My First Car

An essay by Lloyd Sederer MD

Have you heard of a DeSoto automobile? I was around when they were first made. Chrysler started manufacturing DeSoto’s in 1928 and abandoned the brand in 1960.

Two years after Chrysler ditched the DeSoto - in my last year of high school - I first encountered a DeSoto. I had passed my driving test the year before. The test official must have had a good night before giving me my test since he decided I was no more a menace than the next guy, or gal.

I thought for sure I would fail the eye test (then given with the driving test), not the letters and numbers but the color chart. I was, am, color blind, especially red-green colorblindness. Green defies me, I can barely detect it, only when very deep in hue and then I can’t tell it from brown. But, fortunately for me I could tell the difference on a traffic light because the red looked darker, surely different from the green, which looks white to me. For those of you now fearing meeting me on the road, I have never run a red light – except intentionally (as it was changing!). To my amazement, I identified the correct image hiding in the color chart, ending that barrier to my getting a driving license.

Learning to drive starts with a learner’s permit, which I did not escape. That permit means someone had to teach me to drive and sit next to me as I endangered their life. That was my dad since my mother would have been way too terrified and had trouble controlling me.

My driving lessons began on weekends. My dad had me make countless circles in a vast, empty parking lot not far from our home in the Bronx. Then it was on to the Bronx streets. It seemed like a very long time before I was allowed to drive in Manhattan.

My favorite driving lessons were with my dad’s friend, Larry, when he came to our house to visit. Larry lived in Fort Lee, New Jersey, right over the GW Bridge. He owned a wholesale children’s (cheap) clothing, import business in lower Manhattan. He cursed and told dirty jokes all the time. Larry liked to drink. I think he must have been a “bit of a drinker” since a half bottle of Chivas would be gone after he visited, with no discernable effect on him. My father really liked him. he made him laugh, which was an uncommon practice for my dad. Larry let me drive his big Buick, four doors with white-walled tires, as he sat in the front passenger seat and fell asleep. I went on highways, into the City, everywhere. Only a few times did he rouse and gasp.

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I was just shy of 17, soon old enough to drive on my own. On one of my family’s regular visits to Queens to visit my mother’s sister, Muriel, and her family, my father took me (alone) to Muriel’s husband’s Ben’s auto-body repair and painting shop. The kind of shop you see in sketchy neighborhoods with a dangling metal sign and beat-up steel doors. After serving as a pilot and flight instructor in World War II, he opened the shop. I guess he knew about mechanical things from the War. My dad had talked with Ben about his finding me a car, which I am not sure was the best idea, but it would be cheap.

Soon, Ben called my dad to say he had one. A 1955 DeSoto. Two-toned, but only if you tried hard to see the colors. With small fins and smaller, round brake lights. We went to Ben’s shop in Queens to “inspect it”, which surely is overstating our position. The engine started, reluctantly, but the body looked like it had been left in the Mohave Desert for 100 years. The mileage gauge was broken, probably purposely after exceeding at least 200miles, I guessed.

I asked my Uncle if he would paint it. I had even less of a clue then than I have today.

Ben ignored my question, as if I had asked him if he wanted deer ticks or a venereal disease. He went back into the shop and came out with a stubby, lidded can of automobile compound. I knew about compounds from math and chemistry, but this kind was novel to me. Even more novel was his saying get some rags and rub this stuff all over the exterior, then rub it some more, until you see the paint. He offered no more counsel. For $50 I was the owner of a DeSoto, my first car. The compound was free. I paid him with my earnings from working that summer in Manhattan (another story).

The car (with me driving) made it back to the Bronx. I parked it in the narrow driveway of our 3-decker brick, attached house. I got some rags and started to apply the compound. This was not like rubbing Mediterranean seasoning on Cod. This was like digging a 3-foot deep, 10-foot-long trench. Pure, hard labor.

The weather was warm, and I sweated like in a Turkish Bath. It took over a week, after school and on the weekend. But if I had it done! If I had a video, you would see its two tones of blue become visible to the naked eye. My arms and shoulders seemed to have become huge from my compounding, almost as if I took anabolic steroids. I had my first car, retrieved from scrap by Uncle Ben and given a reprieve - at least for the moment.

I remember, later, driving the DeSoto to my first day at City College in Harlem, in northern Manhattan. I parked it on the street, confident that no one would steal it.

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Lloyd I Sederer MD, is a psychiatrist, public health doctor, and non-fiction writer. Www.askdrlloyd.com

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