You gonna buy Thelma's car?

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I had been teaching math in the pre-freshman program at Tuskegee Institute the summer of ’67, and Buzzy, my grad school roommate, had been studying Arabic at Princeton. He took the Greyhound down to Alabama to meet me, and we set off.

My ’56 Merc was dying when I drove it from Boston to Tuskegee at the beginning of the summer. The transmission was obviously going bad, and the car would jerk forward spasmodically at intervals after it had been running for a while. On the trip south “a while” meant most of a day, but as the summer wore on it would happen after only fifty miles, then thirty. It was obviously time to get rid of the car. Someone recommended that I see Preston Hornsby, the Probate Court judge of Macon County, who was also a used car dealer. I went down to the courthouse to see if he wanted to buy my car. I waited while he officiated at a marriage in his office, and then he got behind the wheel. I told him about the problem, but the car ran fine for ten minutes. He figured he’d be able to sell it. He offered me $50, I asked for $55, and it was a deal.

“You gonna buy Thelma Washington’s car?” asked Jacquie. “You fool!”

Thelma, if you're reading this, I have no regrets about that car, even though you were absolutely right that those ’61 Falcons had a design flaw in the oil system, and I didn’t get it cleaned out as frequently as you told me I had to. I didn’t burn out the main bearings until the following February, and that car did a fine job going to California and back to Boston before then.

Thelma was a year-round faculty member in the math department, working on her math degree from U Minnesota. “Statuesque” is a good word for her. “Quiet” isn't. On the subject of cars again, she once remarked, “All the nice men I meet have raggedy old cars.” She’s someone I’d enjoy running into sometime.

Did the name Thelma make you picture Geena Davis? The height and the beautiful smile are right, but the hair and skin don’t match. Remember, this is Tuskegee. Key on the Washington, then think, what if Denzell had a sister Thelma? That’s about the best I can do without a photo.

One of the songs that was playing a lot that summer was “Message to Michael.” It went “Spread your wings for New Orleans, Kentucky bluebird. Fly away, and take a message to Michael...” The car I bought from Thelma was powder blue. The first planned stop heading west was New Orleans. I always thought of that car as the Kentucky Bluebird.