I have now been shuffling through teetering piles of photos for weeks. Discovering, observing, guessing, filing, moving on to the next stack. A conveyor belt of once cherished, or at least worthy, memories. A triage of someone else’s memories.
All pictures will give you an obvious subject: a house, a hut, a dog, a waterfall, the school annual dance and the stacks of weddings and communions… That does not really change over centuries it seems. Styles, locations and breeds maybe. But, it does not mention the value of the picture to the person that took it, nor to the one that kept the photo.
Among these pictures, however, there is one visual cue I already knew about: the cars.
Whether grandfather, father, grandmother or great-grandfather, they told me, they show me in these pictures, how much or what, cars meant to them. And so whenever they pop up in the pictures, my eyes are drawn to them. Sometimes the cars are there, just out of focus, in the shadows. Or sometimes centre stage. Cars convey an oral family history. They are as well a visual social history. This has nothing to do with being a car enthusiast as such, just the memories and feelings they trigger. Say Hot-Rod and the Happy days tune starts in my head. A Ford T? Keystone Cops in pursuit. People posing in front of their car in 1919 in Africa? Pride.
And boy, do the memories and feelings flow in the photos I dig out! With each, a more accurate picture of the family and history emerges. Let’s us blow some of the mist away and sharpen the story.
Let’s travel back in time a century through cars, how the family saga kept their myths and what the pictures show as reality.
The Panhard
The Panhard. The last car of my grandfather. Only ever been uttered about in whispers and allusions. The punch line of many lazy Sunday afternoon Rami card games, the game of the Matriarchy, the uncles, played pro at the Cercle – the local pub in Claviers. “And then we took the Panhard”; “Did we have the Panhard then?”… Uttered in such reverence that I could only guess at its grandeur! A muscle car maybe, a patrician sedan probably. After all, a quick look in the dictionary gave Panhard & Levassor, some sort of French Daimler or Benz image.
And so the saga was sung for many decades, until I found “the Panhard”. Yesterday afternoon, 9th of September, meekly crouching, forgotten, in a 1950s picture from the Claviers railway road. Just a Dyna Z. 1954 possibly. An anchovy tin. Like the GS, an engineering marvel in a sci-fi shape. Modernity… a few years before.
The Chevrolet Deluxe
Never discussed, never mentioned and yet present in many pictures: what was that big chromed sedan that splashes through rainstorm on the road to Lobito? A Chevrolet Deluxe 1949 with its signature chrome front grille.
Classical 1950s American cars are embedded in the European, and certainly French, psyche. Talk about “une Américaine”, and that would only mean a female American by exception. Else? One of these American 1950s road cruisers. Implicit opulence and performance. Not the Panhard then.
From the movies found, Chevrolets were the base ride in Katanga. A social occasion in Jadotville seemed pretty much like a car dealer parade. These rides, this car were cherished memories for father, mother and daughters, and so they took movies of the drive to church on Sundays in Jadotville, or of putting the car on the boat back to Africa, even of driving the car in France. Yet, a word never uttered.
The Truck
But the one that got everyone harping was the bush truck. That is actually the first thing my mother jutted down in the few notes she wrote about her youth. A statement of a truck, customised and rigged for hunting and long-range trekking. That one was sitting proud in oral memories, photos and films, the visual and mechanical embodiment of life on the track. A custom Ford half-ton 1944 truck. A pick-up truck with living accommodation and loading bay; enough space for everything and everyone. The truck for that weekend outing, that hunting expedition, along the Lufira river – headwater of the Congo. Just pick a bush, turn right, use the machete to hack your way through, stop and set up the tent.
The 1940s mobile home in Africa.
And before that, there are the fossils.
The Ur-Car(s)
François Dulière, my grandfather, had organised, for his last 10 years in Africa, an exclusive 4-men hunting party: himself, Donatien the driver, François the medic and Mulandu the hunting guide. The Old School, the true school, the locals in his own eyes. Old school Likasi, Old School Katanga even, before the cathedral, the roads and the breezy bungalows. After all, he had drawn in 1916-1921 the maps that had allowed Jadotville to become what it was in 1945.
To him, Africa was the bush, silence, rusticity. Freedom.
Anything else? Transient.
He had started working there at the age of 14, and began hunting with his own team a few years later. His father was chief electrician in a nearby mine at Lubumbashi, the Mine de l’Etoile. The family settled in Chisengwe. And sure enough, a new car was the best and earliest visual cue of his esteemed position. Proud enough of the car that it made the frontpage of this article. That is the earliest cue in our travel back in time through cars. The last pebble.
That car was another Chevrolet, to drive beaten earth tracks, to trek across barely-there bridges and fords. Both his father and this car large enough, rugged enough to survive Katanga. And true to word, it would become in time a well-travelled car as a 1921 photo shows, windshield hanging and spare tires at the ready.
So my grandfather chose another Chevrolet, like his father did before him. And I smoked Camel cigarettes, like he did. Coincidences. Surely. Or pattern?
Looking at this handful of car pictures, it is a bird flight narrative of my family history. Across albums and photo stashes, they are a backbone. Not the whole story. And then, you have some outliers, like a picture of my grandfather at the wheel of a true Bugatti race car in 1923. Look at his grin!
So there is more to him than ruggedness and functionality. And the same goes for all of these photos. They tell the story of who took the picture, as much as why the photo was kept. And they leave you thirsty for the full narrative. For example, why was my grandfather driving this car from a Turkish official, after having worked in Smyrne earlier? And later? Well, that is why cars are such a wonderful visual cue.
Does this jig your memory too?
Stay tuned.
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