When recently flipping through an old Auto Trader, I thought of my former neighbors, Bill and Gert Tabor. They had the most stately, bronze-colored LeSabre. The brown, vinyl interior matched the hue of a tater. They mostly babied that car from new like there was none greater, never really seeming to care that no amount of leaded gasoline would sate her. Eventually, the old 455 started to labor, so Bill took it to the shop to see if a rebuild could save her. The tinworm in mid-Michigan is also a real hater – a giant rust hole had developed in the front fender, about the size of a small crater. The texture of the roof’s vinyl “skin” became rough as that of a gator. Eventually, she was a goner, that big, bronze LeSabre.
Bill brought home a beige Toyota Avalon to replace her. We neighborhood folks, we all called him a traitor. “How could you, Bill Tabor, in this town of blue collar labor?” My mind flashed back to all the summertime baths and coats of wax he gave her. In time, with the closure of the second, major General Motors factory in town, the Tabors said, “Flint, see ya’ later!” I’ll bet that LeSabre is now an industrial-sized refrigerator. Perhaps in Decatur.
Flint, Michigan.
Sunday, February 20, 2011.
Unfortunate outcome for an old Buick. Seems that the two door models, convertibles, GS models, etc. are more inclined to be saved than a four door though this is a hardtop as opposed to a sedan and that makes it more desirable.
As for the Avalon, in my mind, a good car but fuggetaboutit; was probably made in the U.S. however, not Flint of course but I imagine Georgetown, KY.
You make some great points… With as many models of foreign-branded cars that are built in the U.S., I suppose many of those jobs aren’t union jobs, which would be a main point of contention for many in this area.
As for this particular LeSabre, the saddest thing about its rust was that the rest of the body seemed straight and dent-free. Those wheels are also one of my all-time favorite designs.
+1 on those Buick Rallies!
Or rather, the Avalon was resurrected from the Buick and continued it’s whole life on the road as a refrigerator!
All things have a life-cycle, even old Buicks! The one consolation is that this one served far longer than most others from the same vintage.
One thing about the Avalon of a former neighbor – at least the radio probably has a fader. I wonder if they will someday buy a Navigator? To know, I would have to be some kind of prognosticator.
Did you notice the LeSabre looks like it has a hitch for a trailer? A future Navigator would also be a suitable wager, if its owner is, indeed, a sailor. (Or has a sailboat, anyway. There are lots of lakes in Michigan.)
Well said, Joseph and Jim.
Were these comments written on a whim?
Thank you kindly, my good man!
…But with my attention span,
I was lucky just to find
Words that only sort of rhymed. 😉
The 455 she did ran
Until it no more can
It found itself in a bind
And the crusher was quite unkind
The house looks like it dates back to the mid or late 50’s. The bath (or bath and a half) could either be in Robin’s Egg Blue or Butternut. A GE dishwasher, if you were lucky enough, that also matched the color of the refrigerator. I will venture that there was central heating and wall to wall carpeting.
Based on the above, the owners must of felt he was living on “God’s Green Acre” and the Buick was an ideal choice for the driveway.==;-}
Chuck, you’re spot on! This was actually in my very first neighborhood, so your estimates of year of construction, number of baths, colors, etc. are all accurate. I loved this neighborhood when we lived here.
Our (slightly raised) ranch was similar to this one, and we had 1 1/2 baths and wood paneling in our basement (which had blue and green shag carpeting).
Yes – the “Tabors” could have been so many of our neighbors I remember through our years in Flint. 🙂
I completely forgot about the wood paneling which was also in the den of the house that I grew up in. What memories!!! ==;-}
Given the location, those houses probably all had Buicks in front of them at some point or another.
At first glance I thought this picture was taken some 20-25 years before it actually was.
A salient, observation, nlpnt, and you’re probably right. One neighbor (actually a Buick retiree) always had Buicks in their driveway. By the time my parents moved from Flint in the early 1990s, they had a late-model LeSabre sedan and a little, red Skyhawk wagon.
Regarding time frame, I remember deliberately composing this image to give that illusion. What I saw in just this frame reminded me so much of early childhood.
This picture brings back warm memories for me, but also makes me a bit melancholy about the brutal march of time. Both of my grandmothers lived in “mid-century” ranch-style homes, and had Buicks in the driveway. There was something so comforting about that–homey, safe, comfortable.
And I had to laugh about the descriptions of interiors of the era in the comments. My Pop’s mother, in Pass Christian Mississippi, had a kitchen with turquoise-colored appliances, white cabinets with a black pinstripe outline on the cabinet doors and “specked” formica counters, with bathrooms that were either light blue or light green tile. My mother’s mother, Mère, in Metairie Louisiana had “early stainless steel” appliances with yellow formica countertops and brown wood-stained cabinets and and each bathroom had different pasted colored fixtures and tile–one was pink, one was yellow and one was aqua. High style ranch home living! Sadly, Katrina heavily damaged both and they had to be demolished. The neighborhoods are totally different now and filled with giant new houses. And not a Buick in sight, but plenty of Toyota products. So I guess you really can’t go home again.
GN, I’m sorry to hear about each of your grandmothers’ houses, and as an indirect result of that terrible event.
Having grown up in and around houses with the kinds of furnishings, layouts and color schemes you and Chuck described, I have an affinity for it now. I’ve had friends and relatives who had bought homes from this era and systematically removed every removable trace of the era in which they were built. I’m talking about perfectly well-kept, serviceable things like tile, wood, etc.
I know what it’s like to make something that’s now yours, your own. But to me, trying to make a 50’s ranch look like an upscale boutique hotel is often just a complete failure in both concept and execution. But that’s all a matter of taste. 🙂
My old neighborhood reminded me of Charlie Brown’s, and I loved it for that reason.
When I was in middle school in Ohio, in the early 70’s, one set of parents had a beautiful dark blue full-sized Buick convertible with a white top.
I don’t think it was a LeSabre, but it was a full-size car. A Century, maybe?
I remember thinking at the time that even though I was into hot rods and street machines, it was a beautiful car.
I still do.
Dan, you’re right – I think the convertible you remember was probably a Centurion.
The early B-Body Buicks of this generation (1971 – ’73) are my absolute favorite-looking of the four GM divisions. They may have been behemoths, but to me, and in any body style, they were styled flawlessly.
There was once was a man named Dennis; while muscular, he was far from a menace. His writing was ever so fine, his rhyming subtlety sublime.
That’s as much as I can muster, poems sure do cause fluster.
Shafer, I will give you an A for effort. You should have seen the hamster wheel turning in my head to come up with the couplets above in my response to Tom in Phoenix.
A 71 lesabre, my very first car, in green with a white vinyl top. And bubble wrap on the seats, covering some strange not vinyl not cloth material. Of course it was 1983 by then, and the 350 tended to hesitate in acceleration. But it had room for 8 kids no problem.
One of the handsomest sedans ever built.
To our dueling writers named J
I must mark this effort as merely ok
For all of your talent which I muchly adore
Nobody could rhyme the characters name Tabor?
(Just had to try ?)
If it’s pronounced as T’bore,
one could reference Ava Gabor.
There once was a Buick Le Sabre
Whose interior looked like a ‘tater
It drove till it holed
Which the owners, who were old,
Replaced with a beige-flavoured traitor
In it to win it! Well done!
For GN above: for me, every homely memory of (admittedly a bit dull) ’50’s housing, with variable income-related car waxed outside (now the posh only live with the posh, you notice?), is gone not by nature but by Hurricane Greed. Seems anything less than palatial, any bedrooms less than five and any places less than 4 to clean your ass is considered inadequate – by the inevitable four occupants. And their two beige Camrys.
Mind you, nostalgia isn’t as good as once it was somehow. Our cheap n’ high-coloured mid-century was pretty much extruded from every available form of asbestos, and, given the diminutive size and thus our rubbing against the walls, it’s charm might kill me yet. And those Camrys in every metric vastly outdo any 6.5 litre Buick.
Well, it was better weather then, you can’t argue with that. Or…
I understand that the US has a 70 billion dollar trade deficit with Japan, 50 billion dollars of which derives from the automotive sector.
Will see if Avalon if still gonna be on Road 45 years from now?
Inherited Grandpa’s beautiful metallic brown ’70 Lesabre HT sedan after he passed in ’76. Drove it for three years into the next gas crisis which caused a rewrite.
People say I’m lazy
and no good as a hoon.
Cuz I drive Pops’ Buick in the morning;
go broke fillin’er in the afternoon.
But I ain’t asking nobody fer nothin’
if I can’t push her on my own.
If you don’t like the life I’m leadin’,
then just leave this LeSabre boy alone.