Molly McBride’s ‘68 Dodge

       It was a 1968 Dodge with a history.  I bought it at an auction.  I paid $1000 for it.  My competitor in the bidding came around as I was getting the title from Jerry and mentioned loud enough for me to hear, “I didn’t want to see that car go for nothing.”

     I turned to look and I could see he wasn’t too happy.  It occurred to me that he was hoping to see the car go for nothing, to him, not to me.  He ran a service station and probably knew what condition the car was in.

     His comment, meant for me, was saying he really didn’t lose the bidding war to me.  He was just in the bidding for altruistic purposes, to see that Molly got something for the car.  I wasn’t concerned about winning a bidding war, or any of those other games that auction-goers play.   I had the car I wanted at a decent price, and if the service-station man thought it was worth bidding on, then I had made a good buy.

      It was 1979.  We were new parents.  Our “good” car was a 1970 Ford pickup, the only new vehicle we have ever owned.  Our second car was a 1955 Chevrolet.  It was old and two door.  Not exactly a family car.

     We knew about the Dodge because we lived across the street from the American Hotel where Bert and Molly McBride lived.  They were brother and sister.  The hotel was in a neighborhood of single family houses, a block and a half off Kansas Highway 25, a half mile from Highway 36.  Not a likely place for a hotel.

     Where we lived was once the site of the local livery stable.  Perhaps that was why the American Hotel was there.  I never figured out why it was there.  In the seventies, the “guests” were long-term boarders who couldn’t or didn’t afford a better place to live.   The most infamous renter was Bill Ely.

     Bill had a reputation as a ne’er-do-well, one of the town drunks.  He had lived at the American Hotel off and on for many years and was a familiar sight in our neighborhood when we moved into our house in the Fall of 1970.

      Molly was an old maid who had been the county school superintendent in the days when one-room country schools still functioned.  As the schools faded into history, so did her job.  She bought the American Hotel and brought brother Burt along to fix it up and serve as maintenance man.

      Molly bought the big old Dodge brand new from the local dealership.  The Dodge was famous from its beginning. It was the first car the dealership sold with factory-installed cruise control.  It had a 383 V-8 engine.  If you had the cruise set at 65 mph and had slowed down to 35 mph, when you turned the little ring on the turn signal forward for “Resume”, it would sit you back in your seat as it got back to 65 as fast as it could, and that was pretty fast. 

     And  Rod, the local dealer, could lie down in its trunk and stretch out, no bending.  Its trunk was that big.   

      Molly was a small woman, so small she had trouble reaching the foot pedals and seeing through the windshield at the same time.  She had a small pillow which she placed between her and the seat back. The pillow pushed her forward enough so that she could reach the pedals and still see to drive.  The pillow came with the car when we bought it.

      Molly’s driving habits would not be remarkable in the cities today.  She always had her right foot to the floor—either on the accelerator or on the brake, just like modern city drivers.  It was a bit unusual in our village, however.

      When we heard the roar of a person in a car in a hurry, that would be Molly.  If we heard the screech of rubber on pavement, it was Molly coming to a stop, a usual one, not necessarily an emergency.

     Molly saw to it that her new car was well maintained.  Every November, the car would go to the Dodge dealer’s garage and the rear tires would be replaced.  She had a set of studded snow tires mounted on their own rims.  Off would come the regular tires and on would go the snow tires.  The extra set of tires and rims stayed in the trunk until April when the regular tires and the snow tires switched places.  The extra tires and rims came with the car when we bought it.

     Molly always parked the car in its place in front of the hotel.   One winter afternoon, with the studded snow tires in use, Molly came out of the hotel, jumped in, backed out, felt a thump, pulled forward, felt another thump, stopped and got out.

        Behind the car’s back tires she found Bill lying.  “Don’t run over me again,” Bill is purported to have said.  “I’ll get up.” 

      Molly helped Bill up, got him into the car and took him to the emergency room.  Bruised and maybe cracked ribs, that was all.  Everyone attributed Bill’s survival to his relaxed state.

    It seems Bill came home pretty well under the influence.  He leaned against the car while he rested up and prepared to tackle the steps up to the front door and then another set of steps up to his room.  He went to sleep, or passed out, and fell behind the car. He was behind the right rear wheel where Molly didn’t see him when she came out and got into the car.

      He was relaxed.  Plus he had on a fairy heavy winter coat.  The car had on its studded rear tires.  Bill survived and went on to die another day, I’m not sure where, when or how.

     The day came when Bert and Molly could not keep up with the rigor of maintaining the building and dealing with the renters.  She sold the hotel.  At first it was a group home for adults working in a sheltered workshop.  Then a lady bought it and converted it to a private residence.

     Meanwhile, Molly moved to a retired teacher’s home somewhere east.  A group of locals organized and held an auction to dispose of all the things she no longer needed in her new home, including the Dodge.

     One evening I had a high school dance to chaperone.  The Goodwife thought it would be a nice outing, so she dressed up and went with me.  All the kids were going so we had no regular teen baby sitter.  We convinced our day time baby sitter to take on the extra job.  She had no car.  So I went to get her before the dance and brought her to our house, thinking that way not to have to disturb the sleeping baby when the dance was over.

     The dance did get over and we returned home, driving the Dodge, of course.  It was a cold evening so I left the car run while I escorted the Goodwife into the house.  I helped Laurine on with her coat and helped her down the steps and around to the driveway, but Alas!  There was no car sitting in the drive!

     Had someone stolen the old thing?  I had heard of sneak thieves taking running cars or cars with keys in the ignition from private driveways.  Was I a victim of a thief?  But I was only gone five minutes or less.  Who would want an old ’68 Dodge, anyway?

     Gradually my eyes adjusted to the darkness.  Then I could see it.  It was across the street, the left rear wheel sitting on my neighbor’s lawn, the right wheel up against the curb, the front end dipped down nearly touching the street. 

     I left Laurine standing in the driveway while I ran across the street.  The door open, the dome light on, I could see that the car had slipped out of park and into reverse.  There it was, still in reverse, still doing its best to climb up the curb.  Silently, I thanked God that the curb had stopped the car’s journey.  I had visions of the car backed into the neighbor’s living room wall. 

     Another fifteen feet to its right and the car would have been in the driveway of the old American Hotel, now the private residence of a single lady with two teenage daughters.  No curb, no parking blocks, nothing to get in the car’s way.  It would have hit her house.

     I got Laurine safely home.  I made sure the shift lever was in park and set the parking brake, a thing I rarely do, while I helped Laurine into her house.  Again in my own driveway, I made sure the car was in park when I shut it off.

     Contemplating the incident after the shock wore off, I came up with this theory.  The old car just wanted to go back to its rightful home, to its parking place in front of the American Hotel.  It almost made it.  We should have called it “Christine”, but Stephen King hadn’t come up with that yet.

     There was one other exciting incident with the old Dodge.  Once I was changing the spark plugs.  Like most V-8’s, the spark plugs are rather inaccessible, especially the back ones.  As I pulled the socket wrench up from the back plug, somehow I knocked the socket off the wrench handle.  The socket fell down on the battery cable attached to the starter solenoid.  No, the starter didn’t begin to run.  Instead, the socket created a dead short between the battery cable and the engine block. 

     Sparks were flying.  The socket got instantly hot.  Grabbing it bare handed was out of the question.  I tried the pliers but I couldn’t get a hold of it.  The battery cable insulation began to melt.  The battery was boiling.  I used the plier handle to pry the hot cable clamp off the positive battery post.  The welding stopped.

      I should have replaced the cable, but no need to spend that money.  Some electrical tape covered the spots where the bare wire melted through the insulation.  Good old duct tape provided a protective covering for the electrical tape.  All was well.      

     The old car saw us through two babies.  It was replaced in 1986 by a 1980 Grand Lemans which was much more compact and more economical to drive.  I wanted to donate the Dodge to the local museum since it had a real and amusing history.  The museum had no room for such an artifact, of course.  Eventually, the opportunity to sell it to a college student arose, and we got rid of it.  I’m sure, knowing whom we sold it to, that it has gone to the car crusher, many years ago.

     The old Dodge lingers on in my memory.  It is a pleasant memory of a young family and the old car that served us well, even if it did have a mind of its own.