Who's Your Caddy? America's Love Affair with Cars

By Gabriel Decker

Who's Your Caddy? America's Love Affair with Cars is a delightful look at the car culture of America. Why do people choose the cars they drive? Are the reasons practical, or are they just a testament to whimsy? These are some of the answers you'll find in this delightful book. Chock full of personal photographs, most of which were taken by the author, Who's Your Caddy? is guaranteed to bring a smile to the faces of all who read it. What started as a Master's thesis, has morphed into a book that, indeed, will appeal to everyone. Enjoy the ride!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Escarpment Press
• Release date: Nov 7, 2017
• ISBN: 9781540187161

Gabriel Decker

"Classic cars are my addiction.  I enjoy owning old books and not taking the time to read them.  I play the guitar when I have the energy to take one off my wall.  I have fallen into that cliché of having another glass of wine while writing.  It is time to lift up the hood and get some work done on my old classic.  This is who I have become." —Gabriel D. Decker

Book preview

Who’s Your Caddy?

(America’s Love Affair with Cars)

By

Gabriel D. Decker

Who’s Your Caddy?  America’s Love Affair with Cars

Copyright © May 2015 Gabriel D. Decker

FIRST EDITION

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

All rights reserved.  No part of this publication may be used or reproduced by any means, electronic, graphic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Introduction

This book was originally conceived as the thesis for my Master’s degree in Professional and Technical Writing at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.  However, upon reflection, it occurred to me that if published as a book, it might also have a broad appeal to people other than those in academia.  The result is represented here.

My book contains several stories of different car enthusiasts and the history behind the car(s) they work on and cherish.  My son’s story is included, which details how he became a car enthusiast.  The stories will show the influences cars have had over families through time.  The stories bring the cars to life.

The questions I will answer are: Why this car?  and What does it mean to the family that owns it?

The stories about the cars and why so much time and effort is being put into them can be inspiring to readers, and I have captured a piece of this with each story.  Some of the owners no longer have the cars, but their memories have attached, and together, car and owner are intertwined.

Acknowledgements

To Tracy Decker, my patient wife, I want to say thank you for understanding and letting me live my dream, not just with writing and a six-year long journey with this degree, but thank you for letting me have my garage with my boys, building some wonderful memories that we will never forget.

My heartfelt appreciation goes to:

My thesis committee, for their professionalism and encouragement with this project.

Dr. Charles Anderson for helping me mold my writing over the years to get me where I am today.

University Writing Center, the interns, and Graduate Assistants who listened to my stories, collaborated ideas, and became a place of peaceful learning over the last three years.

Dr. Allison Holland for her insightful wisdom and encouragement over the years I worked in the UWC.

All the people who agreed to be interviewed and shared their personal stories with me that made this project come to life.

Table of Contents

1—So it begins . . .

2—Car Shows

3—Media Representation

4—The Black Bird

5—Baby

6—Gray Ghost

7—BBC Top Gear

8—Charlotte

9—Gone in 60 Seconds

10—Beyond Names

11—The Fast and the Furious

12—Katy Bell

13—Corvette Summer – 1978

14—Nostalgic Malibu

15—Cars

16—The Black Bird (Cont’d)

17—Reflection

Works Cited

1

And So It Begins . . .

The Hot Wheel has style, lines, character, and the curves of the real car dad or granddad has in the driveway.  Many Hot Wheels will come and go over time, but even as adults, we will collect the Hot Wheels we cannot obtain in the real world.  A love affair that starts when you are a child with an eighty-nine cent toy, becomes an obsession costing thousands upon thousands of dollars. 

Cars speak a universal language.  Almost everyone owns a car, or deals with cars somehow.  Communication builds relationships with our cars at an early age when a parent hands their child a toy car.  The act of purchasing an eighty-nine cent toy speaks volumes over time.  The complexity comes from growth (Kleine).

Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, and working together is success (Henry Ford).  Car enthusiasts help each other with the purchase of the car, people will help, give advice, lend a hand, and together another classic car story is born.  Sometimes, the story is completed, and the vehicle has a new owner.  Other times, the project is just beginning.  It is a rare young man who isn't interested in cars, and it is not hard to get a club started . . . Actually building your own car is but the beginning (Edmonds 6).

People spend tens of thousands of dollars restoring cars that will never be worth what their owners have spent on them.  Why?  One answer might be Because the car is good looking, or I have always wanted one.  Still, what is the story behind that car that brings it to life for the owner?  What story is the owner trying to create or recreate? 

Owners go back to a time of fond memories in dad’s garage, in their high school shops, with a neighbor.  Or, does their work time create new stories as well as new cars.  Is building a car similar to sampling a bottle of fine wine? 

I have been around the car industry all of my life.  I have worked in the custom chrome industry, watching people chrome individual pieces on their cars while bringing their project to life.  We dealt with every minute detail of polishing specific parts and painting others to create specific looks.  The proof is evident in the original Big Foot truck owned by Bob Chandler, who lived a few houses down from us in St. Peters, Missouri.  Along with chrome and paintwork, my father and I built several custom cars for our personal enjoyment.

I enjoyed listening to the people talk about their passion for the cars they were working on.  There are hundreds of magazines, such as Hot Rod, Low Rider, and Modified Mustang, showing these cars and giving a short snippet of the story.  I always wanted to read more because of my memories of the cars in my driveway.  To find out more, I sat down with enthusiasts and recorded their story.

Car enthusiasts come in all age groups.  They are born at different times in their lives.  Some have memories from their childhood, and others have had the desire to get started but never found the time until later in life.  The one thing each person I met had in common was his or her desire to share the story.

Each person I interviewed took me down a path I did not expect.  The questions I asked were basic and open-ended.  Between and after my questions, the car enthusiasts shared the stories that were most important to them.  I went on a four-hour road trip with one person, being introduced to family hideaways.  Another gentleman educated me on an era of time eighty years ago.  I felt privileged to be let into each person’s world.

After each interview, I went back and transcribed the conversation we had, using any notes I jotted down during our time spent together.  I made notes of times and body language while listening to the story I was being told.  During the interviews, I tried to keep my mind clear and focused on keeping the person talking.  I listened to the story and was able to respond, but I was not thinking about writing.  I just wanted to hear the story and enjoy our conversation together.  I let the tape recorder take care of remembering the exact words.

During the transcription phase, I would get a felt sense for the way I wanted to tell their story.  The felt sense is "not yet in words but out of which images, words, and concepts emerge" (Perl).  Sometimes, the introductory paragraph would start to