Here Comes Treble: A Car By Any Other Name
Isabel Bradley writes affectionately of good friends, Henry and Harry, Freddy and Lucy, Jemima Puddleduck and Peppi. It may surprise you to learn that Lucy underwent a "sex change'' to become Freddy the Second. Even more surprising is the fact that these friends had four wheels, rather than two legs.
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Henry was a 1948 Citroen.
He was grey and had running boards that swept down below the doors from large mud-guards; headlamps like frogs’ eyes bulged on either side of a radiator that could have been a long, French nose; and doors that hinged about the centre post. His windshield was flat. Manually operated indicators flapped out of the pillars between the front and rear doors. Henry’s dashboard was wood. It sported a speedometer in miles per hour, an umbrella-handle with a wooden knob on the end for changing gears, and a gaping cubby-hole. There were bench seats front and back. The spare wheel was in a round container on the sloping boot-lid.
Henry was a member of the family.
For more than twenty-five years, Dad cared for Henry, doing oil-changes, maintenance and repairs in the driveway of our home. Henry took us to visit Gran every Saturday, and once every three years he made the four-hundred mile trip from Johannesburg, in the centre of South Africa, to the Natal coast – Shaka’s Rock, or Umkomaas – for our family holidays. He delighted in driving over the mountain passes with their tight bends and gut-swooping drops, hugging the road with his front-wheel drive.
Conscription was in force in those long gone days; every young man, on leaving school, spent a year or longer “serving his country”. When my brother was in the army Mom, Dad and I loaded picnics into Henry and drove for an hour or more each Sunday to visit our soldier in camp.
When I was growing up, it didn’t seem unusual to me that we had named our car, or identified him as distinctly male. Eventually I learned that most people don’t name their cars, and most vehicles are generally referred to as feminine.
When it was time for Henry to pass on, first to my brother, and then to the great Scrap-Yard in the Sky, Dad bought Harry. Harry was a Studebaker Silver Hawk, named after the old Devon song – you know the one? “… Peter Davey, Dan’l Whidden, Harry Hawk, Old Uncle Tom Cobleigh and all…” (See Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Centenary Edition, page 1113, under “Uncle” for the full text of the refrain.)
By this time, I’d driven Freddy the Fiat for a few years, until my first husband and I traded him in on a house. Unusual, I know – but true.
The next second-hand car that I bought had her name taped to the dashboard – Lucy. She was a smaller Fiat. A few years later, when Dad took Lucy over from me, he changed not only her name, but her gender, re-christening her Freddy the Second. It didn’t surprise me that she gave him a lot of trouble, before becoming accustomed to her new identity.
Since then, I’ve owned only two cars. Cars in our family tend to be long-lived. From Fiats, I moved to Volkswagen, the model known in South Africa as the Citi Golf. The first was also a pre-owned car, her paint-work cream-coloured. Her license plate was JPL 835 T. From the first two initials, I named her Jemima Puddleduck. I drove Jemima for five years, and loved her dearly. A few months after Jemima devolved to my stepson, she died a violent death: she was run over by a truck while parked in a back-street in Durban.
I then took delivery of a black, bright, shiny, sexy little Citi Golf. She was the top of the range, with an eighteen-hundred cc, fuel-injected engine, and air-conditioning! Because her performance was so lively, she was named Peppi.
I’ve driven Peppi for the last fifteen years. She’s been badly injured twice in our time together, in altercations with other vehicles. Though “hospitalised” both times, she recovered remarkably well, and has remained a true and faithful friend.
Sadly, it is time for me to say farewell to my lovely little car. Peppi is starting to belch smoke, doesn’t enjoy the new generation fuels, and her heart is making a nasty, rattling sound that my husband Leon tells me is officially called “pinking”. She’s slowing down, and making far too many trips to our nearest car clinic.
My next car? Well, after a week or two of driving it, I’m sure it, too, will reveal its personality to me. We’ll become friends and partners for the next twenty years with any luck. In a relationship that is designed to last that long, we’ll have to be on first-name terms. Hopefully, she’ll tell me her name soon!
Until next time, “here comes Treble!”
By Isabel Bradley Copyright Reserved ©
