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There are decisions a man makes after careful consideration, consultation with his wife, sober examination of the available facts, and prayerful reflection upon how the consequences might affect his family. Then there are decisions involving automobiles.

On a Friday evening in the autumn of 1959, A. J. Groves sat at the kitchen table in his new house in RoadRunner Estates, eating chicken-fried steak beneath a brass light fixture shaped like a wagon wheel and feeling unusually certain about the future. The steak was crisp around the edges, the mashed potatoes had been excavated in the center to accommodate a reservoir of pepper gravy, and the green beans had come from the garden behind the house, where Donna had spent the summer proving that vegetables would grow in West Texas if threatened often enough. Their three children ate with varying degrees of enthusiasm while the television in the living room announced that the Western adventures of Maverick would return after a message from its sponsor.

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A. J. had spent the entire day shopping for a new automobile. He had driven a Ford Galaxie at Frontier Ford-Lincoln-Mercury, a Chevrolet Impala at Cactus Chevrolet-Oldsmobile, and a Plymouth Sport Fury at Tumbleweed Chrysler-Plymouth-DeSoto. He had inspected engines, opened trunks, bounced on bumpers, and permitted three salesmen to explain power steering as though each dealership had discovered it independently. He had listened to claims about resale value, engineering superiority, ride quality, and the likelihood that owning a particular automobile would cause strangers to mistake him for a man with investments.

He had decided on the Plymouth.

The decision pained him. A. J. had been a Ford man since before he had possessed enough money to become any kind of man at all. His 1954 Crestline had been a good car. It had carried Donna to the hospital three separate times and returned with one additional passenger on each occasion. It had taken the family to Balmorhea, Odessa, San Angelo, and once as far as Carlsbad, where the children had complained about the darkness inside the caverns after spending the entire trip complaining about the sunlight outside. The salesman at Frontier Ford knew A. J. by name, and the service manager had never lied to him beyond the amount traditionally permitted between a mechanic and a customer.

But the red-and-white Plymouth Sport Fury hardtop had stirred something inside him.

It sat low and wide, with sweeping lines, soaring fins, and enough chrome to redirect sunlight into adjoining counties. Its 318-cubic-inch V8 possessed the kind of thrust A. J. associated with jet aircraft, guided missiles, and other things operated by men whose occupations sounded more impressive than Vector Control Technician. A. J. was then in his sixth year of defending Fort Stockton against mosquitoes, flies, rats, and every other living thing unwilling to acknowledge municipal authority. It was important work, particularly to anyone being bitten, but it did not cause women to turn their heads when he drove past.

The Plymouth might.

“I’ve made my decision,” he announced.

Donna cut a piece of steak. “All right.”

“The Sport Fury.”

“The red one?”

“Red and white.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“Three hundred and eighteen cubic inches. Four-barrel carburetor. Push-button transmission.”

Donna nodded, although A. J. could tell she had absorbed only the word button.

“I talked them down nearly two hundred dollars.”

“Is that before or after what they’re giving you for the Ford?”

A. J. took another bite and decided there were times when a husband should answer his wife directly and times when the gravy needed his immediate attention. “We’ll go get it in the morning.”

That night, after the children had been put to bed, the dishes washed, and the television reduced to a glowing dot in the middle of the screen, A. J. continued describing the Plymouth. He told Donna about its forward rake, its torsion-bar suspension, the authority of the V8, and the manner in which the fins seemed to rise toward the heavens. He spoke with increasing enthusiasm, and the discussion of thrust, power, and forward motion produced in him a related mechanical development not covered in the Plymouth sales literature.

Donna noticed.

Unfortunately, she also remembered that she had already taken her evening bath.

“I have a headache,” she said, pulling the sheet to her chin. “Besides, we have to get up early if we’re going to the dealership.”

A. J. rolled toward the wall. Before the children, Donna had occasionally regarded marital relations as spontaneous recreation. Since the arrival of the third, they had become a household project requiring scheduling, clean towels, and sufficient advance notice to arrange air support. Rice Krispies Treats now involved negotiation, even those not requiring the melting marshmallows.

Saturday morning, the children were stationed in front of cartoons with cereal bowls and instructions not to murder one another. Mrs. Calhoun from next door promised to look in on them periodically, a commitment she understood to mean peering through the kitchen window whenever she went outside to shake a rug.

A. J. and Donna climbed into the Crestline for its final trip as a member of the Groves family. They stopped at the Dairy Twin for two coffees to go, served in paper cups equipped with lids that fit only as a matter of opinion, and then took the back way toward Tumbleweed Chrysler-Plymouth-DeSoto.

They were passing the old Skelly station when Donna suddenly sat forward.

“Well, would you look at that.”

Ordinarily, this meant a garage sale, an unexpected patch of flowers, or a woman wearing something Donna intended to discuss later in confidence with three other women. A. J. glanced toward the former service station.

The building had most recently housed Ted Finley’s Lawn-Boy mower business. The Skelly signs had come down, though the green-and-yellow paint remained around the edges where the sun had not reached. A new banner now stretched across the front:

FORT STOCKTON RAMBLER — AMERICAN MOTORS

Beneath it, in smaller letters:

FINLEY LAWN-BOY SALES & SERVICE

Where the gasoline pumps had once stood was a freshly waxed 1959 Rambler Rebel V8 sedan. It wore whitewall tires, polished wheel covers, a bright coral side spear, and a body finished in the palest shade of pink A. J. had ever seen applied to anything larger than a bathroom fixture.

“Pull over,” Donna said.

“We’re expected at Tumbleweed.”

“I only want to look.”

“It’s pink.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“It’s pink and beautiful. That still leaves pink.”

Donna rolled down her window because the glass was interfering with her appreciation. A. J. continued another fifty feet before recognizing that his Saturday would progress more peacefully if he surrendered early. He turned into the lot.

Donna had her door open before the Crestline stopped moving.

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Ted Finley was arranging three Lawn-Boy mowers along the curb, all facing the highway at identical angles. He abandoned them and hurried toward his first customers of the morning. Ted had sold lawn equipment long enough to understand that a man generally entered a store knowing which mower he wanted, while a woman standing beside a new automobile represented an opportunity still taking shape.

“That’s one gorgeous car, ain’t she?” Ted called.

Donna nodded eagerly.

A. J. stood with his hands in his pockets. “It’s pink.”

“It is not pink,” Ted said. “That is Cotillion Mauve.”

He tapped the window sticker as evidence that American Motors and possibly the federal government had settled the matter.

“Looks pink.”

“Cotillion Mauve is a sophisticated color.”

“What color is the part that’s even pinker?”

“Coral.”

Ted had clearly prepared these answers in advance, perhaps while lying awake the previous night wondering why the factory had sent the first Rambler in Pecos County dressed for a bridesmaids’ luncheon.

Donna walked slowly around the car. The Rambler had fins, chrome, quad headlights, and whitewall tires, but in proportions unlike the enormous new Ford, Chevrolet, and Plymouth models downtown. It was shorter and narrower without looking cheap. The roof stood upright, the doors were large, and the windows suggested that the designers expected people inside to enjoy seeing where they were going.

“I love the size,” Donna said. “It looks just perfect. Not enormous and hard to drive like those cars you showed me yesterday, dear.”

She said it with the authority of a woman who had conducted independent research, though in all the years A. J. had known her she had read no consumer publication other than LIFE, and then primarily when Elizabeth Taylor was on the cover.

Ted recognized the opening and drove his entire sales presentation through it.

“Mrs. Groves, you have identified the future of the American automobile. Smaller—not small, mind you, but sensible. Manageable. Easier to park. Better fuel economy. Lower operating expense. Lower insurance. You can park this at Piggly Wiggly without removing the quarter panel from the car beside you.”

Donna looked at A. J. in a manner suggesting that she had been accused of doing precisely that.

Ted opened the driver’s door. “And look at the room inside.”

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The cabin featured a split front bench and a full rear seat trimmed in salmon, white, and patterned gray upholstery. Matching panels decorated the doors, while black carpet covered the floor. The dashboard was finished in black and pink, with a 120-mile-per-hour speedometer mounted before a thin black-rimmed steering wheel. There was an analog clock, a heater, a locking glove compartment, and a push-button radio. On the left side of the dashboard, the automatic transmission was controlled by buttons that looked sufficiently modern to launch one of the rockets A. J. had read about in Popular Mechanics.

“Push-button gear selection,” Ted said.

“The Plymouth has that,” A. J. replied.

“Yes, but in a car this size, you can reach the buttons without leaning.”

A. J. gave him a look.

Ted opened the hood. “Two-hundred-fifty cubic-inch V8. Four-barrel carburetor. Two hundred fifteen horsepower. Dual exhausts. Three-speed automatic. This is the Rebel, Mr. Groves. Not some little grocery-getter. Rambler took a sensible family car and gave it the heart of something that ought to have its picture hanging at the post office.”

The name helped. A. J. admitted that much privately. Rebel sounded muscular. It suggested a man standing against the crowd, ignoring convention and choosing his own road. Unfortunately, the automobile wearing the emblem remained Cotillion Mauve.

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“We need to get to the dealership, Donna.”

Ted heard the urgency and knew he had approximately thirty seconds before losing them to a red Plymouth with fins visible from Alpine.

“Reliability,” he said. “Resale value. Economy. Those big cars are the end of something. This is the beginning. Five years from now, everybody will be driving automobiles built more like this one.”

A. J. glanced toward the row of Lawn-Boys.

“How many Ramblers have you sold?”

Ted straightened. “The franchise became official Thursday.”

“That wasn’t my question.”

“This is the first one offered to the public.”

“That means none.”

“That means you’d be first.”

Donna slid behind the steering wheel and rested both hands on it. “Let’s take it for a drive.”

“Donna—”

She looked at him and batted her eyes in a way she had not employed since before the middle child arrived.

A. J. felt the first chill of approaching defeat. It remained some distance away, but the horizon was getting darker.

Ted tossed him the keys.

They headed north on the highway, where Fort Stockton loosened its grip and the black pavement stretched toward the Davis Mountains. The Rambler accelerated with surprising authority. Its 250-cubic-inch V8 did not possess the raw thrust of the Plymouth’s 318, but it was moving less automobile, and the result pressed A. J. pleasantly into the patterned seat. The automatic shifted smoothly, the dual exhausts produced a confident murmur, and the upright cabin offered almost as much usable room as the Fury.

Then Donna slid across the split front bench until she was beside him.

A. J. glanced at her. There was enough room remaining on the passenger side to accommodate another Donna, which seemed to contradict everything Ted had said about smaller cars.

She placed one hand behind A. J.’s neck and began massaging the tight spot the way she sometimes did after he had spent a long afternoon confronting an especially stubborn mosquito problem near the settling ponds. She told him how beautiful the Rambler was, how easily she could drive it, and how much money it would save them in the long run. She mentioned the children, gasoline, insurance, and grocery-store parking.

Then she leaned closer and whispered something unrelated to fuel economy.

A. J.’s hands tightened around the steering wheel.

Donna continued.

She described activities, variations, and scheduling concessions A. J. had never heard proposed during their entire marriage. Several had not occurred to him even during the most private moments of his morning shower. Her promises were specific enough to arouse him and detailed enough to make him wonder whether Donna had recently begun reading something besides LIFE.

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She finished, kissed his cheek, and slid back toward the passenger door.

A. J. drove another mile in silence.

“How do you turn around on this road?” he finally asked.

They drove the Rebel home that afternoon.

The Plymouth salesman waited until eleven-thirty before concluding that A. J. had changed his mind, been struck ill, or died. Of the three possibilities, he would later regard the first as the least dignified.

The new Rambler had barely stopped beneath the carport before the neighbors began arriving for the obligatory inspection. Men examined the engine and kicked the tires. Women praised the upholstery and asked Donna what the color was called. Children climbed into the back seat and pushed every button within reach.

Herb Wilson from two doors down circled the Rebel twice, then whispered to another neighbor that the new car made A. J. look “a little light in his loafers.”

A. J. heard him.

“It’s Cotillion Mojave,” he announced. “Like the desert. It isn’t pink.”

The window sticker was already in the trash, and A. J. had no idea what mauve meant. Mojave sounded dry, dangerous, and inhabited by men who carried canteens. Nobody corrected him.

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That night, Donna honored the negotiated terms of purchase with a degree of enthusiasm that temporarily eliminated buyer’s remorse. Physical satisfaction had a way of making even a pink automobile seem like sound financial planning.

The effect lasted until Sunday morning.

A. J. parked the Rambler beneath the carport, nose inward, hoping the house might conceal most of it from passing traffic. Donna drove the children to church and Sunday school. The women of the Sewing Circle gathered around the car afterward and declared the color exquisite. Unlike A. J., they knew exactly what mauve was. Their approval troubled him more than Herb’s comment.

Monday morning, A. J. parked at the far end of the Fort Stockton Municipal Employee Parking Facility, beyond Public Works and nearly against the fence surrounding the impound lot. It did no good. Government employees could detect a new automobile at distances ordinarily associated with military radar.

Duchy from Animal Control walked around it and said, “My dog’s got something stubby and pink like that.”

Walt from the Water Department asked whether it had come with a matching purse.

Nelda from the DMV said it was the most beautiful automobile she had ever seen. This proved the harshest condemnation of all.

A. J. tried laughing with them. He explained that the color was Cotillion Mojave and the automobile possessed 215 horsepower. He opened the hood twice during the first week and pointed at the four-barrel carburetor. The men agreed that the engine was respectable, then stepped back and looked at the body again.

The Rambler itself gave him little reason for complaint. It started every morning. It handled neatly, returned better fuel mileage than the Crestline, and carried the entire family in comfort. Donna could park it with ease. The children loved the fins. Even a persistent transmission leak amounted to little more than a few drops on the carport floor, though A. J. placed a flattened cardboard box beneath it and considered each stain a personal betrayal.

The trouble was not that the Rambler was a bad automobile.

The trouble was that Fort Stockton had decided what it meant.

A. J. began stopping at the Lucky Lady after work. At first he had one beer, then two. He parked behind the building so nobody passing on Dickinson Boulevard would connect the Cotillion Mauve Rambler with the man inside. After several months, he quit stopping at the Lucky Lady and went directly to Eggs & Ammo, where he bought six-packs of Pearl from a clerk discreet enough not to ask why the city’s Vector Control Technician required cold beer four afternoons a week.

Soon the first can was open before he cleared the city limits. The last was empty by the time the Rebel turned into RoadRunner Estates.

He quit attending church. Donna continued taking the children, and the Sewing Circle ladies continued admiring the car. They praised its room, its visibility, and its sensible dimensions. Each compliment returned home to A. J. through Donna, polished to a high shine.

By 1961, the drinking cost him his job. The official letter cited repeated absences, improper use of municipal equipment, and one incident in which A. J. had attempted to spray an alley for mosquitoes after sunset and treated three garbage cans, a clothesline, and the open window of a police cruiser. Fort Stockton’s insect population received the news of his dismissal with cautious optimism.

A. J. tried to trade the Rambler. The Ford salesman offered him so little that A. J. asked whether the figure represented the allowance on the whole automobile or only the radio. Tumbleweed Chrysler-Plymouth-DeSoto did worse. Cactus Chevrolet-Oldsmobile declined to make an offer at all until A. J. reminded them that refusal was not generally considered part of the appraisal process.

Ted Finley had already surrendered the Rambler franchise.

“Nothing wrong with the cars,” Ted explained. “Fort Stockton just wasn’t ready.”

Behind him stood three new Volkswagens, each resembling something that might emerge from the back of a much larger automobile.

A. J. occasionally saw his old Crestline around town. A school custodian had bought it from Frontier Ford and cared for it well. The Ford would pass with its familiar grille shining, one of A. J.’s old Pecos County parking stickers still clinging to the rear window. Once, at a stoplight, he pulled alongside it and saw that the small crack in the steering wheel was exactly where his thumb used to rest.

A. J. cried before the light turned green.

Money became scarce. Donna stretched meals beyond limits recognized by ordinary arithmetic. She made casseroles from noodles, canned soup, and Spam, telling the children it was a new recipe when it was mostly the same recipe rearranged. They walked to school whenever the weather allowed. A. J. took odd jobs repairing screens, trimming trees, and spraying yards for insects, though several customers insisted he arrive after dark so the neighbors would not see the car.

When cable television eventually reached RoadRunner Estates years later, the Groves family could not afford it. A. J. regarded this as providence. He had learned what happened when people were offered too many choices. Three networks were sufficient. Three children were sufficient. Three major automobile companies had certainly been sufficient.

The Finley dealership continued selling Volkswagens for a few years, but the Lawn-Boys remained its most dependable product. A man could buy one in green, start it with a pull of the cord, and never face questions about what the color said concerning his private life.

The Groveses kept the Rambler longer than anyone expected, partly because it refused to die and mostly because nobody else in Pecos County could be persuaded to own it. Donna drove it proudly. The children learned to drive in it. The patterned upholstery wore thin, the pink dashboard faded beneath the West Texas sun, and the transmission continued marking its territory wherever it was parked. A. J. eventually stopped correcting people who called it pink.

Years afterward, when someone mentioned that the Groves family had owned the only Cotillion Mauve automobile ever sold new in Fort Stockton, A. J. would stare into the distance and insist that the color had been Cotillion Mojave.

Like the desert.

Not pink.

And if Donna happened to be standing nearby, she would smile the satisfied smile of a woman who remembered exactly what it had cost her to get the car she wanted—and knew that, adjusted for inflation, it had still been the best bargain of her life.

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