For studious and overachieving Clem Leone, the years sped by in Baltimore, and in eleventh grade, Clem became a family legend. He walked onto a used car lot and fell in love with an eight-year-old 1933 Chevy Eagle, factory two-tone (green and black), two-door sedan with a spare wheel on each front fender. The price of eighty-five dollars was beyond his reach; he had saved up forty. But it was a man’s car and Clem, now spending half his high school days in auto mechanics class, wanted it. Clem had been delivering papers with the understanding that his boss would teach him to drive a car; he had practiced long and hard.
In an unlikely encounter, the undersized high school junior went toe-to-toe with a full-grown car salesman whose credit check revealed Clem to be a highly respected paperboy. An hour later, Clem drove home the Chevy Eagle and parked it at 505 East Randall Street. Mother and Pop stumbled out of the house and stood transfixed at the first automobile in the family, and a sudden wild impulse took the three of them along with sisters Irma and Edith on an inaugural road trip, certainly the farthest Clem had ever been from home, all the way from South Baltimore to the tourist destination of 1941: the Civil War battlefield of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. President Franklin Roosevelt had dedicated the Eternal Peace Light Memorial there less than three years earlier on the seventy-fifth anniversary of the battle, and Clem’s stepfather had wanted to see it ever since. Suddenly, Clem wielded the power to satisfy such an urge.
The old Chevy opened up another world for Clem Leone. For a while now he had been intrigued by Sylvia Iafolla, a classmate at Southern High School. Clem would take his violin into the various classrooms and play a tune to entice younger students to sign up for musical instruments, and he would play steadily, flawlessly. Except in Sylvia’s classroom. The scrutiny of this little Italian girl three years his junior, mere eye contact and any expression on her pretty face, would confuse Clem’s fingers something awful, despite the fact that he was older and more mature. Sylvia confounded Clem. When Clem bought the Chevy, an early thought was to take Sylvia for a ride, but both knew the concept was forbidden by her parents, Alberico—from the Old Country—and Myrtle—one generation removed. Eventually, Clem and Sylvia found a solution: He would pick her up around the corner and take her for a nervous, innocent drive wherever.
Clem lived a studious life in South Baltimore in 1941. But cold winds started to blow across the Inner Harbor, signaling a change of seasons for Clem, Sylvia, and the world.