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Show a lowered front end and a lifted rear. The body was at an angle to the frame. It was automobile as roaring wedge, that basic ancient tool. The two modifications were the result of the two body styles of the fifties. A '56 Mercury could only be lowered. A '55 Chevy could only be dagoed. Marlon Brando was lowered. James Dean was dagoed. There was for me, a heroic quality to these customized cars. My father often commented that one would never see a customized Chevy on the streets of Moscow. The Bill of Rights had fostered the hot rod. I asked him why. "Alot of time and money goes into those cars. The Reds wouldn't allow such decadence. In Russia everything is done for the good of the state. These cars don't do anyone any good." "Well, I think they're fun," mother said. "That's my point," he added sternly- Even I, exiled to the back seat for chronic squirming, doubted that was his point. "What's deck-a-dance?" "That's why your father works so hard, so we can be deck-a-dance." When my mother saw one of these cars, she called them all, "baby moons", she didn't see a greaser behind the wheel; she saw a reincarnation of Henry David Thoreau with tattooes and a ducktail. My father found her fondness for baby moons alarming. He had recently changed his hair style. The national sales manager of his insurance company had told him that flat tops look boyish, that a salesman should cultivate a gravity of appearance and manner. Now, his hair was too long to stand up, and too short to comb back. In the mornings, he applied Vitalis recklessly- How, he complained between spoonfuls of Wheaties, was he going to make sales when he looked like Alfalfa? "Baby moons," she said. It was a '52 Mercury, painted a metallic maroon. It was going the other way. She turned to watch it. One Sunday, the three of us drove around in our Oldsmobile. Imagining what it must be like, we cruised the most expensive neighborhoods. My parents were playing their kissing game. My father received one kiss for every baby moon. But when we reached an exclusive neighborhood where there were virtually |
