My dad once told me the story of his uncle Delmar’s car:
“Your uncle Delmar never had kids, so of course he had lots of money.
Back in the 60s this racecar driver told Mercury that he wanted them to make him a car, and Mercury figured that if they had to make one, the might as well make six.
Your uncle Delmar bought one. When aunt Nancy wasn’t around he’d take your uncle Donnie and me with him out on the highway and really open it up.
When he decided to sell it, me and Donnie begged him to sell it to us, but he refused.”
Delmar said, “You idiots will kill yourselves in it.”
“And we would have,” Dad admitted.
“So Delmar sold the car to your uncle Alfred.”
Dad said it kind of derisively, and did his impression of the permamellow Alfred driving the Marauder; it was much like Bill Cosby’s impression of Weird Harold driving his go-cart Continental–slumping sleepily in his imaginary seat with his arm outstretched on the imaginary wheel.
A few years ago I asked Alfred about it, and told him what Dad said about him tooling about in it all slow and stuff.
“That’s not really true,” he said.
“I had it up to 80 one time.”
Comments are closed.