The American Car

A brother and sister grew up on a South Bristol council estate in the 1920’s and 30’s and then their lives diverged. For those of us who grew up on one side of the divide it felt as if those on the other side were living a life that came out of a TV screen.

When I was young we went to their Christmas parties. My sisters and I would huddle in a corner of the lounge while dad went downstairs to play snooker with our cousins and Uncle Fred held forth, nursing his whisky in front of a large television, his moustache and slicked hair making him look like Walt Disney, with Auntie Marion as his actress wife.

They lived on what was then the eastern edge of the city, in the largest house of a housing estate that Uncle Fred had built, high above the River Avon. We arrived by bus and around 11 or midnight we were given a lift home, by one of my cousins. Our preference was for the American car, a pale blue Chevrolet, a bulbous model dating from the late 40’s or early 50’s. It seemed enormous by the standards of those times, with seats like sofas, automatic transmission and a soft bouncing motion.

I remember a particular ride home in the American car, one cold night after Christmas. It was late and my eldest cousin Alan drove, smelling of beer. Down through the nearly empty streets travelling west, heading for the city centre, past the last stragglers on their way home from the pubs. Pedestrians occasionally turned to stare at the car, a symbol of the free enterprise society, as it slid down the long descent to Old Market.

At St George’s Park Alan turned right and worked his way through residential areas, first to Eastville, by the stadium, then on to Muller Road. There had been snow almost from the beginning of the journey but as we got closer to home it grew thicker and, with almost no traffic to keep the road clear it was soon covered across its whole width. As we climbed, towards Gloucester Road, Alan struggled to control the car, which was losing traction and slewing from side to side.

At the bottom of Springfield Avenue, Alan decided that he would go no further. The final climb to Gloucester Road was steep and he was clearly concerned that the car would get stuck and he would not be able to return to the party. For all its size the Chevrolet was underpowered and unsuited to the steep, unsalted roads.

We walked the last few hundred yards home through deepening snow. At the house dad opened the door then went straight to the kitchen to start the paraffin stove, while mum moved us up the stairs to bed.



The American car was soon gone, replaced by more conventional vehicles, the practicalities of maintaining an ageing foreign car in the England of the late 1950’s eventually defeating even Uncle Fred.

The parties ended as well, at least as far as my sisters and I were concerned. We were told that it was not fair to expect one of the boys to drive us home. I suspect that there was another reason, which is that my parents were becoming uncomfortable with the apparent disparities in wealth and the lifestyle of the two families.

We weren’t particularly concerned about the end of the parties. They were fairly adult affairs and my cousins, most of whom were a little older and more used to that kind of environment, largely ignored us.

My parents continued to go to occasional parties without us, and later they spent some evenings at a pub in Somerset that Uncle Fred had bought, but we had little involvement in this. It was as if by this time the rules of engagement between the two families had been negotiated and my sisters and I were to play no substantial part in the settlement. Increasingly my parents seemed to make a virtue of our relative poverty, our lack of material goods. It was made very clear to us that money was not to be confused with worth.

In my mind the American car stands at the centre of our family story. While my parents made a virtue of going without, it became an early emblem of the others’ wealth, a reminder of the origins of the lifestyle that they aspired to. The car was replaced by many others, but none of those marked the difference between brother and sister so starkly, or as startlingly as the blue Chevrolet.