CHAPTER TWO

“NOT JUST A CAR, ITS A CADILLAC”

I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. In the 1970s and 80’s, Birmingham was a Buick town. The president of the bank drove a Buick. The ministers of the finest churches drove Buicks. Mayor Richard Arrington drove a Buick. All of our mamas drove Buicks. And if Daddy had a shot of making V.P. of his company, he drove a Buick, too. Granted, what kind of Buick you piloted to the country club, office parking lot, or grocery store separated you from the other Buick drivers. Modest types opted for a Century. Big shots owned a Park Avenue or Electra. My parents drove a LeSabre and a Regal, both of which sounded far more exotic than they actually appeared. Roll-up windows, “hunky-hunky” seats which were supposed to glide to and fro with the touch of a lever (yeah, right), and acres of vinyl defined those Buicks of my childhood.

Yet there were other cars in Birmingham. Exotic cars. Flash cars. Barges of indescribable glitter: Cadillacs. If you were a doctor, lived off your investments, or perhaps were from Atlanta, you maybe owned one of these behemoths. Sure, my parents thought they were “pretentious” and “unnecessary.” My father called his Buick, “perfectly fine,” read: boring. But I did have a relative with a real car. Uncle Bubba, aka Dr. James A. Morgan, always drove Cadillacs. Big ones. Long ones. Black ones.

As a tot astride the “hump” in my Great Uncle Bubba’s super-chromed Cadillac, I watched with fascination as he performed magic tricks with the old car. We’d tool around in all that finned glory and he’d say, “Okay, Morgan, I’m going to dim the lights without touching the button.” To my amazement, the headlights would politely dip into low beams for an oncoming car, without his foot ever pressing the button on the floorboard. Follow-up tricks would make the radio dial independently scan the airwaves, the power windows leap up and down, and the gas pedal move by itself. To me, Uncle Bubba’s Cadillac was magical miracle from Detroit.

Like many Southerners (especially in Texas, one of Cadillac’s largest markets), my great uncle was a Cadillac man. “Everything else is just a car!” he’d bellow. His first Cadillac was a gold 1954 Series 62 Sedan, a gift from a patient whom he’d saved while stationed as a surgeon in West Berlin after World War II. He drove Cadillacs from then on.

As I grew older, I never forgot my uncle’s sparkling Caddies. While most boys my age lusted after the yuppie Teutonic trinity of BWM, Mercedes, and Porche, I clipped magazine ads that showed mile-long Fleetwoods or Eldorados bedecked with wire wheels and whitewalls. To the horror of many a fellow teenager, I found myself saying “nice car,” to grannies four times my age. I argued that Caddies were the transportation for potentates, presidents, popes, and pop-stars.

Yet it wasn’t until I borrowed my grandad’s yellow Fleetwood D’Elegance, “a.k.a. the Big Banana,” for a double date, that I convinced my friends that a Cadillac could be cool. On the way to pick up the pretty blonde cheerleader I had somehow convinced to accompany me to a movie, I accidentally locked up all four wheels and came to a screeching stop in front of her house. My mortified friend Adam said, “smooth, Murph, real smooth.” (In high school, a display of automotive ineptitude is akin to emerging from the bathroom trailing a stream of toilet paper on your shoe.) My date, evidently startled from her shower by the sound of a 5,126 pound car grinding its Goodyears into quadrangles, appeared at her bedroom window stark as nekkid as the dagmars on a 1956 Coupe DeVille. Thereafter the Big Banana was a big hit.

Years later, when I moved home to Alabama from New York and needed to buy my first car, I pondered the usual assortment of practical vehicles in my price range. None seemed quite right. The got me from point A to point B, but not with flair, not with finesse, not with, for the love of heaven, fins.

So I bought a 1963 gold Eldorado. It has more do-dads than any modern-day econo-box. Small children gaze in wide-eyed wonderment at it’s dial-n cruise control, factory air, and Guidematic adjustable headlights (the thing that Bubba used to make them magically dip). One stomp on the chromed accelerator sends mechanics into hydrocarboned bliss. Strangers invariably stop, ask the year, and tell me about their uncle or dad’s Caddies.

I smile, show them the gizmos, fins, and chrome and know that Uncle Bubba would be proud.