'58 Chevy Convertible

By Ken Thompson

      I can remember the Chevy and the McCarthy brothers like it was just yesterday.

     It was a 1958 Chevrolet Bel Air Impala Convertible, black with a white top and with a red and silver interior. It had dual headlights, small chrome fins on the front fenders, wide whitewalls, and glittering chrome hubcaps with "spinners". The power plant was a 348 V8 with a Power Glide automatic transmission. It had a pretty loud radio with the "right" sound "Rock 'n' Roll" - of course. It was the most beautiful car I'd ever seen!

     As soon as he got it in late 1957, Hank McCarthy took fire-engine red enamel paint and personalized HIS car by painting the part of the wheel rim you could see between the whitewall and the hubcap. It made a beautiful car look fantastic. Hank took great care of that car. With that car and who he was, I figured he could just about get any girl. I wasn't sure what "get" meant but I was sure that if anyone could, Hank could, particularly with that car.

     I knew Hank primarily 'cause he was Joey's older brother. Joey as one of the other kids in the apartment houses on Avenue "C". He went to Erasmus but was best known for getting into fights. He just didn't know when to keep from opening his mouth with a smart-ass remark. In truth, he wasn't a good fighter or fast or strong; you'd figure he'd learn to shut-up but he didn't. Sometimes the fight didn't happen when he announced he was gonna call his brother, Hank, to help him out. When that didn't work or the other kid knew Hank wasn't around, I'd simply stay around the fight to make sure it was only one-on-one. Sometimes I wound up in the fight if only to make sure it was "fair". I think Joey appreciated me for that. Joey took some awful beatings. Mine weren't much better. I was pretty glad I went to a different High School.

     Hank was a bit of a legend. He had played football for Erasmus, was a great stickball player, had a good build and great mannish-boy looks, a nice smile, and an engaging way about him. You just
couldn't not like him.

     Besides all this, Hank was best known for fighting two men who were harassing a woman as she was coming out of one of the bars on Church Avenue. In protecting her honor, he took a beating, the woman got away, and the two men wound up not looking too much better than Hank. The story lasted all of one Morning Edition of the Daily News but the legend was set for us kids and the women in the neighborhood.

     After high school, Hank went into the Marines and served as an MP first in Germany and then in San Francisco. When he got out in 1957, he took his savings and bought the convertible.

     After the Marines, Hank was still well known in the neighborhood and got a personal referral to one of the large bank branches on Flatbush Avenue. They hired him and trained him to be a house appraiser for home mortgages. Most of these were new construction by Brooklyn people heading to truly greener pastures on Lunk Guylind. Joey and I would sometimes go with him on his inspections simply for the excitement of being in the presence of greatness and riding in a fantastic convertible. Hank would always treat us to lunch in small diners or grills in whatever area he was appraising. Everyone seemed to know him and was his friend. What I liked most was that Hank always treated Joey and me like real people, not like kids.

     While Hank had moved on with his life, he could still get the stickball bat anytime he wanted, in any of our games, to take a few hits. When he did, we all moved back about 50 feet though we knew he would put the Spaldeen into the treetops. We were honored to give him some swings in any of our games.

Hank also introduced us to Gilgo Beach on the south shore of Lunk Guylind. It had sand dunes, great waves, and no crowds. But what it had most was room for Hank and guy and girl friends from Brooklyn, Queens, and Lunk Guylind to have beach parties with garbage cans filled with iced beers and sodas, places for barbecues, loud music, ball playing, and privacy (if you know what I mean). Joey and I were peer-age "playmates" for the Hank's girl friends that had to bring younger sisters along with them. Compared to Hank and his buddies we were mere children. Gilgo wasn't Coney Island but it was different and in many ways great. I never got the full education there that Joey and I thought was our birth-right for just being "family" to Hank.

     In 1960 Hank got engaged, at Patricia Murphy's Restaurant in downtown Brooklyn, with a ring hidden inside a popover, to an absolutely beautiful and buxom girl from Ocean Avenue and they got married. Just after that, he and his wife moved to the Port Washington area of Lunk Guylind to a house that he found that he both could afford, would appreciate in value, and that he could raise a family in.

    On one of his first visits back to the neighborhood, I asked Hank why he moved away and didn't stay in Brooklyn with us. I can remember him pausing and just looking at me. He crouched down, leaned over and told me he loved Brooklyn and would always love Brooklyn but that Brooklyn was changing and that it wasn't always for the better. He told me that you couldn't see it from inside Brooklyn but that once you got outside for any time, and looked back, you could see it all happening.

     He tried to explain the factors like bank's "redlining" and discriminating against parts of Brooklyn, combined with real estate agents 'block-busting" to churn sales, combined with "white-flight" to the suburbs, combined with the Dodgers moving to California meant that Brooklyn was going down-hill and wasn't the place to be for him. He just stared at me looking for some sign of understanding that I couldn't give him. I just looked back and faked some agreement with a "Sure, okay." I refused to accept in my heart what he said; though I knew that that he was honest and had never lied to me. I also knew that banking and real estate was his business and that he ought to know. I so much hoped that he was wrong.

     About a year later, he had his Mom, his sister Maureen, and Joey move to the Roslyn Heights area on Lunk Guylind.

     I quickly lost touch with Joey as we went very separate ways. In truth, other than some Gilgo, stickball memories, and outings in Hank's convertible there wasn't much there. Joey was a nice guy but we didn't share much else. Besides I didn't much like getting dragged into his fights.
     Through all the years I've come to know that Hank was right on so many things.

     All of this came flooding back, triggered by an ad I saw for a scale model of a "Fabulous Fifties" 1958 Chevrolet Impala Convertible for $135 plus shipping and handling.

     Hank was a cool and classy guy, an icon for growing up in Brooklyn in the 1950's, and had it right-on. So was the '58 Chevy rag-top!

[end] © Copyright by Ken Thompson - 2004.