I am looking out the window of my hotel, early morning while the family is sleeping. Opening the curtains was blinding as we’re in Barstow, California, a smudge of commerce in the scorched Mojave Desert. Every so often, a car crosses the view, but I can’t see anything but the dust plume shooting up ten, twenty feet and blossoming like a contrail behind it. That’s all the evidence you need on a desert road to know that there are cars.
This is what driving was like before there were paved roads. This was brought to our attention at the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles on our tour with Richard Messer, Director. He is deeply knowledgeable about both the collection and the cultural impact of the car, as evidenced by our changing infrastructure. The Petersen has exquisite exhibit space to this effect complete with steam shooting from steam engines and the smell of apple pie wafting from a restaurant replica. It seems simple, but I don’t think I realized that without the car we wouldn’t have driveways, garages, strip malls, drive-throughs, drive-ins, etc. Now maybe we could live well without some of these things, but where would we be without the garage – the hotbed of American Innovation? Hewlett, Packard, Gates, Ford, and countless others have drawn strength from the isolation and relative discomfort of a garage workspace. And, they weren’t just out there drinking beer. I work in a converted garage myself, and no matter how nice your Indian carpet is, you still know you’re in one. It’s motivating.
Our visit to the Petersen was not driven by the history of the car and its impact on our lifestyle. No, our goals were much less lofty. I wanted to poke around records that would indicate what items celebrities left in their cars when donating them to the museum. The Petersen has received many celebrity cars as gifts and has quite a few on display: Steve McQueen, Rita Hayworth, Batman – okay, it was a film car, but hey, it’s the Batmobile, so back off! The sad truth is that most of these cars are acquired from second parties who owned them after the celebrity and before the museum. So, they’re stripped of their celebritized content long before accession. It’s a lot less sexy to consider that the snotty tissue behind the passenger seat belonged to Joe Somebody from East Nowhere and not Rita, so that took some of the shine away until Mr. Messer mentioned Kate, with a twinkle in his eye.
“We did find something once,” he said “when we brought in this 1966 Imperial that had belonged to Katharine Hepburn.” His voice was soft and reverent, but there was also a small grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. He tilted his head and thought for a minute. I was standing on tiptoes. “She left some notes, in her own hand, about the car.”
I thought I would pass out. Maybe I just forgot to breathe.
He showed us the car and let me peek in the glove box. There was a money order receipt from the second owner of the car to someone else. No Kate. And, a trashy novel. I’m going to say “no Kate” but we’ll never know for sure. It’s astonishing that these things are still in there.. We didn’t have enough time to go to the archive, but I’ll be following up with Mr. Messer to see if we can decipher what Kate’s precise thoughts on the Imperial were and maybe she’ll know why Steve McQueen preferred an automatic.
This is what driving was like before there were paved roads. This was brought to our attention at the Petersen Museum in Los Angeles on our tour with Richard Messer, Director. He is deeply knowledgeable about both the collection and the cultural impact of the car, as evidenced by our changing infrastructure. The Petersen has exquisite exhibit space to this effect complete with steam shooting from steam engines and the smell of apple pie wafting from a restaurant replica. It seems simple, but I don’t think I realized that without the car we wouldn’t have driveways, garages, strip malls, drive-throughs, drive-ins, etc. Now maybe we could live well without some of these things, but where would we be without the garage – the hotbed of American Innovation? Hewlett, Packard, Gates, Ford, and countless others have drawn strength from the isolation and relative discomfort of a garage workspace. And, they weren’t just out there drinking beer. I work in a converted garage myself, and no matter how nice your Indian carpet is, you still know you’re in one. It’s motivating.
Our visit to the Petersen was not driven by the history of the car and its impact on our lifestyle. No, our goals were much less lofty. I wanted to poke around records that would indicate what items celebrities left in their cars when donating them to the museum. The Petersen has received many celebrity cars as gifts and has quite a few on display: Steve McQueen, Rita Hayworth, Batman – okay, it was a film car, but hey, it’s the Batmobile, so back off! The sad truth is that most of these cars are acquired from second parties who owned them after the celebrity and before the museum. So, they’re stripped of their celebritized content long before accession. It’s a lot less sexy to consider that the snotty tissue behind the passenger seat belonged to Joe Somebody from East Nowhere and not Rita, so that took some of the shine away until Mr. Messer mentioned Kate, with a twinkle in his eye.
“We did find something once,” he said “when we brought in this 1966 Imperial that had belonged to Katharine Hepburn.” His voice was soft and reverent, but there was also a small grin tugging at the corners of his mouth. He tilted his head and thought for a minute. I was standing on tiptoes. “She left some notes, in her own hand, about the car.”
I thought I would pass out. Maybe I just forgot to breathe.
He showed us the car and let me peek in the glove box. There was a money order receipt from the second owner of the car to someone else. No Kate. And, a trashy novel. I’m going to say “no Kate” but we’ll never know for sure. It’s astonishing that these things are still in there.. We didn’t have enough time to go to the archive, but I’ll be following up with Mr. Messer to see if we can decipher what Kate’s precise thoughts on the Imperial were and maybe she’ll know why Steve McQueen preferred an automatic.
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