The Rental Caddy

And the Persistence of Memory

The life of the regular business traveler has its ups and downs, but no experience is quite like the moment when traveler and rental car meet for the first time. Purveyors of travel transportation and accommodation (United, Marriott, Hertz) lavish all manner of emoluments on those loyal to the brand (on the way home from Cali recently, a 2 million mile passenger was feted over the general announcing system, and fellow passengers cheered his great accomplishment when prompted to do so), with Hertz providing to we few, we happy few, the opportunity to land, find one’s name on a board, identify one’s area for car selection, and then pick from among some number of gleaming lovelies. Hertz—having emerged recently from COVID-influenced bankruptcy—bestows upon me the honor of selecting from the “President’s Circle” of cars, which generally means mid-size and above cars and modest SUV’s/hybrid vehicles, in addition to the occasional unicorn Mustang or Camaro. A recent selection experience was very different and redolent with memory.

As I strutted serenely to the President’s Circle to make my selection, I espied something odd, something different, something quite out of the ordinary here among the generally ordinary. It was a Cadillac. A Cadillac XTS four door sedan which, according to the Google machine, was last manufactured in 2019.

I could not BELIEVE my good fortune. I won’t lie—there were other cars available that looked newer, and in the back of my head, I thought I remembered that Caddy had stopped making these particular sedans, a fact that was buttressed by the 55,000 miles on the odometer. Slipping behind the wheel, I was enveloped in a leather-bound cocoon that instantly screamed both comfort and egg-crate like safety. Closing the driver door was pure joy, as the sound was deep and weighty, suggestive of thick, American, steel (or aluminum or something or other). We don’t turn keys much these days, we push buttons, and upon so doing, this noble beast roared to life and then settled into the quiet purr one expects from the once proud leader in American car building luxury. In that moment, I was 17 again.

You see, for a few years at least, my father was a Cadillac man. Starting his post-Navy life in the early 50’s as a route salesman for a wire manufacturer, he always referred to himself as a “humble wire-peddler”, usually when irony was appropriate. At some point, this young man saw that a market for specialty wire was opening up, and he convinced his parents to re-mortgage their house to help provide seed money for a wire manufacturing business. That decision, along with grinding hard work and the love and support of my Mother, led to a level of success that accommodated the raising and educating of six kids and their (he’s 90, she’s 86) ongoing comfortable retirement.

My Dad is not a profligate spender, as one could tell—especially in those years—by his wardrobe. I’ll never forget when I brought home a college girlfriend (Texas debutante, etc.), and my father chose to wear a green velour long sleeve shirt with 1/4 zipper, and green polyester pants, a fact pointed out by brother Tom over dinner that night to great mirth. I’ll never forget another time, when—I think I was home from college—he showed up at the breakfast table in another equally resplendent rig. When I chucklingly chided him for his choice, he quietly looked at me—Mom must have been out of earshot—and said, “Who the f*** do I have to impress?” I’ll never forget that moment, and I cannot begin to account for how many times I have thought and said exactly those words in the decades since.

Virtually everything I know about how a man acts in this world I learned from my father. Nowhere was as important a schoolhouse for such lessons as the green fairways of Burlington Country Club, where I and another young lad would strap two golf bags over our shoulders and caddy for various foursomes of middle-aged titans. Here, I saw my Dad being a man, not just a Dad. I saw him shuck and jive. I saw him listen. I saw him laugh. I saw him among friends.

The point of all this nostalgia is not JUST to venerate my old man, but also to reconnect to the rental Cadillac. You see, Mr. “Who Do I Have To Impress?” had a weakness for luxury automobiles, one he passed on to me. My earliest memory (and I will rely on older brothers to correct me here) of a Dadmobile was some manner of Ford LTD, I’m guessing something like this 1968 model.

In it, he would travel back and forth to his wire business (which exists to this day under new ownership) with our yellow-Lab “Bridget” (Bridgy-puppy) in the backseat, as Bridget was an uncompensated employee at the time. It was also how he got himself to Burlington Country Club. The next vestigial memory of Dad land-yachts was a Ford Thunderbird, which as cars go, was an unfortunate inheritor of a great car history. The Thunderbirds of the 50’s were pieces of art; by the 70’s, they were bloated tanks. His looked something like this:

He was clearly moving up in the world, but he wasn’t ready yet for the transition to top of the line—Lincoln or Cadillac. Later he told me that a guy in his business had to be careful not to look “too successful”, or the guy you want to sell your wire to might think you weren’t hungry for his business. As the years went on, this approach grew less important. I don’t think he ever seriously considered a Mercedes or any other foreign car, not just out of patriotism but also a general sense of upkeep cost. Eventually though, he was ready for the Caddy.

Senior Prom, 1983

Pictured above is what I believe to be my Dad’s second Caddy, a “Sedan Deville d’Elegance”. By this time, he was leasing his cars and would turn them in every two or three years. My great good fortune was to arrive as a driver at just the time he was driving Cadillacs. My prom date is the so-far-out-of-my-league Chris Wutzer, who was deposited in that front seat and door closed BY ME as had been drilled into my head by my father for the previous 17 years (open the door for your Mother and your sister). I have not had the experience yet of seeing either of my girls get into the car with one of their romances, but I do know that if he doesn’t do the open the door thing for her, we will have a brief chat on the matter.

These early 80’s Cadillacs were dreams. That there, is not a leather interior but a PLUSH VELOUR pillow-like environment. Early electronic diagnostics and trip computers were available in these monsters, along with automatic seek and scan on the installed radio. My Dad’s pronouncement on the personal use of technology that had safely returned men from the Moon: “Just more stuff to break”. Speaking of the radio, I have indelible memories of being taken places by my Dad on a Friday night (or being picked up) accompanied by the sounds of “Fridays with Frank” (Sinatra) or to and from church (“Sundays with Sinatra”). Do I love Frank Sinatra to this day? Why yes, yes I do.

I came of age in Cadillacs. I learned to drive mainly in a Cadillac. I spent a lot of time with my Dad in Cadillacs. Happening upon a Cadillac in that San Diego Hertz lot was like opening a time portal to a place where I worried about little, mostly because I was not yet aware of how much there was to consider. Eventually—and I’m not quite sure why—he turned in a Caddy and got something else, something lesser in return. I think it was something like this 1986 Pontiac Parisienne. It was big. It was boxy. But it wasn’t a Cadillac. Of note: those spoke hubs are expensive, a fact I was acquainted with upon tearing one off while backing out of our narrow, rail-road tied driveway.

Dad’s made some questionable vehicle choices since that last Caddy, but he has stayed true to big, and four doors.

I’ve reprised his performance a few times, with modification. In my late 20’s, I drove a (pre-owned, certified) Lexus LS400. In my early 40’s I had a brand new Acura RL. I have a four door Jaguar now (12 years old, 270,000 miles!). These have been great cars, but none offered the experience of that prom car. I’ve never ridden on a parade float, but that Caddy felt like one.

I drove that Hertz Caddy for three days, and each time I approached it, each time I got behind the wheel, each time I moved effortlessly in and out of traffic—I remembered those big land-yachts and my Dad in the driver seat, window cracked to allow for the release of smoke from the (then) ever-present Winston. I remembered how there was never any trash, nothing extraneous in my Dad’s cars—something I shoot at myself these days but seem less able to pull off.

There isn’t a week that goes by these days when I don’t find myself saying something or doing something that I know is uncut Dad influenced, though I am a poor substitute for the real article. I have been in the company of powerful, extraordinary, and talented men my whole life—but none of them put it all together like my Dad.

Who pray tell, was second place cool? Why, Frank Sinatra, of course!