ENTER FRIENDLY FRED ENTER FRIENDLY FREDFlick sucked noisily at a hollow tooth as I stood up stiffly to get the kinks out of my legs. Bar stools are not good for the knees. Not only that, but my conscience was beginning to bother me. Here I was, frittering away an afternoon chewing the fat with Flick, when I should have been out filling up my blue-lined notebook with acute observations on the evolving life of the Industrial Midwest, not to mention the impact of Automation on the day-to-day life of the solitary citizen. Also, I was on an expense account, and there wasn’t much to squander it on in Flick’s. I enjoy living to the full.
I stalked to the end of the bar, flexing my shoulder muscles and jiggling my feet. This is known in Indiana tavern circles as “Shaking Down The Suds.” Flick moodily changed his apron. It was getting late in the afternoon now, and the big rush of steelworkers was due shortly after four when the shift at the mill changed.
Again the entranceway swung open with a puff of frigid air. This time a tall, thin, natty customer displaying a formidable set of store teeth and a dour piercing gaze strode resolutely to the bar. Flick glanced up and, without a word passing between the two, took a bottle of bourbon down off the mirrored shelf behind the bar and poured a double. Neat. The man quickly tossed it off, threw a dollar down on the bar, said: “Be seein’ you,” and was gone. Flick rang up the buck as I returned to my stool.
“Well?” I asked.
“Oh, him? That’s Fted. Friendly Fred. He runs the Used-Car lot across the street.”
I looked over at the lot. A touch of twilight gloom was beginning to dull the surfaces of the shiny fenders and grinning grilles. The banners fluttered jauntily, snapping and cracking in the breeze.
“He sure has some great-looking junkers over there,” I remarked, dredging an expression out of my misty past.
“Yep. Sure has.”
Next to bowling, automobiles are probably the single most important fact of a Midwesterner’s life, after his job, of course. The family heap, the weekly paycheck, and a decent bowling average are all they ask of Life.
“What are y’ driving these days, Flick?”
“Olds 88.”
“How’s she do on gas?”
“Oh, seventeen, around town. Maybe nineteen, twenty on the road,” Flick lied.
“Can’t ask for more than that.”
I found myself sinking into the laconic conversation that I had almost forgotten existed. I had become completely acclimated to the martini-drenched, impassioned, self-pitying monologues of the French restaurants and expensive bars of New York. Here, the Ego—if it existed at all—was barely discernible. They had never even heard of the word “Career.” Job, yes. Career, no.
“Olds 88. Hydromatic?”
“Yep.”
“Four-door?”
“Nope. Hardtop.”
“What color is it?”
“Dark blue. ’Bout the same color as that old Graham-Paige your Old Man used to have.”
“The four-door Graham. With the V-grille.”
Now I remembered. Of course! The Graham-Paige. In Hohman, cars were never forgotten, any more than old love affairs are ever really erased in other cultures. Family histories are measured in terms of cars, such as: “Clarence got the whooping cough when we had the Willys-Knight,” or, “Alex ran away with the Ledbetter girl right after we got the Hupmobile.”
“You know, Flick, there’s something I never told you about that Graham-Paige,” I said.
“Well, if you’re gonna tell me about the bad clutch it had, forget it. I know about that.”
Flick was showing off again.
“No, Flick, there’s something that’s been on my conscience for a long time. It has to do with that Graham-Paige.”