Orgasmic Saskatchewan, Pontiacs, and Astronauts.

               Alex Emond has been patina-hunting on the high plains of southern Saskatchewan. This is one of my favorite parts of the world. I love driving across the province on Hwy 13, which is south of the Transcanada Highway, and much less traveled. The country is open grassland and anything but flat. It rolls. The sky is huge. The wind goes through the grass with a sound like bedsheets tearing. Driving across south Saskatchewan is a bit like sailing: you get a heightened awareness of weather and wind, and of the way light works on wide open spaces. Wallace Stegner lived in Eastend, Sask. as a boy, and he left his wonderful memoir of the region, Wolf Willow.
                I quote from AE: "Patina-Quest 2011 continues... this line-up of retired road warriors was in Climax, Saskatchewan. Climax is way down in the S.W. not super-far away from Big Beaver. I think those early pioneers were a little unsettled."

AE: "I now take you to Shackleton, Saskatchewan,where the streets are named after Antarctic explorers. Not a lot left but it is a very charming place. Here we have "ASSHOLE'S GARAGE " How lovely! In an adjacent yard is this sweet old grain truck." 

AE: "Here's a fine old wagon that hasn't deteriorated too far. Rust has begun. Still, I like it. Not your typical Sask.vehicle. This was in Pennant, Saskatchewan. A Prairiesiene, no less.

It's a 1964 Pontiac Parisienne stationwagon. The Parisienne was a Canadian Pontiac, top of the  full-size Canadian Pontiac lineup, which also had a Laurentian, and a Strato Chief. Canadian Pontiacs of this era were actually Chevrolets: they had Chevrolet engines and systems; everything but the sheet metal was Chevrolet. 
            In 1959 my father, HHB, had the only real honest-to-goodness Pontiac in Montreal: a 1959 Catalina. 1959 was the first year of the "wide-track" Pontiacs, in the US, anyway: the Canadian cars had the new wide track body on top of the skinny old Chevrolet frame. So they teetered, like boxcars, on wheels and tires that looked ridiculously inboard, as on this nice original Pontiac Laurentian, below.

 I don't know how HHB got our Catalina, but it was an extraordinary-looking car. 

My father did not drag-race our Catalina, however, though I would have encouraged him to had he shown the slightest interest. He was not a car guy. Zero interest. Drove 'em 3 years, traded them in, and bought another--after consulting me. I wonder how/why he got the only Catalina in Montreal? I was only 5 when he got it: it was the last family car decision I was not in on.  
            I admire Pontiac's ad layouts in this era. They made the wide-track cars even wider than they were, so the square-jawed men and elegant women seemed cool, but sort of tiny. The men all look like astronauts on holiday; though there wouldn't be any astronauts for a year or two. The women look like astronauts' wives, as they would be profiled in Life magazine, later in the Sixties.

BTW, I'm currently reading astronaut Michael Collins' memoir, Carrying the Fire. Collins was command module pilot on Apollo 11, the first mission to the moon. If you're weary of crybaby memoirs, this isn't one. Collins leaves out most of the personal stuff: he only hints at what a strain (or pain) it must have been to have an astronaut for a husband, or a daddy, during the Gemini and Apollo eras. But he writes well enough that his own personality does come through, and it's rare that we get a story so well told from the point of view of a pilot/astronaut/engineer. Collins comes through as a fighter-jock, a superb pilot, an engineer with a kind of modesty and charm that is the opposite of the way men are supposed to act these days. There is neither aw-shucks faux innocence nor swaggering bragadaccio, though he is a test pilot by profession, not a bunch known for either excellent prose or excess modesty.  He's a methodical man and writes with a dextrous touch, like a good pilot flying one of the sensitive, supersonic T-38 jets the astronauts used as personal transportation. This book subverts the myth that the astronauts were a bunch of space bunnies along for the ride in machines devised and operated by genii at Mission Control. Au contraire. They were all extraordinarily accomplished high-flyers and NASA was wise enough to take full advantage of their skills and experience, in planning missions and flying them. 
     I enjoy looking for literature in unlikely places. Like astronaut memoirs. So much contemporary fiction feels like drizzle. Yes, drizzle. It's cold, wet, goes on far too long, and makes you long to be anyplace else.  Novelists writing about....writing, more or less...gets tedious. Telephone-book sized opae packed with word games and collegiate American despair? I'll pass. I'd rather be in the simulator with Mike Collins.