Old Brown

When I was stationed on a United States Air Force radar base south of Minot, my primary mode of transportation was an MG Midget that I also used to compete in autocross events run on a K-Mart parking lot on Sunday afternoons. The sport was difficult on my little car and I found myself having to make repairs on a regular basis. One day, at an intersection in Minot, the car stalled and I tried to restart it until I noticed smoke coming out from under the hood. I pulled on the hood release and jumped out of the car, leaving the ignition in the “on” position. When I opened the hood, a ball of fire leapt out at me and I jumped back. A man came running out of a nearby teenage night club with a fire extinguisher, that alas, proved to be empty.

As the orange paint on my little car was turning black, a full-sized Pontiac four-door sedan driven by an airman from the SAC base came around through the intersection and skidded to a stop a few yards away. Like the Lone Ranger on his way to save the bank from robbers, this knight pulled a out small, dry powder fire extinguisher, ran to my car, pointed the nozzle at the fire, and snuffed the flames almost instantly. Just as quickly as the fire had gone out, though, it reignited was a whoosh. Then, and only then did I remember that the car had an electric fuel pump, so I reached inside and turned off the ignition thus stemming the flow of gasoline onto the fire. The Lone Ranger pulled the trigger once more and the fire died. We stood there for a moment looking at the mess, and then after they’d helped me push the car to the edge of the sidewalk, the Lone Ranger and the other fellow rode off into the sunset.

My insurance was of no help, so with the help of some ingenious others, several catalogs, and the local MG dealer, I set about repairing the car at the auto hobby shop on our little radar base.

One of my first needs was transportation. Friends lent me cars when I asked, but the job was going to take some time and to be stuck at a radar base fifteen miles from town was a horrible thought. One day in a corridor at work, I mentioned to Joe, the Training NCO, that I was looking for a car to buy. Joe told me that he had Old Brown that he’d sell me. Old Brown was a 1954 Chevrolet station wagon that had been owned by a number of people associated with or stationed on the site and just about everybody knew the car by its nickname.

That night, a friend and I went to Joe’s house in Minot where I was introduced to his wife and children. Once I had been vetted by the family, I was offered the opportunity to adopt Old Brown for $75.00. Joe and his wife explained that the ignition key was long gone, but because that generation of Chevrolet had an ignition switch with several positions that needed no key, the car would run well. They explained some of the other quirks that I’d likely encounter, such as the need to pump the gas pedal several times before trying to start the car on a cold morning, and the little levers that would some times get hung up under the hood, making it impossible to shift gears, but that evening I went home in my eighteen-year-old Chevrolet station wagon..

Old Brown and I did well by one another and then I finally got my MG running again and the Chevrolet was most often parked beside the auto hobby shop, used by anyone who asked when they needed to go on a parts run. When it came time to renew the insurance, I decided not to and the car fell into disuse.

One Saturday afternoon, my friend Bobby and I were sitting in the otherwise empty NCO Club drinking a beer or two when a fellow from the next town south came in asking if he could put up a poster for a demolition derby coming up. We let him tack it to a bulletin board, drank a beer with him, talked about the weather and girls, and because we were in North Dakota, farming. From time to time I’d glance at that poster and I guess Bobbie saw the look.

“You know, Mac, you’ve got Old Brown,” he said between puffs on his smoke and pulls on the bottle. “We could fix her up for that demolition derby.”

With that, I became a future demolition derby driver. Over the next few weeks, we stripped out most of the glass, pulled out the rear seats, cut out the headliner, and set about creating a demolition derby car.

On the day of the event, we hooked a rope from Bobby’s car to Old Brown, tossed a tool box, some cans of oil, and a five-gallon jerry can of water and pulled Old Brown to the field in the little town of Max where the local VFW or American Legion (I forget which) would stage the demolition derby. For the reader who has been protected from such inanities, a demolition derby is an event in which a number of cars, driven by drivers protected only by seat belts and a motorcycle helmet, are smashed into each other inside a small area outlined by telephone poles laid in a large circle. Basically the rules are simple, cars may not be modified to prevent damage from being fatal (to the car), there is prohibition against intentionally running into the driver’s door, and any driver trying to avoid crashing into other cars, thus keeping his own car running, would be disqualified. There were to be several heats of competition to determine which drivers would earn a trip to the big time – the final.

The draw put me and Old Brown in the first heat with four or five other cars. We were positioned inside the circle, each car pointing in towards the center where, to begin the heat, an official would set off a cherry bomb. For the first time since we’d started talking about the demolition derby, I was nervous. So nervous in fact, that I had to put the car in neutral because my knee was shaking too wildly to keep the clutch pedal down.

From the moment the cherry bomb went off, I started having fun. Up to that point in my life, I’d avoided hitting things with cars. I’d never even run over an animal. But the rules had changed. Slamming the car into reverse, I spun out of the middle of the instantaneous melee and began looking for targets. I’d been advised to use the rear end of the car as a bettering ram and to aim for the front end of the other cars with the intent of crippling them, whether be breaking the steering mechanisms or gashing the radiators to cause the engines to overheat and seize.

Back and forth we charged, dodging each other, absorbing grinding blows, constantly whipping the steering wheel left and right, shifting from first to reverse and back again. I would no sooner smash into someone than someone would crash into me. I took a mighty blow in the grill from a huge 1960’s station wagon and Old Brown began to pour steam from under the hood, but that old Blue Flame engine still put out 115 horsepower and let me continue banging into other cars – for a while. The lack of coolant finally began changing the size and shape of inner parts of the mighty Blue Flame and she began running slower and slower. Finally, the engine quit and an official gave me a flag to hold up that signified that my car was out of the competition.

My adrenaline was still pumped up, but I had to sit and watch as my former competitors continued banging and clanging around until only one car was left running. The tow truck came out and pulled each of the sidelined cars out to where the pit crews could make repairs (or hook them to a tow vehicle and go home). Bobby and I began looking at the damage and discovered that the radiator was still whole, but that a hose had burst. We didn’t have a spare, but we had a lot of black tape, so we wrapped the hose tightly and began adding water to the coolant system. It held, so we could run again in the consolation event they’d hold just before the main event.

The consolation heat was a bunch of battered cars that had been knocked out in earlier heats, but had been put back in running condition like I had done with Old Brown. This time, I wasn’t nervous, I now had experience, and I was ready to bash fenders with the rest off them. The bomb went off and from there on out it was a blur of bumps and bangs, steering around, mostly in reverse, aiming for car’s that were aiming at me, and generally, a whole lot of fun. One car failed, then another and another until I was left with only one opponent, and Old Brown, steaming away, gallantly kept up the brawl and then, miracle of miracles, the other car stalled and would not start. I’d won. Old Brown and I had lived to fight another battle. We were in the main event.

We added some more water, taped that bad radiator hose some more, changed a flat tire, and drove back out into the circle. All the other heats and been started with the cars facing into the center of a rough circle. The main event was started differently. We were all backed into the circle, so that there was a small circle in the center, surrounded by the rear ends of eight or so other cars, all nearly touching. The bomb was thrown into the middle and when it went off, we all moved forward briefly, then shifted our cars into reverse and slammed backwards into the pile, back and forth, and then sliding or being pushed sideways, skidding into first one car and then another. Smoke and dust and steam filled the air as Old Brown and I rammed car after car, joyfully working together as a team. The six cylinder Blue Flame engine, nearly 20 years old, gave its all against mostly younger V-8 motors in larger cars, until Joe’s prediction came through. I nailed the accelerator to the floor and rammed the front right corner of an Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser station wagon, crushing its radiator and front wheel with one mighty blow. I reached for the column-mounted shifting lever to pull away from the Olds and found it immovable

The two little levers that Joe had said would sometimes hang up did just that. I was stuck in reverse, with the rear of my car imbedded in the front of a car that was no longer mobile. Other drivers saw my predicament and I became the favored target until the officials came by with the flag. I was out of the competition in a car that could still run if only I could get out, open the hood, and unstuck those two little levers. All I could do was watch the other cars battle to the end.

The event was soon over, the dust settled, the smoke and steam dissipated, and the spectators began leaving the side of the hill that overlooked our arena. The officials came around to each car and told the teams that there was a keg of beer being tapped for us. As we sat around on the warm hill on that warm Sunday afternoon, one of the officials came over to me.

“You the guy in the’54 Chevy?” he asked.

When I admitted to being that fellow, the official went on, “You were the only one that looked like you were having fun. All the other drivers seemed pretty serious, but you had a grin on your face the whole time.”

The local Air Force newspaper carried a picture of me and Old Brown that next week with a brief article about the demolition derby and how we had finished. I gave the car to someone who was going to build a trailer out of the rear chassis and the rest of the car was hauled off to an inglorious end at the junk yard and all was forgotten.

Forgotten, that is, until that winter. I was on Main Street in Minot, shopping for Christmas gifts when I ran into Joe’s wife and one of their younger children. We stood on the cold sidewalk chatting for a few minutes and all the while, the little boy was tugging at his Mommy’s skirt. When he finally got her attention, she looked down at him and asked him what he wanted. Still holding on to her skirt, he looked up at me and that at her and in a rather plaintive sound, said, “That’s the man that murdered Old Brown.”

1937 Flatback Ford (ST#9)

I suspect most people can only remember back to when they were about six years old. I recently heard an automobile collector saying that he had restored a 1937 Ford Flatback because he remembers his father driving it when he (the auto guy) was less than two years old. I wouldn't dream of questioning his veracity because I have my own memories of a Ford sedan of that vintage. When my folks got married, Mom didn’t drive. During the war, of course, that wasn't a problem. After the war, though, we moved back to Meriden from Springfield and in 1946 my parents bought the house I would sell fifty-six years later, after they both had passed on. It was eight miles to the nearest town with grocery stores, banks and clothing stores, and I suppose Mom felt isolated, so Dad began to teach her to drive. Brave fellow, he was. She’d practice by driving around in circles on the lawn and my sister Bonnie and I had to get in the car with her so she wouldn’t have to worry about running over one or both of us. That car was a 1937 Ford two door sedan with a flat back.

One of my more vivid memories was that winter after Mom finally got her license. We were going to the next town to buy groceries and then pick up Dad from his work. Bonnie and I were in the back seat and it was snowing. About halfway to town, the road goes down a rather steep hill to a flat below. As we started down the hill, Mom saw that there had been a wreck at the bottom of the hill and that a police car and a wrecker were in the road, so she slammed on the brakes. The car began skidding sideways down the hill and as I’d been standing on the floor looking out the window, I got a perfect view of the accident that, in my mind even today, seem to be getting closer and closer. We stopped before we hit anything and I have no further memory of the trip to town, but as Dad was there afterwards, I assume we got groceries and then picked him up.

It was with that same car that Dad hit a cow. It was late in the day and we were on our way home from Mascoma Lake. As we topped a hill outside Lebanon, a cow and our car met in the middle of the road. She got up and, seemingly no worse for wear, took off into a field. The grill of the car was bent up a little, the headlamps were damaged, but the car was still in running condition. Being an honorable man, Dad drove to the nearest farmhouse to report the incident. He knocked and soon a lady of some years opened the door, but stayed behind the screen door, as if for protection. When Dad told he’d hit her cow, she shushed him, and with a furtive look over her shoulder, told him to keep it down.

“If the old man hears you, he’ll raise hell," she said.

Dad told that story for years, usually as we were on our way back from Mascoma Lake.

Education in Meriden

In my youth, there were five schools that got whittled down to three by 1954 and finally just one in 1973. The changes were not, as one might expect, the result of a declining student population, but rather the result of improved roads. You see, in the late 1940’s, there was a school in each end of town, Plainfield, East Plainfield, and Meriden plus one on Methodist Hill. As the use of asphalt expanded and plow trucks could clean snow from the pavement, it became fiscally prudent to close the schools in East Plainfield and on Methodist Hill and bus the kids to Meriden. They used a Jeep station wagon to bring the entire school population down from Methodist Hill to East Plainfield where they and the East Plainfield students boarded a yellow Blue Bird school bus for the trek into Meriden, six miles away. A number of years later, they built a new school in Meriden and now all the children in town go to it.

By 1954, however, it became necessary to add more classroom space, so an old school, long out of use, was reopened. Known as the Brown School to differentiate it from the White School, it was a two story building with four rooms, two downstairs and two upstairs, The one on the left downstairs was the classroom, the one on the right had chicken wire over the windows and served as a basketball court. There was no basket, but an old Union Regulator Clock served as a target and was soon smashed flat. I recently saw a similar clock for sale for around $500.00.

Upstairs, the room on the left was vacant and on the right was the town library. There was no running water in the building, so one of the big boys would go across the street to Edith Whitney's to fill up a stone crock for drinking water. In the rear, along either side of the woodpile, were unheated facilities, one for boys and one for girls. The aroma of these facilities was rather intense, particularly in spring and fall, but even worse, in the boy’s room in winter, a ridge of ice would be built up around both of the two holes, so we’d delay certain functions until we’d get home.

For the readers unfamiliar with the little village of Meriden, I’d better explain why the two schools were differentiated by color. It had absolutely nothing to do with the race of anyone, but more with the color of the two buildings. The White School was, indeed, white, covered with painted clapboards, usually pronounced as clabberds. The Brown School was covered with stained wooden shingles that had turned darker brown over the years.

In the 1940’s, children started school in the first grade when they were six, so in autumn of 1948, I was enrolled in the school system. It had taken at least a year of discussions to make me understand that I’d have to stop wearing my brogans and bib overalls, and that I’d need to put my learning to use. I knew my ABC’s, I could count to as far as I knew numbers went, and I had a new wardrobe, so off we went to the Meriden White School. All eight grades of the Meriden school district went to the White School. It was a large imposing building from the front. That is, it was large to a six-year-old from the country who never rode an elevator until he was a teenager. A staircase went up from ground level to a pair of windowed doors that gave entry to a hall that stretched the length of the building. Just inside those doors was a brass bell that would soon play a role in humiliating me in front of the entire school. There were doors that led to each of the classrooms and at the ends of the hallway were the facilities, boys at one end and girls at the other. I always wondered what he difference was, but never once in all my years of learning at the White School did I dare look in to see.

The classrooms were divided into the “big room” and the “little room”. As a first grader, I was in the “little room”. That room was further divided into four rows, with the first grade being along the wall nearest the hallway and the fourth grade, or the big kids, being along the wall with windows that looked out over the playground. How I longed to be one of the big kids so I could be closer to the windows, not realizing that the glory would only last one school year and then, as a fifth grader in the “big room”, I’d be along the wall without windows, looking longingly at the eighth graders along the windows.

The first grade is fraught with dangers and Miss Jenney was the one to correct any and all failings. She had a wooden ruler which she’d use mercilessly on the backs of the hands of any student who failed to follow her rules. We first graders saw that ruler as being nearly the size of a two by four, but with a brass straight edge burrowed into a groove along one edge, the purpose of which was to surely inflict extreme pain and agony.

As a first grader, I was pretty obedient. I walked almost half a mile to school, past a cow pasture on the left and a choke cherry bush-hidden brook on the right. Beyond the pasture was the football field for the local prep school, the school farm buildings, and then the Baptist Church. I’d cross the road at the church, then an iron bridge with a loose wooden plank surface, across a flat and out the lane to the school. The lane, as well as the school parking area, was unpaved, so in rainy weather, there’d be mud to contend with.

Shoes were expensive commodities for my family, so I had a pair of galoshes to wear over my shoes whenever the weather was rain or snow. Those black rubber galoshes fit rather tightly over my shoes, then were tightened with four or five special buckles that would clamp the boot top to my leg. I noted earlier that the bell near the front door would one day play a role in my humiliation, and these somewhat difficult buckles would add to that role.

It was a rainy day and that morning, Mom insisted that I wear those ungainly and definitely uncool boots to school with the admonishment that I had to wear them when we went outside for recess. That was also the day that had been tabbed as being the day for a fire drill. Now we’d practiced fire drills before. The bell would start clanging, we’d grab our coats from the coat closet at the rear of the classroom, then get in line along the wall and march single file into the hall, through the front doors, down the stairs and out into the yard where the teachers would count heads to make certain we all had escaped the imaginary holocaust.

The bell went off. The students crowded into the coat room, grabbed their coats, put them on as they were getting in their place in line, then marched out into the parking lot. The teachers did their job. They got the fire drill started, prompted and cajoled the kids to hurry and get in line, and then marched them out into the parking lot. I say “them” because at some point I became a bit confused. The teacher was shouting to hurry up, but Mom had been pretty specific. I struggled with those boots while all about me kids were getting their jackets and pushing and shoving their way into line. Finally it got quiet and I could concentrate on the matter at hand, getting those infernal boots on over my shoes and buckled. I was still struggling when Miss Jenny returned to see why her student count was off by one child. I had one boot buckled and my shoe was in the other one, but it flapped as Miss Jenny grabbed me by the arm and dragged me out of the coat room, through the now empty classroom, across the hallway and out those doors onto the top of the steps where suddenly, time stood still. Nearly every student, from the first graders to the eighth graders watched as little Jimmy McNamara was dragged down the steps, one boot clasped tightly, the other flapping wildly, arms akimbo, jacket unbuttoned, at the end of Miss Jenny’s arm.

About the only saving grace from that event was that as we descended, Miss Jenny and I saw what no one else saw. The entire school, with three exceptions, was watching my humiliation. The exceptions were me and Miss Jenney, of course, and my classmate Dougie Carver who’d somehow figured his school day was over and was halfway down the lane, on his way home. I don’t know how Doug felt later on about his error, but for years, whenever the event of that day was brought up by someone, I’d point out that he’d taken off, hopefully dimming any further humiliation.

A Flatback Ford and other stories

I always wanted to write a book, but never thought I had a story to tell. After decades of thinking that way, I realized one Sunday afternoon that I knew one story that was unique – mine. That very day I sat down and began pecking out a story on a twelve year old computer using the fourth finger of my right hand and the forefinger of my left (arthritis and carpal tunnel syndrome make real typing impossible). Before I started though, I made a cheese and onion sandwich on sourdough bread and poured a Guinness. Isn’t that the way all Irish writers start?

The Irish part is somewhat true. My great-great grandfather, Michael McNamara, the son of William and Mary Husty McNamara, immigrated to Canada from Ireland in 1840, probably for the adventure and a new start, rather than to escape the An Droscshaol as did hundreds of thousands who followed him. When he left Ireland, the Bad Times were still four years away. We know that he met with an Anthony McNamara, possibly a brother or cousin, in New Ireland, Quebec. We know that in 1841 he'd crossed over into western New York and in the summer of 1846 he moved to Lowell, Massachusetts in search of work.

In Massachusetts, he joined the US Army, spent some time in Mexico, probably participating in the battle of Monterrey and the siege of Vera Cruz, then more time at Fort Merrill in Texas until he was discharged in 1851.   Following his service he went to visit Andrew in New Ireland, Quebec and met Catherine "Katie" Carroll, who, like himself, had immigrated from Ireland, but from County Longford in the center of the country. They married in 1852 in Megantic County, Quebec and by 1861 were living with four children in Inverness, Quebec.  Their son and my great grandfather, James, was born in 1865 in Quebec and emigrated with the family to the United States, eventually dying in the town of Unity, New Hampshire, in the same year I was born, 1942, about 30 miles away. I never asked my folks if I was named after him.

I do know that my middle name, Elmer, was given to me to honor my grandfather on my mother’s side, Elmer Clarence Towne. There will be more about my ancestry in later pages, but Elmer’s lineage goes back to William Towne who was born in Greater Yarmouth, England in 1598. Between those two lines are a number of folks with Irish and English heritage, as well as some with other backgrounds.

It is stories from that background I'll begin putting here.