1957 DeSoto

1957 Desoto

 

I was a stunner upon debut.  Part of a post war surge in engineering and design, I was heralded as “Forward looking”  I cut a stylish figure with my high tail and bright colorful two tone exterior. I was equally at home parked in front of a New York Hotel or a Midwestern grade school drop off.  I appreciated seeing people turn heads as I passed by. “This new guy in town” had swagger.  I would proclaim my presence sounding my resonant twin exhausts with the throaty growl of my muscular engine.  Girls wanted to be with guys wielding me around the drive-in parking lots.  I was an object of desire. Named “Fireflight,” I was “top of the pack.”  Now I’m top of the heap.

I don’t know what happened. Things changed in the last 50 years.  How I got here sitting in this weedy field alongside a forgotten road is a mystery to me.   My body is decrepit. Worn away and ridden with blights, my exterior hardly even conveys my purpose any longer.  When I am able to turn over, it is only with a solitary belch of noxious emissions, and then silence. I no longer allow anyone to see it anyway.   I am unable to see in the night . My eyes are cloudy, my energy long ago trickled away.  My tires are either flat or bald – no longer roadworthy.  If I could muster some “get up and go”  it would be with a crescendo of rattles, squeaks and rumbles. I would still turn heads, but now for different reason. The worst is not only has my warranty expired but they no longer even make parts for me. 

One day a restored Cordoba drove by my field and I think I heard a trumpet sound.  I could just imagine Ricardo Montalban tapping the horn in a salute to me as he sat ensconced in that luxurious Corinthian Leather.  But visits like that are few and far between. Now, mostly only birds stop by and ,while I don’t understand them, I am sure they are commenting on my amazing swivel seats, push-button Torqueflight transmission and commanding appearance. I’m sure they remember me. Well, I can hope they do.

Worse for wear, I know life is at a close for me. But I can still be a shelter for a new generation of field mice making my rear seat their castle.  I can still think about those wonder years when my rakish figure was all the rage, and I still can dream about the young boy leafing through a “Vintage Cars”  book thinking, “That 1957 DeSoto was really something.”  Even after the last of those that actually possessed my kind are gone, I will live on as an icon to a time of change, when there were automobiles and they made getting from here to there an adventure in style and grace.  I am proud to have been a 1957 DeSoto Fireflite. They don’t make em like me anymore.  Just think of me now and then. I’d like that.

 

-Jerry Wendt 2015