One of the clearest memories I have of my Los Angeles childhood revolves around a car. By the early 1950s, my parents had managed to eke their way into the middle class; and for Los Angelenos, nothing signified that social status more than the automobile. For my dad, the symbol of this par excellence was the 1956 Buick.
I will never forget standing with him, at age 11, holding hands, in front of a revolving platform on which stood a two-tone, banana-yellow and black version of that massively imposing vehicle. It was the fall of 1955, when the new models came out, and in my mind's eye I can still see the tears welling in my father's eyes.
We bought the car and kept it for a decade; but it suffered one mechanical problem after another. That model's brakes came to be notoriously unreliable, for one thing. The color should have been designated "lemon yellow," for the 1956 Buick was a classic lemon in every way. But you couldn't tell that to my dad. I can still hear his raspy voice today: