Come Away With Me Lucille, In My Merry Oldsmobile

 

I bought my first car in 1964, using money I’d earned by raking blueberries and taking care of a neighbor’s laying hens. It was a 1956 Oldsmobile 88, a blue and white monster. It drank gas like I drank beer and weighed so much it was like getting a mule up to speed, but once it was going, that sucker cruised. It had a wide soft front seat, perfect for a girlfriend to snuggle close to me. Suffice it to say that the Olds and I had many adventures after dark.

Other guys might have had newer wheels, or bells and whistles my car didn’t have, but more often than not, they were slightly envious. I remember coming out of the high school gym one evening after a basketball game to find Arlo Wadsworth (a true Maine character until the day he died) bending over the engine in my car. He’d taken the liberty of getting into the front seat, unlocking the hood, and perusing the power plant. I remember his words like they were said yesterday. “I’ll offer you real cash money for it right now.”

I declined and went on driving it for another year and a half. One night when I was sort of between girlfriends, an attractive girl two years younger than I, asked if I could give her a ride from the dance at a local community center to her grandparents’ farm in Appleton, the town just north of where I lived. I remember us sitting in the driveway, her grandparents long abed, talking and doing a bit of kissing. It was what might have been the beginning of a promising new relationship, but fate intervened. On the way home, the main bearings started screeching and I knew I didn’t have the money for an engine rebuild, so I parked it by the old chicken barn across the road, saying a forlorn goodbye to it and the potential romance.

As for the second part of the song title I used for this post, I did have an Aunt Lucille, but she never rode in my Oldsmobile. She and Uncle Guy preferred big, fancy Cadillacs.