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The second chapter in a seven part series.

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Virgil and Glenda Winkler bought one of the last lots available in Phase II of Roadrunner Estates.  It was the last one because it was one of the largest, and therefore most expensive.  That’s why everyone else had passed on it.  That’s exactly what Virgil Winkler bought it, and then built a Plan P-489 smack dab in the middle of it.

“A P-489 Plan?” Wendell Yoakum said when Rod Hardin, the RoadRunner Estates salesman, mentioned it at a neighborhood cookout.  “Jeez Louise, I didn’t think you’d ever sell one of those in here.  That plan is bumping, what, 1,600 square feet?”

“Tops out at 1,670.  Just under twenty grand!” Rod replied.  He knew how neighborhoods worked.  He fed the competition without taking sides.  He’d throw out nuggets about lot size, square footage, and intimate income ranges of new homeowners and then sit back and watch what followed.  “They even took the lava rock option for the front and side elevations.”  Anita Yoakum detected his slight smirk, but got over it as soon as Rod gave her ‘the wink’.  The ladies of RoadRunner Estates were not immune to ‘the wink’.

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As the rest of the neighborhood watched the Winkler house go up they noted the Winklers had checked the option box for both the bay window in the front and the bow window in the back.  They noted it seemed excessive.  “The just doubled the drapery budget,” Anita noted when she and Wendell walked through the house while it was being framed.  Anita couldn’t help but note that there was a serving bar into both the living room and the family room.  “What I wouldn’t give,” she muttered to herself under her breath.  Wendell heard her, but pretended he didn’t.

When the Winklers moved in with their four girls, everyone did their best to welcome them into the subdivision.  “We’re known for being friendly here in Phase II,” Patsy Runnels said enthusiastically.  Privately, over coffee at Anita’s house the next day, Patsy noted that Virgil reminded her of a big cactus.  “He’s a prick,” she said.  Anita nearly choked on her Folgers, but nodded in absolute agreement.

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A couple days later, Glenda invited both the gals over for coffee.  They gritted their teeth when they were shown the all-pink GE Appliance Package.  The same one that was in the model home.  “Do you know what that package cost?” Anita said as they walked back to their respective homes.  “Good god, that’s just sinful.”

Virgil was one of the handful of men in all of Phase I and II who held a degree.  True, it was from West Texas Farm & Ag Baptist College, but it took four years to get it and he didn’t hesitate to point that out.  The damn thing was framed and hung over the mantel, where most men hung a deer head from last season.  The other thing that defined Virgil was his military service.  He didn’t miss a chance to work into any conversation that he’d been in Naval Intelligence during “The Big One”.  If anyone had dug deeper, they’d have found out it was a desk job on the east coast.  Virgil had been responsible for filing reports on results of bombing runs and field work done by the real heroes.  But nonetheless, he’d served.

The degree and service to his country were what got him his job out at The Facility as the Industrial Psychologist.  Again, it probably sounded like a more inflated position than what it really was.  Virgil was handed the task of talking workers through some of the things they’d seen that they had a hard time dealing with, or the mental toll of the redundant, repetitive, or repulsive tasks they performed.  Most of his work dealt with the part of The Facility that worked with animal testing for the government.  “You can’t gouge out the mind’s eye,” he used to tell the people that came to see him.  Little comfort for those who’d witnessed the inexcusable.

Virgil and Glenda met through a party at the Aye Phelta Thi fraternity house during his last year in school.  Glenda wasn’t a student at WTF&ABC, but came to the party with a cousin.  She felt guilty attending, not being enrolled, or even Baptist, but her cousin wouldn’t take ‘No’ for an answer.  A month later she and Virgil were engaged.  Five years and four kids after that,  (Virgil converted to Glenda’s Catholic faith) they were building the house of Virgil’s dreams as he started his new job at The Facility.

The morning Virgil woke up, threw open the curtains and looked across the street to see a gleaming brand new Raven Black and Inca Gold Ford Fairlane 500 two door sedan in the Yoakum driveway was like a swift kick to his scrotum.  “Damn it!” he yelled, waking Glenda up as though a thief had broken in and made off with every pink General Electric appliance.

“What’s wrong, Virgil?” she screamed.

“Look out the window!  You tell me what’s wrong!”  Virgil bellowed.  Much to her dismay, Glenda saw nothing out of the ordinary, just a late winter Fort Stockton morning.  “The car, damn it!  The CAR!” he yelled.

“The gold and black car across the street?” she asked.  “That car?”

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“Hell yes, THAT car.”  Virgil was beside himself.  “It’s brand new.  Two toned.  Sweeping lines.  Fender skirts.  It makes my ’54 DeSoto look like a ten year old goat turd.”  He was at the closet throwing on his suit, skipping the whole shave, shower and cereal routine that normally started every day.

“I’m going in early.  Taking off early.  Going by the dealership and getting something new.  I will NOT be made to look like a fool.  The days of me being hazed and belittled ended when I left the fraternity.”  Virgil stormed out of the room after his little speech, leaving Glenda to wake up the girls and get them ready.

Glenda thought she might have heard the DeSoto actually lay rubber in the driveway, but it might have been Tab Hunter on the new hi-fi singing Young Love.

Out at The Facility, Virgil was completely focused on the new car situation taking place in RoadRunner Estates when Ed Walker came in for his appointment.  Ed had been working in the semi-industrial chemical lubricant section of the plant about six months earlier when the elliptical centrifuge tank blew a purification valve allowing the contaminants in the tank to become volatile and eventually erupt.  Walker became severely disfigured in the accident, resulting in his wife leaving him.  He was transferred to the double arm mixer drum tumbler in the pesticide plant and given limited duty, but continued to struggle with the psychological effects of the disfigurement and divorce.

Anxious to get to the dealership, Virgil finally told Walker, “Look.  Man-up.  Sure you’re a freak show right now, but it could have been worse.  You have no idea the kind of problems I’m dealing with.  We’ll talk again in three weeks.  Chin-up.”

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At the dealership, Virgil wasted no time in finding a brand new Chrysler New Yorker 4-door hardtop on the lot.  Pink with maroon side spears and top.  Wire wheels.  It was a beauty.  He was surprised when no one came out to help him, so he made his way to the front door of the dealership.  Inside, everyone seemed to be gathered around a small black and white portable TV in the back corner of the showroom.

“Excuse me,” Virgil said.  “EXCUSE ME!”  Several people turned around.  “I want to buy a new Chrysler.  Can someone help me?”

“Certainly sir.  I’m sorry.  We’re just all watching the news.  The Russians have put the first satellite in space.  Sputnik.  No one knows exactly what it will mean for world peace, or our future.”  The middle aged salesman seemed nervous, off his game.  Like he was truly rattled.

“Right.”  Virgil replied.  “It’s the salmon and burgundy four door hardtop just outside.  The one with the wire wheels.  Let’s get it written up.  I want to get it home before the sun goes down so the neighbors can see it.”

The salesman cleared his throat and walked Virgil over to a desk near the middle of the showroom.  While he appreciated the fact that it seemed like it was going to be an easy sale, he was focused on what nuclear war might mean for his family and the country.  His hand was shaking while he started the sales contract.  A half hour later, the contract was in the finance office, Virgil’s DeSoto was on the used car lot, and Virgil was looking at his Timex watch and attempting to calculate how much daylight was left.

That’s when the salesman walked back over to the desk.  “It seems, Mr. Winkler, as though there is a problem with the financing.”

“What are you talking about?” Virgil asked.

“We are not able to get the new Chrysler financed.”  The salesman looked glum.    “Your credit score will not allow it.”

“What the hell?” Virgil snapped back.  “I’ve got credit everywhere in town!”

“Yes, sir,” the salesman snapped back.  “That is the problem.  You are maxed out.”

There was silence, then the salesman could see Virgil get visibly more and more angry.

“Look.  I came here to buy a new car.  I need a new car.  I am not leaving this dealership without a new car.  What do we need to do?”  Virgil went from anger to embarrassment to nearly pleading for the salesman to make something happen.

“I might be able to put you in a Plymouth.  It would be half the cost of the Chrysler.  I could inflate the price of your trade-in to make it look like you have more equity in the new car, but of course tack that on to the new Plymouth.  It’s a long shot.  Would you like me to talk to the Sales Manager?”

“A Fury?  Top-of-the line Plymouth?” Virgil asked, almost weeping.

“No sir.  It would be a Belvedere.”  The salesman had one eye on Virgil, the other on the TV.

“What color?” Virgil asked.

“I have a white one and a gold one.  The gold one has a white roof and accent stripe.”  The anchorman on TV was talking about the ramifications of America falling behind in the Space Race.  Virgil was thinking that the gold Belvedere would look better in the driveway with the black lava rock accents on his Plan P-489 three bedroom, two bath ranch.

The paperwork had to be written up all over again, the numbers played with to offer the best possible picture to the financing company.  The payments on the Belvedere were $70 a month.  That was about what it was going to be to put the oldest daughter in private school at Our Lady of Immeasurable Concern.  He would just have to explain to Glenda that little Susan would be attending the new Alamo Elementary School instead.

When Virgil finally got into the gold 1957 Plymouth Belvedere sedan he looked around at the cabin.  It was fairly spartan.  It didn’t really look all that much different than the DeSoto he’d traded in.  But it had that new car smell.  It had fins on the back and a lot of chrome everywhere.  It was brand new.  A day newer, in fact, than Wendell and Anita’s Ford Fairlane 500 across the street.

It was dark by the time Virgil got home.  The family was watching Make Room for Daddy on TV and shushed him when he came through the door.  Virgil walked into the kitchen and got a cold Pearl beer from the pink refrigerator and peered out over the serving bar into the living room at the TV.  

He noted what a bumbling fool Danny Thomas seemed to be in the show.  It was the episode when Rusty is old enough to drive.  Danny Thomas teaches him to drive in his new Plymouth Belvedere.

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