Freedom of the Road

On the cusp of adulthood, one Friday in the 1950s, Dad, with his Elvis pompadour, left work and picked up his brother Alan. They drove all night from Montreal to NYC to have Saturday lunch at the Automat and catch a Habs/Rangers game at the Gardens that evening.

On the way home Sunday his second-hand Dodge broke down somewhere in Vermont. “We were late for work on Monday,” he tells me with a grin decades later. At 32, Alan died from cancer. Don’t know what happened to the Dodge.

Inspired by Blink of the Eye. Image of Madison Square Gardens in the 1950s, photographer unknown.