Transportation

The 1940 Ford sits in splendor

in the undoored garage, waiting

patiently for its driver who never

drives anywhere without her hat,

one of her Sunday hats, pinned

neatly to her gray hair. The boy

sits in the passenger seat, waiting

impatiently for the next journey

around town, knowing the Ford

will inevitably break down,

usually in what the lady will

consider a forsaken or vaguely

threatening neighborhood, but it

will be a new adventure, wherever

the Ford sputters and stops. People

are always kind and respond

to the knock by the lady

with the gray hair kept in place

by a Sunday hat, the boy at her side

wondering how long it would be

this time for the tow truck to arrive.

This is another in a series of poems about growing up in the South, suggested by my friend Nancy Rosback. My grandmother drove a 1940 Ford that looked exactly like the one in the photograph.