when I pictured Emil in a car, that was the one I saw. I tried to change the image several times, ran a whole series of cars and trucks through my mental projector with no luck. Always turned out as a red and white Nomad. Interesting, eh? Until I saw him in it, the Nomad was nothing more than a name to me. But in my mind's eye, I knew what it had to look like. And so did Emil.
     Truthfully, what I saw was actually a '56. However, I knew from almost buying one in 1967, that the biggest engine in a '56 Chevy wasn't the 283 V-8 I wanted Uncle Emil to have. So I tried my damnedest to make the change to a '57. Just didn't work. That later model didn't look like the car that my Uncle was driving so I guess I had to give in. Emil seemed to think that's a good idea.
     Consider Herman Melville. Ahab seeks revenge and wants to kill Moby Dick, a white whale. But Melville has been to sea and knows the bigguns are the blue ones. So Moby Dick turns blue. Ahab pisses and moans in Melville's mind for months on end, "White, Herman, white. The whale has to be white." Finally, Melville relents and page by endless page of scratch outs, Moby turns white.
     I guess the moral of that aside is that both Emil and Moby Dick swim in the same sea but the whale has a better sense of horse flesh.
     We find Emil standing and stroking his chin, deep in thought. Fifty-one years of age. Kids grown and gone. A few bucks in his pocket, money in the bank. His life good and on cruise control. The idea of midlife crisis has never entered the man's head. What the hell was that to a man during the war years and the decade that followed? For Emil, life was about being honest with himself, not always an easy thing to figure out and do. But he gave it his best shot. He wasn't rich, wasn't poor, had his good times and his bad, enjoyed a beer once in a while and had a thing for brussel sprouts. Mostly he was thankful for being alive. He wasn't out to change the world in any way, shape or form. His aim in life was to not screw things up too much and hoped enough people felt the same way. Simple, doable and maybe even effective.
     Where exactly do we find Emil standing, staring and stroking? The Chevrolet dealership in Alexandria eyeballing the '56 red and white, two door Nomad of course. Rumor had spread its spidery little fingers all the way north to the hinterland of Parkers Prairie that there was this hot shot wagon gathering dust on Gieske's lot for the better part of three seasons 'cuz nobody in his right thinking, Minnesota mind could see any possible use for a two door station wagon. How you gonna put the kids in the back or load groceries for the Pete's sake? Seems one of the Kleinschmidt twins, Weird Wally no less, had up and ordered it on a whim and fifty bucks down. Son of a gun, turned out his blushing bride wasn't nearly as pregnant as she'd claimed two months before their shotgun wedding. By then the Nomad had arrived. However, Terry was now having the second thoughts he should have had a few weeks earlier and could see no possible use for a station wagon regardless of the number of doors. Fortunately for both Wally and Gieske there was a way out. Seems there was also a new two door Bel Aire on the lot, kind of puke green in color, that Gieske was willing to part with for full sticker price. Terry thought it over for about three seconds and drove off a wiser young man.
     So there stood Emil alongside a white shirt and tie wearing young buck named Rick. Both were appraising the merits of the slowly aging wagon in front of them. To this point in his life, the only thing Rick had been able to sell was his virginity for ten dollars down in St Cloud. Unloading the Nomad would be a major step up from his cherry popping though it would no doubt take longer than ten seconds.  Emil quietly explained that he had $2200 cash, on the nose, to spend. Nothing more. Nothing less. Rick did the salesman thing and ran off to his boss. Old man Gieske got a chuckle out of the offer. Seems the total cost with transport, dealer prep and license was $3152. Seeing as how the car had been gathering dust for a while, he shagged Rick back with a counter offer of $3000. Long story short, Rick sweat through both shirt and tie on his repeated trots before Gieske came out to personally deal with Emil, his firm $2200 offer and the rubber banded roll of hundreds in his left hand.  With Cheshire cat smile on face, the big shot offered his hand and said,
     "Arlen Gieske's the name. Rick tells me you're Emil Schonnemann and it appears he wasn't pullin' the wool over my eyes about your wad of cash. But, and this is a big but, I ain't about to go any lower than twenty-four fifty on a thirty-one hundred dollar car. Particularly when I'm dealing with some bullet head from Parkers Prairie. So if you ain't interested in upping the ante, I strongly suggest you put your roll back in your pocket, point your pickup north and skedaddle on home."
     All the while this speech was going on, Emil is quietly scanning Arlen Gieske's overly prosperous jowls and sunglass covered eyes. Doesn't look at the car. Hasn't once asked to test drive it. Heck, he knew what he was looking to buy. Didn't even kick the tires, though the idea of doing so purely for comic effect, had crossed his mind.
     After Gieske's done letting off his steam, Uncle Emil slowly slid the roll back into his khakis and matter of factly asked, "How many times have you had to wash that car, Mr. Gieske?" Then turns and walks off toward his Ford.
     Emil picked up the freshly washed, fully gassed Nomad at 2:00 the next afternoon and never looked back. He treated that car like he wanted it to last forever. Did all his own maintenance, had the engine rebuilt twice and the body re-sheetmetalled as needed. Washed once a week and waxed twice a year, it most always looked younger than its years. For Emil, that Chevy lasted as close to forever as his lifetime would allow. Drove to the moon and part of the way back with it. "Fanciest fishin' car north of the Cities," as he put it. "Sometimes it seems a shame that car couldn't have been treated nicer. Seen way too much gravel and backroads offa backroads." The Nomad was loaded with gear for another run North on that mid-summer morning he didn't wake up. Aunt Lena - don't want no Ole and Lena guff from you manure spreadin' Gopher lovers. My aunt's name was pronounced Layna, not Leena. Always was. - said we should plant the old bugger sitting in the driver's seat and leave the car fully loaded. But it didn't work out that way. Outside of the fishing pole that is.
     All that background is well and good but not the modus operandi for this particular remembrance. Picture Emil's garage, oversized two car with single overhead door. Walls are indistinct and fade off into nothingness. If you're thinking dreamlike, that's close enough. On the clean but cracked floor sits his immaculate, red and polished aluminum, fifteen foot Lund on a light weight Dilly trailer, spare tire attached to stem. I'm on the front bench, Nothing Runs Like a Deere mug filled with Emil's patented diesel that cream can't penetrate, in hand. The mud is steaming 'cuz its two below outside, topped off with a stiff wind that smells like Alaska by way of South Dakota. Emil's in the stern seat fiddling with the Johnson, almost but not quite, going vroom, vroom. Inside the garage its warm enough to get by with only three layers, stocking cap and a pair of choppers. I've had mine since I was 15. The right mitt has a cigarette burn from cupping Chesterfields before I could legally smoke. Me and my friends spent a lot of time outdoors getting more than our share of fresh air during our pubescent years. Cigarettes will do that to you. Done fiddlin' for the moment, Uncle Emil turns toward me, picks up the humuhumunukunukuapua'a mug I'd brought him from my year at Schofield Barracks, takes a smoking sip and starts:
     "Seems to me I said something about an Elvis Presley story a couple of days ago. Don't prejudge me about my feelings towards Elvis before I finish this story. I wasn't one of those people who thought he was Satan incarnate. Also wasn't anything close to a fan either. He was just somebody you couldn't ignore back then.
     It might have been '58 but most likely it was '57 that me and Lena were down in Memphis. Lena's cousin Bobby Lee had passed away so we decided to drive down for the funeral. Kinda made a vacation out of it. Figured since Bobby Lee was dead, he didn't much care what we did. But it was a chance for Lena to visit family. It'd been an heckuva long winter in Parkers and the thought of May in the south sounded kinda fun. The idea of all that good southern cooking might of had a little to do with it also. So we packed up the wagon and headed on down the river.
     I don't want to jump ahead of myself but before I forget it... You probably never saw the picture of Elvis standing in front of his pink '55 Cadillac and mugging for the camera while a Memphis cop was writing him a ticket. Most people who see that photo assume that Elvis was gettin' a speeding ticket. Well, he wasn't. And that's not the only photo of that scene. But its the only one with just Elvis and the cop in it.
     So at the funeral lunch I got to talking with a couple of local boys, Bobby Lee's buddies, who, it turns out, were hot into bass fishing. They gave me a bunch of grief about the 'bait sized' bass we had in Minnesota. Not to be out done, I assured them that it was true our bass were smaller than their big ol' bass but ours were also a whole lot smarter. Kind of like the anglers in the Northland. That brought on a bunch of hootin' and hollerin' from those boys. Good time.
     As the lunch wound down, we worked our way around to the subject of southern cooking. And in Memphis that meant ribs with red beans and rice, And ribs meant a place called The Rendezvous. Said it was up a back alley off to the side of a hotel called The Peabody. "Y'all know. The one with the ducks on parade." Whatever the heck that meant. Bunch a goobers.
     So me and Lena hopped in the Nomad the next day and headed to downtown Memphis for lunch. We parked. Dumped a fistful of nickels in the meter and started to wander. My plan was if we circled The Peabody and kept our eyes open, we'd find the joint for sure. Second trip around, two strangers and a doorman later, we finally saw the sign. Ribs were definitely okay but nothin' to write home about. Me? I kinda like the oven baked ribs with sauerkraut down at Chick's in Melrose a whole lot more. Service wasn't all that hot either. Grain Belt? Never heard of it.
     I learned a lesson that day about choosing a parking spot when south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Given the choice, don't ever park with the rear end of your car butted up close to a crosswalk if there's any chance some duck-tailed halfwit in a pink '55 Caddy is anywhere within ten miles. A spin of tires, a cloud of burnt rubber on a right turn and bingo! Left tail light's spread all over the street. Bad move on his part. That pink Caddy was about the only one in the country back before the days of Mary Kay and there was about a half dozen police cars parked down the block in front of a donut shop. Looked like one of those old Keystone Cop movies the way those boys in blue piled out onto the sidewalk.
     So there's Elvis mugging for the camera. White pants, penny loafers, blue, striped short sleeved shirt with the sleeves turned up once. Cop writing a ticket for reckless driving. Me and Lena back by the Nomad keeping, as requested, the hell out of the way. After the photographer from the paper left, the cop tore up the ticket. Life of a big shot in a small potatas town.
     Then it all turned around. Elvis invites us out to his new house just south of town. Nice spread. Lena and I end up in the kitchen with his mom Gladys and his dad Vernon. Salt of the earth people with no pretensions. Elvis wanders off saying he's got a phone call to make. By now its late afternoon and Gladys asks if we all are hungry. So Lena says, "If its no trouble Mrs. Presley, how about the two of us make some sandwiches?"
     That was the first time I ever had a peanut butter, banana and bacon combo. Better than those ribs any day. Went well with the Pepsi and that's coming from a dyed in the wool, as you well know, Coke man.
     Elvis joined us for the sandwiches. Turned out he'd called the body shop that had done the pink paint job on his car. They said they'd do whatever it took to make the Nomad look like new and have it ready in the morning.
     Anyhow, that's how me and Lena got to spend the night in Graceland. Elvis said we could come back anytime. He was a little odd in some ways but underneath all the Brylcream, he was a good kid. With a heavy foot once in a while.
     By now the coffee was cold. Uncle Emil dropped his Lucky stub in the cup and said it was time to go in and warm up. At the door he told me there were a lot more road stories where that one came from.