steveb leatherworks: the blather

My grandfather Max, had a thing for cars.

Being a traveling vaudevillian entertainer traveling the USA from the mid 1920’s (see the caravan pic with my Mom holding the dog and my grandmother in the back car) through serving in WWII in the USO, he knew that transportation was pretty important to his ability to survive. Having a sense of style was part of the deal when you’re an entertainer in the public eye and traveling from town to town – and so my grandfather favored machines with character. In the early 1960’s well after he had retired from “the act”, he bought a Corvair, infamously featured in Ralph Nader’s book “Unsafe at Any Speed”. That sketchy review didn’t faze Max though, he dug the Corvairs style. Screw Ralph Nader.

Much to his chagrin, my grandmother wound up running the Corvair up on a neighbors front lawn one afternoon when leaving my house, taking down their front porch – all in front of a street full of neighbors on a Spring afternoon, making a mess of the suspension and the neighbors lawn and porch. The car was promptly fixed, porch rebuilt and lawn resodded. Corvair was sold, replaced with a Mercedes – his pride and joy, he loved the shit outta that car and drove it until he had a stroke in 1979…I passed it on to a good friends family and it saw another 8 years of service.

My grandmother never drove again after the Corvair lawnmower/ housewrecker debacle, because as she put it “driving didn’t agree with her”.