Peter Behrens's Blog, page 394

1963 Land Rover Series IIA

The Land Rover had a frame-off restoration. It's for sale in Denver. Find out more at B-A-T.

1959 Chevrolet Impala. 1966 Chevrolet Impala. California Blue Sky

2 Chevrolet ragtops in one day from Mike Moore, out on the freeways of the East Bay.  That blue sky looks pretty good from here but must be getting tiresome from a Californian point of view. 1959 was such an insane year for GM. My favorite car, ever, was the 1959 Pontiac Catalina.

Elizabeth Bishop on the bus, Nova Scotia to Boston

The MooseFor Grace Bulmer BowersFrom narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,

where if the river
enters or retreats
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;

where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats’
lavender, rich mud
in burning rivulets;

on red, gravelly roads,
down rows of sugar maples,
past clapboard farmhouses
and neat, clapboard churches,
bleached, ridged as clamshells,
past twin silver birches,

through late afternoon
a bus journeys west,
the windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;

down hollows, up rises,
and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces
to seven relatives
and a collie supervises.

Goodbye to the elms,
to the farm, to the dog.
The bus starts. The light
grows richer; the fog,
shifting, salty, thin,
comes closing in.

Its cold, round crystals
form and slide and settle
in the white hens’ feathers,
in gray glazed cabbages,
on the cabbage roses
and lupins like apostles;

the sweet peas cling
to their wet white string
on the whitewashed fences;
bumblebees creep
inside the foxgloves,
and evening commences.

One stop at Bass River.
Then the Economies
Lower, Middle, Upper;
Five Islands, Five Houses,
where a woman shakes a tablecloth
out after supper.

A pale flickering. Gone.
The Tantramar marshes
and the smell of salt hay.
An iron bridge trembles
and a loose plank rattles
but doesn’t give way.

On the left, a red light
swims through the dark:
a ship’s port lantern.
Two rubber boots show,
illuminated, solemn.
A dog gives one bark.

A woman climbs in
with two market bags,
brisk, freckled, elderly.
“A grand night. Yes, sir,
all the way to Boston.”
She regards us amicably.

Moonlight as we enter
the New Brunswick woods,
hairy, scratchy, splintery;
moonlight and mist
caught in them like lamb’s wool
on bushes in a pasture.

The passengers lie back.
Snores. Some long sighs.
A dreamy divagation
begins in the night,
a gentle, auditory,
slow hallucination. . . .

In the creakings and noises,
an old conversation
--not concerning us,
but recognizable, somewhere,
back in the bus:
Grandparents’ voices

uninterruptedly
talking, in Eternity:
names being mentioned,
things cleared up finally;
what he said, what she said,
who got pensioned;

deaths, deaths and sicknesses;
the year he remarried;
the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth.
That was the son lost
when the schooner foundered.

He took to drink. Yes.
She went to the bad.
When Amos began to pray
even in the store and
finally the family had
to put him away.

“Yes . . .” that peculiar
affirmative. “Yes . . .”
A sharp, indrawn breath,
half groan, half acceptance,
that means “Life’s like that.
We know it (also death).”

Talking the way they talked
in the old featherbed,
peacefully, on and on,
dim lamplight in the hall,
down in the kitchen, the dog
tucked in her shawl.

Now, it’s all right now
even to fall asleep
just as on all those nights.
--Suddenly the bus driver
stops with a jolt,
turns off his lights.

A moose has come out of
the impenetrable wood
and stands there, looms, rather,
in the middle of the road.
It approaches; it sniffs at
the bus’s hot hood.

Towering, antlerless,
high as a church,
homely as a house
(or, safe as houses).
A man’s voice assures us
“Perfectly harmless. . . .”

Some of the passengers
exclaim in whispers,
childishly, softly,
“Sure are big creatures.”
“It’s awful plain.”
“Look! It’s a she!”

Taking her time,
she looks the bus over,
grand, otherworldly.
Why, why do we feel
(we all feel) this sweet
sensation of joy?

“Curious creatures,"
says our quiet driver,
rolling his r‘s.
“Look at that, would you.”
Then he shifts gears.
For a moment longer,

by craning backward,
the moose can be seen
on the moonlit macadam;
then there’s a dim
smell of moose, an acrid
smell of gasoline. -Elizabeth Bishop

Love, Inertia And The Perfect Stance, an update

These from Michael Moore are the latest photos of Shawn Hibma-Cronin's Love, Inertia, And Perfect Stance van project, which we have been tracking for a couple of years.

Eleanor Roosevelt's road trip to Quebec

"It was the summer of 1933; the Great Depression was hitting North America with full force. To escape the heat of the American capital, two independent-minded Washington women hit the road and travelled north to Canada. For three weeks in July, they drove a brand-new Plymouth roadster convertible through Vermont to Quebec, New Brunswick and back...."
Read Andy Caddell's story in the Montreal Gazette

1933 Chevrolet Pickup in South China

For sale in South China (Maine). An older restoration. Photo must have been taken around the second or third week of April. I love that bare, leafless light of early Spring in Maine.

1951 White COE

from Alex Emond: "This truck is some kind of ugly . If you were to adapt a small (Bambi) Airstream trailer onto the frame and spend a small fortune on it ... you would have the perfect getaway vehicle . I really like the look of this creature . I wonder what the original grille looks like . It's not that big..."-AE
It's for sale in Eureka, Montana. It's up on Hemmings:
Description:
1951 WHITE COE truck. Very little rust. It's exterior skin rust, east to fix. Title. Rolls and steers. No engine or transmission. Short wheelbase. Mostly complete but passenger seat frame is gone. Nice grill available. The front was sanded by me, because it had filler I wanted to sand off to be sure there wasn't rust there. No other filler. Solid, rare, coe project. Decoliner clone?
Price: $5,000 firm
Another White COE posted from Sedgwick Maine.

Checker Wagon

It was for sale at Motorland in Arundel, Maine. Something about it makes me think of those Soviet limos of the 1960s--wasn't there a Zil?  Or maybe it's more like a much bigger version of a British Austin of that era. That battleship grey --that was an Austin Cambridge color, along with red leather seats. Checkers were dependable. I remember when they dominated the taxi fleet in NYC. 
  Jalopnik thinks they ought to return to NYC. Te hell with the Prius, he says.
Going by those black Calif. plates, this seems to be a 1969-at-the-latest car.

Delta Colorado Drive-by

 from Mike Moore, on the Western Slope: "Always seems to be the same array."

American Houses: Avon Hill, Cambridge, Mass.

Avon Hill is one of those sections of Cambridge that could be a neighborhood in a much smaller New England town.