(I’m in the midst of another surge of reviewing family archival material. I get much joy from this, both from the physical touching of items held by my ancestors and from feeling like this brings them into the present. Opening a box is like accessing a time machine. For this one, it’s a story my dad wrote in 1991 about a car he owned as a teen. –Andy)

The “Black Beauty”

by Al Smallman

I found the “Black Beauty” at a used car lot in East Dearborn, Michigan one late winter afternoon in 1951. The car glistened in the thawing snow sunlight as it occupied a spot of honor in the corner of the lot. I fell in love with this ’37 Ford Coupe immediately. What sixteen year old could resist a car that had:

• a sleeved 1941 Mercury V-8 engine
• shiny black paint
• dual straight pipes (no mufflers) that were made even noisier because the tail pipes were made from flexible tubing
• fender skirts
• chrome wheel covers
• a three-toned horn
• a spotlight
• a late model radio

I gladly parted with $285 to the ubiquitous used car salesman. The money for the car had been earned through part-time jobs as a paper route supervisor and by selling Mason Shoes.

The car quickly acquired a negative neighborhood reputation. Because the “Black Beauty” lacked mufflers, everyone in the vicinity knew about my comings and goings. After several “next-morning” confrontations by neighbors that had been awakened by the beauty’s loud purrings in the early a.m., I learned to cut the engine as soon as I turned the corner from Cherry Hill Road onto Franklin Street. We coasted the last block and a half home in silence. In this manner, the nocturnal adventures I shared with the car remained our business and not the fodder for neighborhood gossip.

The “Black Beauty” improved my social life markedly. Girls that had been nodding acquaintances, if that, suddenly were my friends and wanted rides to and from high school, or to the drug store soda fountain winter hangout, or to the quintessential summertime early fifties drive-in, “The Sip And Nip,” often over parental admonishments. In a pinch and with a squeeze, six could ride inside the coupe, since it had a very small back seat. If six were inside, they got to know each other very well if the ride was of any distance.

1937 Fords had mechanical brakes which meant that stopping or slowing down the “Black Beauty” was an adventure, usually slowing down was accomplished by shifting into second gear and letting the engine’s compression do much of the braking. This downshifting also meant that the motor noise, sans mufflers, would back off, making a sound reminiscent of a basso profundo machine gun.

My favorite adventure with the “Black Beauty” took place during the 1951 football season when Dearborn High School played Jackson High School there, a trip of almost one hundred miles. Four six foot plus high school seniors headed for Jackson as soon as school was out, three in front and one stretched out across the tiny back seat. We changed positions, except for the driver, every twenty to thirty miles. We were met in Jackson by my gorgeous blonde cousin, Judy, and a bevy of her friends. I don’t remember which team won the football game, but I do remember that we had a marvelous time at a mixer afterwards and that it was after midnight before we started back to Dearborn. I coasted home with time for about an hour’s sleep before seeing to it that the newspapers were delivered on Saturday morning.

Eventually all good things have to come to an end. In January I was to graduate from high school since I was part of the mid-year graduating class. I had been accepted by the University of Michigan and was due in Ann Arbor the first Sunday in February for freshman orientation. Back in those Neanderthal days, college freshmen in particular and undergraduates in general were not allowed to have automobiles on campus. Thus, it came to pass that on one snowy afternoon in January 1952, I drove the “Black Beauty” from my west Dearborn High School to the East Dearborn used car lot. The same ubiquitous used car salesman was still there. He offered me $185 for the car I had purchased for $285 almost a year before. I thought the car was worth more but I had to sell it. I only hope the next owner had as much fun and as many adventures as I had with the “Black Beauty.”