Cadillac Man? No, My Father Favored Buicks

Assessing the precarious market position Cadillac finds itself in these days, The New York Times Tuesday described the General Motors car brand as once “the ultimate destination as car owners prospered and moved up from Chevrolet, Oldsmobile and Buick to demonstrate their success in life” (https://nyti.ms/2Zygmqk).

My father was a loyal Buick customer. Every five years or so he would buy another Buick. Yet he, too, succumbed for a short while to the siren call of Cadillac (actually, it was more my mother who pined for a Caddy, but more on that later).

The first car of his I remember was a green Buick, probably a 1950 model. It had an elongated, almost torpedo-like sleek shape. I have few memories of driving in it. In 1955, when shortly before I turned six, Dad bought a blue Buick Special with a white top, a four door sedan with air vents along the front fenders, a Buick trademark. As the youngest of three, I was relegated to the middle rear seat, the one over the drive shaft hump. Many an argument over leg and fanny room broke out with my brother and sister. Dad often threatened to pull over to the side of the highway and spank us if we didn’t stop bickering.

It was in that car that our parents informed us that for the summer of 1956 we would be sent to sleepaway camp for the first time instead of vacationing at Takanassee, a Catskills resort in Fleischmanns, NY. Eight weeks away from our parents. We’d be shipped off to Camp Massad Aleph where our father’s friend’s son summered. My brother Bernie, 11, sister Lee, 9, and I, 7, howled our displeasure. To no avail, and eventual pleasure. 

That car provided Lee with an enduring memory of our father that she related in her eulogy of him. She recounted how one Sunday morning when she was in fourth grade she alone had gone to our Hebrew school’s classes as Bernie was sick and I not yet old enough to be required to attend. While she sat through classes, our father went to a Men’s Club meeting.

“At 12:00 we met and walked to the car, a big Buick. At the time that we had parked, there were no other cars on the street. However, when we returned, the car was now boxed in between two cars. My dad was recovering from a (shoulder) bursitis operation and the strength in his arm was still limited. He attempted to maneuver the non-power steering wheeled car out of the spot. For what seemed an excruciating long time he struggled, groaned, cursed and finally collapsed at the wheel. I was horrified and frightened and in my childish way thought that we would never get out. It was then that he turned to me, with a strange grin on his face, and asked me to help him turn the wheel. My first response was, no. What could I do to help him free us from this impasse? He calmly showed me what I needed to do and together we moved the resistant wheel. Our hands, reaching one over the other, worked for what seemed an eternity to move the wheels and reposition the car. When it finally happened we screamed with joy and laughed and laughed. The whole way back to our home we reviewed what had happened, how we had worked together and how funny it was.”

Dad made sure the next car he bought had power steering. It was a 1961 Buick LeSabre, desert fawn in color. In other words, light tan. Bernie learned to drive on that car. In 1965 it made way for a Buick Electra 225, green with an off-white vinyl top. The car was massive, forcing our father to work magic each night he slipped it inside our narrow garage. He would hug as close as he could to the left side of the garage, then he had to slide across the front bench seat to exit the car from the passenger door. 

I was behind the wheel of that huge Electra—18 feet, 8 inches in length—the first time I drove on the highway, along the New England Thruway as my parents and I made our way up to Orange, Mass., to visit the family of Lee’s roommate the first year she studied in Israel. I remember observing the signs prohibiting trucks and buses from using the left lane. It felt safer driving in the left lane, though my father kept telling me to drive faster. 

When it was time to get a new car, Mom prevailed upon then 58-year-old Dad to trade up to a Caddy, a car more fitting his success as an independent businessman. He settled on a 1970 blue Sedan de Ville, an inch longer than the Electra. Dad seemed self-conscious driving a Cadillac in our row house Brooklyn neighborhood. He divested himself of this dubious distinction in 1975 by returning to his roots with a blue Buick Regal, much like a LeSabre. 

Within a month he talked himself into believing the car, at exactly 18 feet, was too small. So he engineered a three way deal: He would give Gilda and me the Regal, we would hand over our 1969 Buick Skylark to Lucy, one of his loyal employees, and Dad would buy a new Electra. We hated the Regal, as well. Too big for us. We ditched it for a Datsun Sentra hatchback. 

Dad had a few more cars until he stopped driving when he was 82 in 1994, explaining that in his new home near Bernie in Rockville, MD, “the roads don’t know me here.” His last car was a blue Oldsmobile Cutlass. He gave it to our son Dan who had recently passed his driving test. Dan didn’t care that it was an old man’s car. It was wheels, freedom. We soon swapped it out for a more sporty Mazda 323. 

Japan Through a Long Lens

The unfolding catastrophe in Japan has me thinking about our family trip there in October 1991 when Dan was 13 and Ellie 10. We turned one of my business trips into a lifelong memory, made all the more vibrant by the tragedy of recent days.

While I interviewed executives of Ito-Yokado, one of the country’s largest diversified retailers whose holdings include 7-Eleven, Gilda and the kids toured Tokyo, Mount Fuji, Disney World Japan, and other areas around Tokyo.

It’s hard to believe 20 years have passed. No doubt much has changed in Japan, but here are some reflections that are still relevant, or at least, interesting from a historical perspective:

Twenty years ago, if not still today, the sight of Western children captivated Japanese, especially Japanese children. They’d often approach dirty-blonde-haired Ellie to touch her head and giggle.

Tokyo addresses are randomly numbered—4 could be next to 160 next to 89. I can’t remember why, just that it was confusing. Only by associating a location with a distinctive landmark could you find a destination. You couldn’t rely on signs, unless you read Japanese. Shortly after our visit, English was added to some subway stop signs. Nor could you rely on taxi drivers. If you handed one a piece of paper with your destination written in Japanese, there was a strong possibility you’d still be stalemated because the driver was illiterate.

Crossing a street on foot was a challenge. With red lights stopping traffic in all directions, pedestrians crossed in traditional fashion and diagonally as well. It doesn’t sound imposing until you realize that at major intersections thousands of pedestrians crossed at the same time. Only a firm grasp on Ellie’s hand prevented her from being swept away by the surge.

Back then, only the finest restaurants or those in hotels had English menus. In most places you more or less knew what you were ordering by pointing to either a picture or a plastic representation of a prepared meal. A favorite bagged snack food, comparable to our potato chips, was dried squid. Married women and children ate a mostly fish and rice diet at home, while businessmen feasted on Western-style food for lunch and dinner, usually purchased on expense accounts equal to their salaries.

Japanese women craved more fulfillment and independence. They deferred marriage for careers and, frankly, because the men were immature. The men had four passions: sumo wrestling, playing pachinko (a vertical pinball game), reading comic books and drinking. Delaying marriage contributed to the country’s negative birth rate.

Women’s status was so stunted that even if the highest executive at a meeting was female she was still expected to serve tea to all the men. Men did not defer to women, or children, when entering an elevator. They would push Gilda, Dan and Ellie aside to scramble in first.

Japanese are prodigious smokers. Yet you rarely saw butts on the street. Instead, they crushed their discarded cigarettes in vertical ashtrays hung every few yards along the sidewalk. Their fastidiousness extended as well to graffiti. Over two weeks’ time we saw just one graffiti display, inside a lighthouse stairwell outside Osaka.

Back in 1991 Japan was a full employment economy. That meant department stores hired women to stand in front of elevators to bow to customers when the doors opened. It also meant distribution of labor at the cash register. One person rung up your purchase, another wrapped it, a third took your payment and returned any change, and a fourth handed you your purchase and bowed in appreciation. Full employment also meant no one could be laid off. Our joint-venture publishing company, for example, could not dismiss an incompetent editor. We simply moved him to a non-editorial position, such as circulation manager.

During Japan’s supercharged economic era, continuing even to today, overworking was a danger, so much so that people literally used to die in their tracks, while walking. An article in a paper at the time of our visit explained how other pedestrians would pass a stricken victim and whisper, “ ah, karoshi.” The word means “exhaustion death.” According to the Associated Press, “In the fiscal year ending in March 2010, the Japanese government found about 100 karoshi deaths (caused by a heart attack or stroke). It also ruled that 63 suicides were caused by overwork.” Last month, AP reported, Mazda was ordered by a court to pay $770,000 in damages to the parents of an employee ruled to have committed suicide over depression from being overworked.