A 1948 Packard
Uncle Bill's Memories Pt 2
Back in 2016, I proposed a series of questions to our Uncle Bill regarding his memories of Grandma and/or Grandpa Bruemmer from St. Louis to San Rafael.
In going back through my email correspondence with Uncle Bill I found this story that he wrote to me on October 11th and in his words, "Surprise surprise, they involve cars!"
For those who may not remember, one of Bill's passions has been the Packard car. In fact, for many years he had a lovingly restored Packard in his garage in Rohnert park and quite often when he has looked at old family photos, the first thing that comes to mind is what kind of car Grams had at that time!
In response to your many questions about any St. Louis memories, or memories of my father, the answers are simply that I have none. I was 2 yrs. old when my father died and I have no memories of him, our house, or anything from that time. My earliest memories date from after our move to San Rafael. And, surprise surprise, they involve cars.
A little background info: Shortly after our move to California my mother decided she needed a newer and larger car, our Packard being 10 years old -a lot in those days. With the threat of the Korean War, and post war steel shortages, new cars were expensive and hard to come by. So she was forced to buy a used car.
In those days a number of car makers made long-wheelbase cars with jump seats, like limousines but not that fancy. So she found a DeSoto at Water's DeSoto on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco.
It was a long, heavy, under-powered thing, but had room for all of us and was a year or two old. So my memory: we were returning to San Rafael from the city in our new car when it broke down on the Golden Gate Bridge!! Turns out it was out of gas. I remember being towed or pushed off the bridge -very exciting to a 3 or 4 year old.
The car turned out to have other more serious problems -a creaked engine block-and my mother suspected it had been used as a jitney on Market Street (a kind of short-hop taxi, thus a lot of wear and tear on a car).
So then came my next memory - our next car. I don't think Mom kept the DeSoto more than a year when she traded it in on a brand new 1951 Packard.
It probably is hard to believe today, but in those days, car dealers - especially luxury car dealers - would drive a car out to your house to show it to you. So the Packard dealer in San Rafael, Fred Cabello's Packard, drove out two cars for Mom to choose from, a grey sedan and a beautiful deep maroon one. I begged her to pick the "red" one, as that was my favorite color, but she said, "No, it will fade" (and she was right, cars paint jobs faded quickly back then).
So the grey one it was. The next day we piled into our new Packard in the garage to go to church and when Mom went to put it in reverse to back out of the garage, it jumped forward and into a pile of cardboard boxes! They had not told her to keep her foot on the brake as she was moving the shift lever from Park thru Drive to get to Reverse!
So much for the car stories for now.
More family lore to come!
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