(First half of a story about a horrible car that ended up as an heirloom. np1993 will post the second half)
It was an unusually hot and muggy day in Louisiana, 1955. The July heat was merciless, and the stench of body odor wafted in thick, rolling waves as the bus came to a stop and opened its door. Jethro Bubba and his 13 year old son Jethro Jr. had never been happier to get off of the cramped, rattling transport. Not only for what they had to endure on a daily basis, but that they would no longer have to do so for their commutes.
This day, Jethro carried with him a battered briefcase full of federal reserve notes. Greenbacks. Cashola. And he was going to buy the first car their family had ever had.
Jethro had driven a few times before, and the idea of freedom was too much to resist. He scraped together his savings and traveled with his oldest boy to the big city of New Orleans to visit the brand new Gumbo Motors dealership.
And what he and his son laid eyes on was an absolute wonderland. Poor Jethro had little idea of the actual cost of a car, and was shocked by the prices etched onto the windows of the fine, roomy sedans that lined the first row of the lot. He was about to turn around when Jethro Jr. spotted a little red car parked around the side of the building. Jethro Jr. didn’t know his numbers very well, but that didn’t stop him from bounding up and opening the door to the Gumbo Stumpy. Jethro Sr. humored his boy and stuck around long enough to poke at it. Manual transmission. Two rows of seats. Smelled new, that was the most impressive thing he could say about it, based on what he saw of the interior.
Jethro Jr. begged his father to at least have the dealership fire it up. And that’s all she wrote. The wheezing song of the anemic 1 liter 4-banger was music to Jethro Sr.'s ears. It rekindled the dream of having a car… no matter how cramped and horrid… and being one of the only families in Ponchatoula (at the time) that had their own wheels.
Shortly after purchasing the Stumpy, Jethro realized that it had only two modes: molasses, and glacial. Its hi-lo (that’s right, 2-speed manual) transmission couldn’t get out of its own way if it fell out of the car. Which only happened once. On a hill. And not surprisingly it ended up beating the car down the hill. But that’s a story for another time.
As you can see, with a 0-62 mph performance of 52.8 seconds, Jethro never bothered taking the Stubby on the highway. Ever. As impulsive as he was to buy such a tragic pile of metal, he was at least a prudent driver. After all, he’d be damned if his life savings ended up in a wrecking yard any time soon.
When his dad died of a heart attack at the tender age of 35 (which was just a week after his 18th birthday), Jethro Jr. swore to carry on the car’s legacy.
And it lived on in the family, handed down from Jethro to Jethro for generations to come.