🎧 389: They earned . . .

In Which Herb and Lorna Retire to Florida

THEY EARNED THE MONEY, and they had a great time doing it. More important than the money, and more satisfying, was the work they did during the intense months that they spent earning it, a time when the whole house seemed to sing, when, in fact, it did sing, with the record player in the living room going all the time, playing their old favorite songs over and over and over again, turned up high to play over the sound of their work.
     They cleared the living room, carrying all the furniture to the room behind the bookcase, the room that first Mrs. Stolz and later Ella and Bert had lived in. There they piled it higgeldy-piggledy, facing any which way, chairs and tables and whatnots and lamps all in a huddle, done with, past use. In the living room they left only the piano, the console radio and record player that Herb had bought for Lorna, and the rose-colored sofa, pulled away from the wall, to the center of the room, closer to the fire. Herb brought his workbench and Lorna’s and all his tools and all of Lorna’s up from the cellar into the living room. There they worked, all day, every day. Herb hammered and welded, bent and cut and pounded on a tiny scale, fashioning the armatures and cams and gears and pulleys that made the couples move. Lorna bent over her enormous magnifying glass, carving the couples themselves, poking the tip of her tongue out between her lips when she made the finest, most exacting passes with her miniature files, grinning when she achieved a satisfactory likeness of a friend or neighbor.
     For the first time, Herb could talk to the sculptor who would have to realize his designs, the woman who would have to create the little people who were going to have to perform as Herb had imagined they would. And for the first time, Lorna could sketch an idea of her own, model it roughly with her hands in the air, try to describe it in words, and have Herb make it work. Or, greatest pleasure of all, in the evenings, when they had finished their work and eaten dinner, they would sit side by side on the rose-colored sofa, in front of the fire, in the midst of their work, surrounded by their benches and tools and supplies and works in progress, and admire what they’d done. Often, one or the other would suggest something new.
     “I’ve got a kind of complicated idea, Lorna,” Herb might say.
     Lorna might look up at Herb over the top of her glasses, run the tip of her tongue over her lips, and ask, “How complicated?”
     “Pretty complicated.”
     “Well, then, I think we’d better try it out in the lab.”

WHEN THEY HAD BOUGHT all the Spotters’ stock, when every Spotter had been saved, they began working for themselves, first to make up what they had lost, then to make up what they had spent to buy the Spotters’ stock, and then to finance the circuit of the United States they had been looking forward to, and their retirement.
     A station wagon would have been the practical choice, but Herb was no longer in a mood to be practical, so he ordered a gold metal-flake Avanti for the grand tour. The day the Avanti arrived, Herb hustled it into the service department, which he persisted in calling the repair shop. Old Randolph was long gone, but his son, Randy, or, to Herb, Young Randolph, ran the service department now, and he was as fond of Herb and as indebted to him for technical advice as Old Randolph had been. Herb had been discussing his plans with Young Randolph for some time, so he knew just what was needed. He had already fabricated a heavy-duty trailer hitch, and he had heavy rear springs and shocks, enormous mirrors, fog lights, and other equipment on hand, all of it unusual gear for an Avanti. When the Avanti arrived in the shop, Young Randolph put his hand on Herb’s shoulder, and said, “Herb, I’m going to build you the best trailer puller in these United States.”
     Herb left the repair shop and walked directly to the office of the current president of Babbington Studebaker, Wilbur Haggerty. The men had taken to calling him “Haggard Bill” because of the visible effects on him of Studebaker’s going to the brink so many times and scrabbling back, but just barely, leaving Haggard Bill Haggerty limp and sweaty, his heart pounding. Herb gave notice of his intention to retire in two weeks. The next day, at Hargrove Slide Rules, Lorna simply quit, to the surprise and great relief of Edwin Berwick, now president, who had been wondering how to tell Lorna that in a month the name of the company would change to Hargrove Computational Devices and that within a year they would begin producing electronic calculators.

In Topical Guide 389, Mark Dorset considers Cars: Studebakers: The Avanti  from this episode.

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