Cadillac

Back when I was a teenager I used to do odd jobs for my aunt. She was a classy old broad who was equally comfortable in a board room or in a dockside warehouse.

In 1973, she asked me to help her pick up a Chinese screen, inlaid with ivory and jade, that she had bought on a recent trip to Hong Kong. One of her friends on the trip had also bought a screen, and they decided to save some shipping costs by having the two screens shipped in the same crate. It took a few months, but the crate had come into the Port of Los Angeles. The shipping agent in Hong Kong had told the ladies that they could pick it up in their private car and take the screens home. My aunt was dubious, but the two ladies decided to give it a try, and hired me for the day to drive them down to the warehouse. My aunt had a beautiful 1969 Cadillac Sedan de Ville, and the plan was for me to drive while they chatted in the back seat, and then provide my 17-year old muscle (of whatever kind might be needed) at the warehouse.

When we got there, the warehouse manager took a long time making sure the paperwork was in order. I could have told him that my aunt’s paperwork was always in order, but he didn’t ask. He had a couple of workmen bring out the crate - which was massive. Both screens were six feet high with four two foot panels. The Cadillac was huge - I used to joke that the trunk was bigger than my first apartment - but even it couldn’t accommodate either of the screens.

After some back-and-forth, it was decided that my aunt would arrange with a local shipping company to collect them and deliver them. My aunt insisted on paying for both screens to be delivered, because that’s just the way she was. She and my uncle used to have fierce battles over picking up a dinner check and she was the winner almost every time.

We had a pleasant drive back to the my aunt’s place, and after parking the Cadillac I drove my old clunker back home.

Fast-forward about ten years, and my aunt has passed away. My dad calls me and tells me that she left the Cadillac to me in her will. She hadn’t been able to drive it the last couple of years, so it had some past-due maintenance, but for the most part it was still in excellent condition.

I drove it on the weekends, any my oldest son used it to get to high school and then college. I took it to my trusted local mechanic, and he kept it going until some seals gave out. The mechanic tried to rebuild the engine, but it was just too far gone to make it financially practical.

Since then, it’s sat in a variety of driveways. First at my house for many years, and for a few months at my sister’s place while I did some work on the asphalt driveway. Then back to my place. When we moved to a gated community with an HOA, the car got moved to my middle son’s front yard, where it’s been ever since. My youngest son is the only one who’s shown an interest in fixing it up but is living up in the Bay Area and has nowhere to keep it. Every year the price to renovate it properly goes up, and even if you did fix it up you’d be stuck with a car that gets no better than 6mpg of leaded gas on a really good day.

My middle son has been very, very patient, but it’s now time to find another home for the Cadillac. My youngest is thinking about his options, but it’ll likely need to be sold, hopefully to a collector or someone else who can restore it to its early glories.