Travels With Putt-Putt

(Letters From the Dog Box #1)

The first car I remember my mom driving was a late-fifties Ford two-door.  We called her the Putt-Putt. She seemed old and worn, not flashy like the newer cars of the day, with their bright paint and fancy rocket-style fins. But to Denise and me, she was a privately chauffeured limousine.  

And Mom was our personal driver, delivering us to all of our essential engagements during the week. Places like nursery school at the bowling alley, where the two of us refined our hoki-pokie steps and mastered musical chairs and other life skills with other post toddlers of our generation. Developmental games that would eventually refine us towards our defined futures.  We traveled to haircuts, birthday parties, and play dates to play tag or burst peniattas. Escursions often coincided with Mom going to visit her friends, where she might play Bridge, or watch someone’s baby, or just stop by to have coffee and talk while we loitered around, mostly within her hearing range, and hoped for hard candy treats from a fancy glass coffee table bowl if we behaved.

Grocery shopping was somehow a weekly treat, especially for the short time when we were allowed to stroll the toy aisle by ourselves while Mom shopped for the family. Sometimes a store employee would watch us from the end of the aisle, but most knew us and let us be. When we behaved ourselves, Mom would let us pick out a small toy or treat, provided it cost less than a dollar.  Sometimes I would fail that opportunity to behave, but Denise would inevitably share her treat with me, secretly, in the back seat of Putt-Putt.

Putt-Putt’s pitted front grill featured a distinctive metal disk at her center, which was maybe 10 inches in diameter. I was convinced that this was the actual honking part of the horn and would occasionally devise ways to prove that to be true. Of course, it wasn’t, but I still devised ways to test my theory. I’m still not convinced that I wasn’t right, a stubbornness that my sister says persists to this day.

I also recall a platform that turned Putt-Putt’s back seat into a play area. It covered over and across the footspace, or floor area, in the back seat. It was held by straps that hung over the backs over the front seat, supporting the front of this sheet metal platform closed off the back foot-well and, when covered with pillows, blankets, and toys, became a large play area, or bed, where we could sleep for a while during trips beyond our city, or look over Mom’s shoulders and watch drive-in movies. 

I remember falling asleep back there during a movie where a man drove his car into a swimming pool full of soap suds, and watching portions of The Alamo with John Wayne. There was one special night during a trip to Grandma’s, lying back there and watching meteors fall from the sky through the back window. Mostly, though, I think Denise and I simply fell to sleep back there, not knowing the gentle lift that carried us off to beds, our dreams interrupted only by the gentle tuck under our sheets and a soft kiss good night. 

-dp-

9-3-25 (318/426/491)