Father and the Automobile by Henry P. Kramer

        Even though Father could afford an automobile when we lived in Germany we didn't have one. It isn't that at that time there were no automobiles in Germany. And if Father had consulted us children we would have voted unanimously for one. We were thrilled the time that one of Father's clients picked us up and drove us to his house in the country. And I remember how tremendously impressed I was when my uncle Hans, Father's brother, sent his chauffeur to the airport to pick up Mother and me and take us to Grandmother's house. The chauffeur exceeded 100 kilometers/hour in speed. That was, next to flying on the airplane, one of the most glorious experiences of my life up to that time. The reason that Father did not have an automobile was, I think, more a matter of character.
        Father had grown up in a time and place where a scholar and a gentleman did not fancy gadgetry. A person of a trivial turn of mind, a playboy, or a rich vulgarian, like my uncle, might have a car. But a serious person, like Father, did not fritter away his energies on such things. His attitude towards cars was in line with his feeling about movies. They were intended for 'serving girls', his catch all category for people without intellect. Father never owned a car nor ever saw a movie until we came to the United States.
        After arriving in the United States from Germany in the winter of 1936, the family had spent a year in New York City. Then my parents decided that to make an adequate living it was necessary to move away from New York because they felt that there were too many refugees from Germany all with similar backgrounds and capability overcrowding the small niche available to them in New York. Father had preceded us to Los Angeles by a couple of months. Then, we two boys came out by train to join him. A month or so later, the ladies, my mother and sister, completed the transition.
When father picked us up at Union Station in Los Angeles he told us that he had been taking driving lessons. In a few days, Father bought a 1936 Ford Sedan. He said, rightly, that it was absolutely necessary to have a car in Southern California. Of course, with the help of his driving instructor, Father had obtained a learner's permit. And he still had it when we moved to Paso Robles several weeks later. So we had a car but no one with a license to drive it.
        That caused us difficulties and, to us children, great embarrassment. We children came to the store after school and when the store closed the family's homeward trek started. There were the five of us loaded down with school books and bags of grocery trudging through town on our way home. It seemed to us children that everyone must be looking at this most bizarre procession. Because, in those days in a small town, it was highly unusual for anyone, certainly respectable people, to ever walk more than a block. Even the poor folk in the Grapes of Wrath, the Steinbeck novel about Okie migrants that had been made into a great movie, rode in a truck. It seemed to us children as if we were being mocked by jeering crowds lined up on the sidewalk while we were parading down the center of the main street. In fact, we never encountered anyone on the street and I am sure hardly any notice was taken of us.
        Of course, Father tried to get his driver's license. However, he had difficulties. One of them was that he was unable to prevent the gears from chattering as soon as he shifted from the starting speed to the next higher. The effect was similar to riding on a bucking bronco. The car would hiccup, and take a jump, and then another, and another, and finally die. It took Father many months to get on to the trick of calming the car somewhat to make the transition smoothly. Alas, he never mastered it. Ultimately, with later cars, automatic transmission bypassed the trouble.
        Since Father didn't succeed in getting a driver's license, it was decided that I might be able to get one. I was thirteen years old then. There was a provision in the law to make an exception in the minimum age of sixteen in case of family need and allow children of fourteen to have a special driver's license with severe limitations. For example, at night, an adult had to be present. Of course, driving was not unusual for children in the country. Farm boys as young as ten frequently drove trucks and tractors on the farm in connection with their chores. No license was required to drive on their family's land. Father taught me how to drive and on my fourteenth birthday I got a driver's license. Thereafter, we no longer had to take that long, embarrassing, and tedious walk from the store downtown to our house.
        The house that we had rented was located on the edge of town. There was lots of empty space around it. I would bring the car home in the afternoon after school and before I had to fetch our parents. My younger brother, Steve, was quite put out. He was two years younger and, like many younger siblings, suffered under the unfairness and indignity of being denied an important privilege like driving the car. He reasoned that he could do everything that I could and should by rights be allowed to do it. Thus it happened that I was sitting in the house one afternoon and experienced a strong jolt accompanied by a loud noise. Steve had been practicing driving the car, having gotten the keys somehow, and had hit the side of the house. Fortunately, no visible damage was done and we both kept quiet about the matter.
        Everyone in the family worked hard from Monday morning until Saturday night. Sunday was reserved for a leisurely, late breakfast. At that time, we practiced brunch but didn't know what to call it yet. The newspapers were read and long heated discussion were held about the politics of the day. On Sunday afternoons we frequently went for a drive of exploration into the country side.
        At that time, roads were not as elaborate as they are now. Creek crossings were frequently fords instead of bridges. Rains in California are infrequent but heavy. On a lovely drive through the countryside, delicately green from the winter rains, we came to a creek that was swollen with water. I was driving and decided to take a chance on blustering through on the sunken road. I made it to the middle of the creek where the engine was flooded and stalled. Water started rising into the car. Mother was furious. She started getting out of the car and stepped into the river and got herself completely wet. Father and I were the objects of her fury. We were called inconsiderate and stupid and a few other perfectly apt epithets. Fortunately we were able, with the help of a cowboy on a horse and his rope, to pull the car to dry ground and get it started again.
        Another Sunday afternoon we left Paso Robles to get to the coast at Cambria. We started out on a nice enough black top road into the mountains. As the afternoon went on the road became steeper and rougher. When we were coming off the mountain and nearing the ocean, the road became indistinguishable from a gravel covered freshet and I had a hard time keeping the car on the road. The final descent to the ocean was like driving on the pebbles and boulders of a river bottom. For quite a while after I would have a recurrent nightmare in which I started out on a good road only to end up by degrees on a road indistinguishable from a cowpath on a steep mountain with sheer drops on both sides and no room to turn around. Seeing no way out, I would awaken in a sweat.
        One time, on a Sunday afternoon drive, I found myself in such a dilemma in which all alternatives seem to point to disaster. We set out to explore the village of Parkfield across some wild mountains. In his systematic German fashion, Father had consulted a map which showed the existence of a road from here to there. When we reached the top of the mountain and started our steep descent into the valley below the tangible road essentially disappeared and the car was pointed at a steep angle on a muddy, slippery incline. It was much too slippery to back up and I had no choice but to proceed. I was afraid of wrecking the car and killing all of us. I had no alternative but to go on. With my heart pounding and sweat on my forehead I went on as carefully as I could. After arriving at the little town of less than a dozen houses, we fortunately found a safer way back.
        The old Ford sedan and we children shared a number of adventures that our parents didn't know about. We felt we should spare them, and us, the consternation and emotional strain that knowledge would lead to. One time, Stephen and I and our two cousins, Gabriel and Joe, had a job out in the country harvesting almonds which in those days was Paso Robles' chief crop.
        Because of the manner of gathering the nuts, the procedure was called "knocking almonds". A club with a piece of rubber tire wrapped around the end was used to hit the tree and shake off the nuts which fell on two pieces of canvas overlapping around the tree. The few remaining nuts were knocked off with long poles and then the rectangles of canvas were dragged to the next tree in the row. When the canvas was full, the nuts were bagged into gunny sacks. At that time, we were paid $0.14 per gunny sack for our work. Two of us would fill between twenty and thirty sacks a day. Some of the very experienced hands were able to do as many as forty to fifty sacks a day. It was hard, hot work on fairly steep hillsides. We would consume a gallon jug of water that was wrapped with moistened burlap and kept in the shadow of the trees to keep it cool. The night after the first day of knocking almonds I dreamt of infinite rows of almond trees marching forever up and down the hills.
        We proceeded to park the car at the edge of the orchard overlooking a steep barranca. However, the plowed earth was so soft that on trying to back a little out of the draw, the rear wheels spun and the car slid further down into the declivity. We were very scared that we would lose the car. After work we got a ride back to town and said nothing about our predicament. With luck, the next day a fellow with a tractor was able to pull the car back to safety. We wisely thought that we should spare our poor parents the worry and anguish that knowledge of the situation would surely have caused them. A very similar situation occurred one night when I was on a road that I am sure I had no business on and backed the car into a ditch excavation by the side of the road where the rear tires had no purchase. Again, with great consideration for my poor parents, I did not burden them with knowledge of the mishap and thus saved them, and incidentally myself, from an unsettling, emotional trauma.
        Starting to drive so young taught me a lesson that has proved invaluable. I decided early on that I was not a good driver and therefore had to be especially cautious. This realization came to me when I was driving on River Road, on the East side of the Salinas river, on the part of the road that heads straight into the river. I was driving so fast that I couldn't negotiate the right angle turn but was able to stop with the front wheels hanging over the escarpment into the river. Fortunately, the rear wheels were still on the pavement and I was able to back up and complete the turn. However, I decided that I was not an instinctive driver but must rely on caution and common sense instead of on natural talent. After losing a head-on pushing contest with a friend in his dad's large twenties touring car and me in Father's 1936 Ford at night on an empty parking lot I had to admit to myself that I just wasn't very smart and didn't even have any common sense. Apart from my pride this incident cost an eighth of an inch of burned rubber and confirmed me in the conclusion that I must supplant my lack of common sense and talent with a lot of caution.
        Father was not expected to know how to deal with the mechanical mysteries of automobiles. When tires needed changing, Stephen and I would do it. We tried to and several times succeeded in patching the tires. The most elaborate repair that I attempted was to replace the rusted out muffler resulting in a great deal of dirt and rust in hair, eyes, nose, and ears. My attempts at car repair were hampered by the lack of proper tools. The only tools that were available to us were the ones that Father and Mother sold in the variety store. To procure other tools would have been considered an act of unpardonable disloyalty, and besides they would have cost real money. Unfortunately, the variety store tools were not of reliable quality and therefore hard to work with.
        Father has had a number of automobiles after the 1936 Ford and so have Stephen and 1. 1 can't remember most of them. However, I distinctly remember that first car. The last time I saw it, I was in the Army and on home leave for a limited period of time. The poor car had been neglected because of war time restrictions on gasoline and tires. It had not seen much use and grass was growing from the rug on the floor. The windshield wiper didn't work, and when I drove it on a trip to San Francisco, the lights failed to function. I remember a miserable night near Palo Alto in the rain, without headlights, trying to clear the windshield by hand. Shortly after that, the car was kindly disposed of. It had done its last buck and hiccup. But it lives on in memory and so does Father.