Tom Kockau at Avoidable Contact writes about the 1970 Lincoln Continental:
Lincoln: Great luxury car manufacturer, until they told all people who don’t want an SUV to F themselves. But such is life. People want a certain kind of vehicle, and over-promoted incompetents torch their own castle. But I digress.
But once upon a time in a BETTER time, you could get a parade float-sized Continental in metallic turquoise, and steer the luxurious behemoth to your favorite supper club for the Old 96er, a baked potato the size of a football, and side salad with bleu cheese dressing, Herbert Tareyton smoldering in the mini Coleman cooler-sized ash tray.
And this very nice ‘70 Continental takes us back to those days of yore! I’ve always liked the 1970-71 Continental four doors. Some argue they are kind of plain for a Lincoln, a little too much Marquis, and not enough pizazz, but I always loved this style.
Ah, gentle reader–at one point, my father told me that would be my first car.
You see, when I was living with him whilst I attended the university, my great-grandmother, whom we called “Grams Great” and which is why I cannot apply that sobriquet to my grandmother even after she became a great grandmother in, what, 1997? since we called her Nana in our youth and she’s now become a Grams Great Great but not if my line, wow am I getting bad at these sentences with commas–to reiterate, my great-grandmother was still living independently in an apartment down not far from my old neighborhood and a block or two away from my brother’s first wife’s parents, and probably her, too, in 1993ish–ah, what? Oh yes, my great-grandmother, who lived independently, had one of those 1970s Lincoln Continentals, and when she came to his house one day, I was given the task of moving the car for some reason and parking it on the street. Ah, gentle reader. I was still a novice even though I probably had my license by that point, but I had a devil of a time parking it even at a patch of turf between driveways–not even parallel parking which I would get adept at two years later because I when I returned to Milwaukee, I stayed with friends where street parking was the only parking. On that summer day, though, I could not handle that much car. Every time I tried to park, I was three feet into the roadway. Three feet? Well, not close to the curb in any event. And my father said to me that that Lincoln would be my first car as he expected I would inherit it from her when she passed soon. Ah, but she was at his funeral but two years later.
It might even have been in that blue that Tom spotted.
It certainly triggered a memory. I like Tom’s Lust Object posts not so much because I have fond memories of the cars themselves, but I do remember a time when those long Cadillacs and Lincolns and (sometimes) Buicks were considered the height of luxury. Like something my godfather uncle would drive. And that I might never aspire to.
