Shades of Gray

I'm on the road, book-touring with my novel, The O'Briens. Last night I read the The Regulator Bookshop in Durham, NC; the night before it was Dogstar Books in Lancaster PA, and the night before that I was reading and talking at Highland Park (NJ) Public Library. Tonight is The Flyleaf in Chapel Hill NC and tomorrow I'm part of the Associated Artists gallery-hop night in Winston-Salem NC. Barnhill Books in Winston-Salem on Saturday afternoon.
     The photo below is from Princeton NJ, which seems about the most prosperous town in the world. It certainly is a handsome place. I had a great lunch at Teresa's in Palmer Square, recommended by the manager of Labyrinth, one of the great independent bookstores. In Princeton--as in all precincts of upper-middle class America, these days--most of the cars (let's say 90%) were in that very narrow color spectrum that runs all the way from silver, through gray, to black. What does this signify, do you think? What happened to American exuberance, not to mention big red Buicks? (Or Fords: see my previous blog, on Ford's Styling Brochure of 1956) 
       Go to, say, a golf club. Look at the cars in the parking lot. (But 70% won't be cars; they'll be SUVs). Report back, please, on the percentages of silver-to-black-to-gray. It's dispiriting.

                                                                          Palmer Square, Princeton NJ

Ford Styling brochure, 1956

Dan Picasso sent these images from a Ford Story of Styling sales brochure of 1956.

1. "From the beginning the styling of your new car's interior parallels the development of it's exterior. These two styling phases must proceed together to assure pleasing integration of inside and outside appearance--so necessary now that glass areas are larger and cars are lower, making interiors more visible than ever before. Fashion and color specialists, textile designers, plastics and paint technicians and craftsmen in many fields constitute the interior styling team"


2. "Seat contours are developed for both comfort and smart contemporary effects. Arrangements of fabrics, leathers, carpets and plastic and metal ornamentation are planned fro dramatic tasteful harmony.Color beauty and high interest are everywhere in the studio where your car's interior is designed. Scores of artists are seen sketching, painting and modeling their concepts of the advanced comfort, convenience and and safety features that will lend still greater pleasure to your motoring."


3. "On display are groups of textures and colors that may never before have been combined, but are strikingly beautiful together. the best of these new ideas will find their way into the car that is being designed for you. + In the interior studio the styling process is much the same as the exterior studio. Design ideas are developed as full-size clay interiors, modeled in fine details by studio sculptors and either painted to simulate new fabrics and trims or covered with the fabrics themselves. Stylists keep always in mind the specifications set forth in the original plan and 'package', for their are certain critical interior dimensions that allow no deviation. These include basic seat and instrument panel measurements to assure that you will have ample head, shoulder and leg room. The "package" further specifies the locations of door handles, window regulators and arm rests+ Periodically each detail is double-checked, to make certain that the instruments will be visible to the driver, that the steering wheel and controls can be comfortably used and that no annoying reflections will be caused by the sun or by the headlights of other cars."

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One morning in Maine

Have been enjoying a brief spell at home, in between bouts of book-touring for my new novel The O'Briens. Today a gorgeous springtime Saturday with a stiff NW breeze blowing I'd say just about 20 knots steady: kind of cold. But when we went down to Center Harbor there were already a few boats in the water. 

Boats like this Friendship sloop (below) were rocking on their moorings. Blowing white horses out on Eggemoggin Reach. 

I went into town yesterday afternoon to sign books at my favorite store, Blue Hill Books.

And was happy to see The O'Briens on the list.

On Monday I hit the road for NJ, PA, NC, and Toronto. Book tour events schedule is up here.

1937 Ford Woodie in Brooklin Maine

We're on a run of woodies lately. This one from last summer, at Sean McKay's shop, Affordable Performance, out on the Naskeag Road in Brooklin, Maine. Sean is mostly a Porsche guy but there's always room for a woodie. The WoodenBoat School is just down the road. So is Brooklin Boatyard. We know all about wooden vehicles around here. (Is a sailboat a vehicle?)

Surfing Ruined My Life

I was in Southern California on the O'Briens Book Tour last week. Woke up early one Sunday morning in Santa Barbara, in a guest cottage up on Mission Ridge. T he night before had read & talked at Project Fine Art Zone. Went out looking for breakfast stuff. Ended up at Gelson's Market on Upper State Street. Coffee, grapefruit, croissant. (Having grown up in Montreal, it still troubles my delicate frenchified ear to hear Americans pronouncing the 't' in "croissant").
            Caught this woodie in the empty Sunday 8 a.m. parking lot, at Loreto Plaza.
             According to Pat Rogers, this is a 1936 Ford.

Is it woodie, or woody? Anyway, I've always wanted one, but they belong to a different old-car market than the one I inhabit. I favor old plain-jane trucks. These are what I can afford on a novelist's salary. Would need to add a few zeroes to go woodie. My Santa Barbara pal Frank Mariani knows everything there is to know re. restoring and maintaining these wagons. Autoliterate featured a 1932 Ford woodie a couple weeks back.

        Today, in Maine, I saw a PT Cruiser with vinyl faux-woodgrain on the body. Something about "history being repeated as farce" crossed my mind. Was that Marx?

Meanwhile, I have been promised transportation via 1965 Ferrari from my book tour date in Winston Salem NC next week to the Virginia International Speedway.

On the Airline in Maine

If you know Downeast Maine, you've probably driven The Airline, which is that long, lonesome stretch of backwoods highway from Bangor to Calais, Maine and the Canadian border. There isn't much to see along the way, except spruce and birch and--if you're unlucky--moose. Some desolate villages and once-were-motels. To people from the Maritime Provinces, the Airline has always been a gateway to the US, and an unlikely introduction it is to the most powerful and richest nation on earth. Because power and riches are not what you see along The Airline. The road is cut through Hancock and Washington Counties. Washington one of the poorest counties of the state. Watch out for moose. And turkeys. I have never found a great place to stop, even for coffee; the Airline is really all about getting there fast. If you're heading to Canada, wait for the Tim Horton's at St Stephen or St George, New Brunswick, always full of cheerful, talkative Maritimers--Tim Hortons in Canada have a neighbourly vibe, I think because of the lingering small-town-Canada tradition of people going out for morning coffee or afternoon tea.      
          No one seems to know why Maine Route 9 from Bangor to Calais is called The Airline. It is significantly straighter and faster than US 1, and one theory is that back in the day (before airlines, as in the O'Hare and Logan and LaGuardia variety), plainspoken routes that were obvious shortcuts, like this 90-mile-through-the-backwoods stretch of Maine 9, were often called "airlines".
             Saw this sign along the road.

              Not much to say, is there? Hope that he or she finds one.

Spiritual Vehicles, and Clark Blaise

                                                                                     4/11/12   Bridgeton, Maine

That means there's no Bondo underneath that paint job, right?

This from Clark Blaise, author of (most recently) The Meagre Tarmac:

"Those ancient Homeric names were very common in Québec in the 1870-1910, if my family is any example.  (As were slave-names in the States, ending perhaps with Cassius Clay).  Pepere was an Achille, and among my baby aunts and uncles were an Ovide, Athenee, Eurydice, Homere, etc. but there wasn't a single Jean-Pierre or Marc-Andre among them."--C.B.


And from Brian Bartlett: "Among my ancestors from the 1700s and 1800s in New Brunswick and Maine/Massachusetts, names included Moses, Jesse, Amos, Alpheus, Adeth, Seth, Benjamin, Joshua, Samuel, Malthiah, Elisha, Nathan, Peleg, Bathsheba, Zadock & -- not Biblical but decidedly Protestant -- Luther...but I can't find a single Homeric name. Makes me wonder if the Homeric names were adopted by Quebecois Catholics but not by English Protestants. "---B.B. 

p.s. PB talks about The O'Briens  on youtube.