Big Cars

When I was a kid, my Mom and Dad and I lived in Altoona, Pa. We lived back a dirt road that ended at my Uncle Charles' house and then turned left in a long oval that if you looked at it from the air, resembled a large backwards capital P. We were the second house around the P and where the oval met the original dirt road to form the P was another house. There was a large creek that ran behind Uncle Charles' house and ours. My maternal Grandfather had built both houses. First ours, a bungalow with hardwood floors and a large living room with a fireplace he had built with stones he hauled up from the creek. Then Uncle Charles' house, a two story which Grandpap moved into as his family grew.
Uncle Charles and his wife, Aunt Frances were nice enough folks. Charles was the second oldest of five children. My mother was the youngest. Charles and Frances always believed that my mother had married below her family's station. This, of course, created some tension in my mom's relationship with her older brother. When my father had a snoot full (which he was wont to do in those days) Charles and Frances were always the object of his drunken derision.
Charles and Frances were upper middle class by today's standards. Charles was a terminal manager for Mobil Oil. They had one son, just like my folks. But they had horses and a big corral to ride them in. And Charles always bought a new car every two years. It was always a big car. I remember the 1959 Buick with the huge tail fins. My dad had 10 year old used cars. Hell, I remember when we didn't even have a car. We would walk down that lane and catch the bus to go into town. My dad rode the bus to work. I remember in '59 my dad finally got enough cash together to buy a 1950 Chevy that leaked transmission fluid like it was coming out of a spigot. But we were happy. Happy until Charles bought a new big car. He would bring that new car home and his first stop would be our driveway. And he would show it off to my mom and dad like he was rubbing their noses in it. And I knew that next day, Dad was going to get a snoot full and he was going to come home and talk about going over to Charles' house and calling him out. Mom always managed to nip that idea in the bud, but it was not a happy evening at our house when Charles bought a new, big car.
And ever since then, I have not liked big cars.