Fully Restored
An Essay by Stephen Geez
www.StephenGeez.com
Photo by Scott Watson
www.printroom.com/pro/swatsonphoto
I used to take an old Ford out for a spin.
Not a car, actually, she was an old lady.
Mrs. Ford would admit only to having passed her 90th birthday, but she preferred a bit of mystery about her exact age. “A lady never tells,” she teased, batting her eyelashes and offering a sweetly demur smile. Still, it’s safe to say she had reached that point where one might call her a “vintage Ford.”
I had just barely passed twenty myself, a university student. My Psychology of Aging class required a field practicum for anecdotal study of how our venerated elderly face the challenges of navigating a world increasingly geared to the young. This included me pairing with a local representative of the geriatric set, a chance to postulate sage truisms from spending a few hours with her twice a week.
Mrs. Ford had requested a nice young man with his own car, “getting out” being one of her priorities, which narrowed the student choices to me—my car, I mean, since the form offered no box to check indicating I’m “nice.”
Mrs. Ford had outlived her only child, a son who’d given her a granddaughter, by then a young lady who had found her own place in a distant corner of the world. My case-study subject had opted to remain a part of her beloved Ann Arbor, a vibrant community both familiar and unrecognizable. Giving up her house, she’d found home in an assisted living facility, a regal old mansion in a stately west-side neighborhood, a room across the hall from her lifelong best friend who too soon after succumbed to failing health.
Mrs. Ford always wanted to go shopping first, her private stash of potassium-rich bananas requiring regular replenishment, and she liked to drive around to see how the city and campus were changing. She regaled me with myriad stories that breathed new life into places I’d looked at but never really seen. Then springtime tickled nature to life in the Huron Valley, and stopping to see the river proved one of her favorite sojourns, a way to restore some of the shimmer of youth to a vintage lady.
She once spoke of her late husband’s shiny black Ford Model T, a car he stubbornly kept in the garage years after it had fallen into disrepair. I recalled just such a car parked forlornly in an overgrown barn on property adjacent to my grandparents’ house. I found something reassuring in confirming with each childhood visit that I could look across the fence and see that old Ford parked there, telltale signs proving that despite occasional polishing it hadn’t moved, somebody nevertheless unwilling to let it go. I suppposed that at least one story rattled around inside there, just as I suspected I would never hear it.
My summer after that semester with Mrs. Ford included a canoe trek across the South, the high point being a run of the rain-deluged White Oak Creek near where my grandparents had lived. I couldn’t help but drive by for a gander at the old Ford.
I found empty barn—no car, the place cleaned up.
By then, that old Ford was probably worth more than its original cost, so I like to think somebody restored it to its former glory, then proudly took it somewere better for an occasional spin.
I spent the day floating with a friend, enjoying the glorious Tennessee hills until we happened upon a disturbing scene: remnants of an old car junkyard, rusting hulks pushed unceremoniously into the bank brush to rust and ruin, a secret revealed by the venerable old creek’s unseasonal flood. The front end of a vintage Ford Model T lay mired in the muck, too far gone, its stories lost.
And I thought of Mrs. Ford.
She refused to let herself be shunted aside, left to rust and ruin. She signed herself up for the student program and sought opportunities not just to share her old tales but to make new ones about afternoons together chasing potassium-rich bananas and gazing appreciaitvely at a venerable old river that refuses to let secrets remain buried forever.
I would like to say that my initial interest in Mrs. Ford stemmed from a nobler purpose than earning credit, but I can’t. Nor can I say I succeeded in growing a long-term friendship with her.
No, when I returned in the fall, I learned that Mrs. Ford’s time had too-soon passed.
Millions of old folks bide lonesome lives, even many who appear to be surrounded by crowds. You’ll find them parked in fancy facilities, modern-day versions of the overgrown barn. The lucky ones delight in a bit of polish every now and then, lovingly tended by those who know the stories, or by those who look forward to making new ones.
Vintage people are not hard to find.
Just look, and with a bit of effort you, too, could take one out for a day.
Just like I used to take an old Ford out for a spin.
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© The Fresh Ink Group, LLC, 2007
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