First Car, Lasting Memory

Eileen Clancy

My grandmother remembers when a car was a luxury, not a necessity.
    
“It was unusual for couples to have two cars,” she remembers. She and my grandfather finally bought their second car, a black Chrysler DeSoto, in the late 1950s, when my grandmother needed her own wheels to take the kids to school.
    
The DeSoto didn’t stay at the Clancy’s Madison driveway for long. My grandparents traded it in for a fun-loving Corvette.
    
“I can’t say that I remember any specific details about any of the cars that we had,” my grandmother says. “They got me and my little family where we needed to go, and they were always reliable.”
    
But when I ask my mother about the Chrysler DeSoto, she laughs. She was only six, but she remembers the car vividly.
    
“Every day, Mom would make us say one ‘Hail Mary’ and one ‘Our Father’ before turning the ignition,” she says. “And I never remember it not starting.”