A new car! We just could not believe it! But there it was, sitting in our driveway and Mom proudly beaming while proclaiming... "It's ours". And ours it was. Our brand new, shiny, burgundy red, 1948 Willy’s Jeep Station Wagon. It was just right for the whole family. Mom would drive, Big Mama would take the front passenger seat, Ruby and Stella the back seat, and Fee Boe and I had the grand honor of occupying the extreme back compartment, usually reserved for luggage. Entrance to this "seat of honor" was accomplished by simply crawling over the back seat, and while there were no factory installed seats in this area Fee Boe and I could usually improvise a seat out of whatever baggage we would be transporting at the time. The back door was a tailgate with a window that could be rolled down, providing a good flow of air through the "Station Wagon", as we came to call it. It was a busy vehicle for our family.

Reyes Family - Click photo to enlarge.

Shirley, Vince, Felipe, Felipe Sr., Ruby, and Stella

     Mom was one of those mothers that was totally involved with the activities of her children, and being there were four of us in grammar school at the same time, she was busy transporting us from one event to another. I recall Mom working full time at Brookley Field and then at Albright & Woods Drug Store at Five Points, yet, it seems she was always available to take me to accordion lessons on Dauphin Street, or Ruby to piano lessons at Mrs. Grace Sanders, and Stella and Fee Boe to violin and trumpet lessons respectively, while attending to all the various other activities of an active family.

     Weekends were the perfect times for us to use the "Station Wagon". Many were the days when Mom would pack us up early on a Saturday morning and take us to Brother Autry Harvill's fishing camp (simply called "Autry's") on the Causeway connecting Mobile County to Baldwin County across Mobile Bay. With the "Station Wagon" stocked with a #2 galvanized wash tub, a couple of croaker sacks, some heavy twine, long handled crab nets, and some smelly meat for crab bait, we would embark on our " fishing trip". Autry's had several piers for rental fishing boats to dock at and Brother Harvill permitted us to tie our bait off anywhere on the piers we chose to. I don't recall any other families ever crabbing off the pier so it must have been a singular privilege Brother Harvill extended to our family as fellow worshipers at the same Prichard Assembly of God Church on Meaher Street in Prichard. Or perhaps, as I now suspect, we were favored because he enjoyed seeing Mom, who was a real looker in those days, parade along the pier in her shorts or bathing suit. I suppose we will never really know the true reason for the favor. Whatever, it was a time of great excitement for us kids as we would slowly retrieve our bait from the bottom of the canal and seeing a large blue crab clinging to the bait we would loudly proclaim, "Bring the net, it’s a big one"! Fee Boe would usually net the crab by slowly sliding the net under the bait, crab, and all and with a quick upper pull triumphantly haul the catch to the pier. He earned the honor as "netter" because he was the only one brave enough to separate the big clawed crabs from the net and place them in a croaker sack. The sack would then be tied closed at the top and lowered into the water and secured to the pier. It would remain there until another catch was added thus keeping the crabs alive and fresh. At day's end the cracker sack was retrieved from the water and placed in the #2 washtub ready for loading in the "Station Wagon" for our ride back home. Once we were at home the crabs would be transferred to a big boiling pot and in a short while we were feasting on fresh boiled crabs, a favorite of ours even to this day.

     Then there were those Sunday afternoons when Mom would drive us over to Fairhope across the Bay and along Highway 98. This was during the season that blackberries would be ripening in patches along the highway. Mom usually knew where the most productive patches were located and it was simply just a matter of stopping alongside the road and let us kids pile out with our containers and pick the ripe, juicy, blackberries. Mom being terrified of snakes, which often inhabited the berry patches, would take Ruby and Stella and pick along the outer edges of the patch, while Fee Boe would lead me toward the more rewarding larger patches usually closer to property fences. My own fear of snakes accompanied by the needle sharp briar bushes the blackberries grew on permitted me to follow Fee Boe just so far into the berry patches. With one eye on my target berry and the other scouting for "crawling monsters", I would slowly and deliberately add berries to my pail, while Fee Boe, seemingly impervious to any danger, would place his pail on the ground and wildly pick with both hands thus filling his pail much more quickly than I could. Consequently, he would pick a lot more blackberries than any of the rest of us. When Mom decided we had an ample supply of blackberries, we would pile back in the Station Wagon and head for home, our hands and mouths stained purple from handling and sampling the succulent berries. Once we were home the blackberries were separated for immediate consumption as blackberry pies, or eaten fresh with milk and sugar, or bagged and frozen for later use.

     The "Station Wagon" also served as a delivery van during a joint business venture Mom shared with Aunt Margaret (Cochran). They confidently pooled resources and opened the "Wash Pot", a wash, dry, and iron laundry on Wilson Avenue across from Rhett Smith's Bowling Alley. Customers would drop their laundry off at the Wash Pot, mostly just for washing and drying, especially on rainy days, however, few took advantage of the large ironing machines. Mom allowed me to come by the Wash Pot in the afternoons when I got out of school and I would help her finish drying and folding clothes that we would put in laundry baskets or large grocery bags for the customers to pick up. Some customers paid extra for delivery so Mom and I would load the finished laundry in the Station Wagon and deliver to the customers' homes. The business failed after a few months, not so much from a lack of business, but more so, from a lack of good management. Later years would prove Mom not to be efficient at managing money very well, and this, perhaps, was the reason for the demise of the Wash Pot.

     Mom was our baseball team coach, the first woman to coach a team in Park League baseball. While most of our team's fathers worked long hours or shift work, our team, the Tigers, found themselves without a coach. Mom volunteered to be our coach and a good one she turned out to be. She would pack our whole team in the Station Wagon and drive us to our games from Alabama Village to Pascagoula, Mississippi, or any other distance that would be too far for us to comfortably walk. One particular confrontation we encountered on the ball field was for the County championship at Baltimore Park in South Mobile. Our uniforms were whatever pants, tee shirts, caps, and gloves we owned at the time. Most of us played bare-footed and without any protective gear. It was this rag-tag, scrubby bunch of kids with the "lady" coach that made it to the finals to face the much heavily favored Baltimore Schmoos. We had already observed this team of up-town snoots in their authentic, white baseball uniforms and black tennis shoes, with the best of equipment, roll over their previous opponents. However, we weren't the least bit intimidated.

     The day before the championship game, Mom purchased a white tee-shirt for every boy on our team plus one for herself and took them to the Wash Pot where she dyed them Tiger orange. She also bought us new, blue baseball caps to finish us up. We charged out of the Station Wagon on Championship day resplendent in our new "uniforms". The game was delayed shortly while Mom argued our case to play bare-footed as this was not normally allowed. She won! She did, however, have to agree that our catcher would wear protective gear, which had to be borrowed from the Schmoos. I got the starting assignment to pitch the Championship Game. Later that afternoon, the Tigers rode through Mobile, down Springhill Avenue, through Toulminville, down Wilson Avenue to Prichard Park, our home field, hanging out the windows of the Station Wagon, triumphantly proclaiming the Tigers the new County Champs!!

     Our favorite trip in the Station Wagon would take place every fourth Saturday when Dad was sailing coastwise. Dad was the Chief Steward on the S.S. DeSoto, a Waterman Steamship freighter home ported in Mobile. The DeSoto would leave Mobile and sail to Tampa, Fla., Miami, Fla., Boston, Mass., Philadelphia, Penn., Newark, N.J., and then back non stop to New Orleans, La. before arriving back in Mobile. Dad would take off as soon as the ship docked in New Orleans on Saturday until the ship sailed from Mobile on Monday afternoon. We would drive over and meet Dad's ship at the docks in New Orleans and pick him up as soon as his ship docked.

     Very early, before sunrise on Saturday morning Mom would have the Station Wagon packed and ready for our drive over to New Orleans, some 150 miles west on Highway 90 along the coastal route. It was a narrow, two-lane highway, heavily traveled, that required about a five hour drive with food and bathroom stops. We particularly enjoyed the four-lane span that ran along the Gulf beaches from Biloxi to Pass Christian with its fabulous homes and scenery. Mom always stopped somewhere in the vicinity to buy us a treat or a snack at one of the many drive up restaurants that were located along that resort span. Sometimes, if we had been really good when traveling. Mom would allow us to play the nickel slot machines that most of the restaurants provided. Gambling, I suppose, was legal in Mississippi at the time and even as children we were not discouraged from dropping a few coins in the slots. Immediately, upon entering Louisiana we had the pleasure of riding the "Roller Coaster", a stretch of about five miles of highway built through marshy swampland that caused the asphalt roads to sink and rise resulting in soft, rolling, up and over bumps that Mom would maneuver at just the right speed to simulate a delightful roller coaster ride. It was our custom to stop somewhere in the delta and purchase a bushel of live crawfish to take to New Orleans with us. This usually ended my ride in the "honored seat" section, as I would leave it to Fee Boe to replace any of the "escapees" back into the bushel basket.

     On arriving in New Orleans we would stop in the French Market in the French Quarters for beignets and coffee at the Café du Mont, a world famous cafe. After a breakfast of beignets (deep fried crispy dough covered with powdered sugar) and coffee (really half chicory coffee and half heated cream) we would proceed directly to the docks along the Mississippi River and pick up Dad at his ship. Dad would usually allow Fee Boe and myself to come up the gangway to his midship focsle (forecastle = room) and assist him in carrying his "luggage" back down to the Station Wagon. Dad's "luggage" usually contained coffee, meat, and other foodstuffs that Dad had "requisitioned" from the ship's stores.

     From there we would catch the ferry at the foot of Canal Street for a short trip across the Mississippi to the town of Algiers. Dad allowed us kids to get out of the car and go up to the passenger deck of the ferry with a reminder to be back in the car before the ferry docked. From the ferry's passenger deck we had a spectacular view of the New Orleans skyline and harbor. This probably assured he and Mom a few minutes alone without us kids hanging around.

     Dad had the only relatives we knew of, at the time, living in Algiers and it was to the home of Uncle Maning and Aunt Mim that we would go to spend the weekend. Aunt Mim was formerly married to Dad's brother's son, Roman Solis, who had remarried and moved back to the Philippines. She had two daughters from Roman, Nooney Perez, a divorcee, who lived with her along with her two daughters, Carmelita and Ninette. Dee Dee Nazelrod, a second daughter, her husband Steve, a son Mark, and a daughter, Pam lived in another neighborhood in Algiers. We referred to them as Aunts, Uncles, and cousins. Aunt Mim, a superb seamstress, had later married Uncle Maning, Manuel Gentica, and they lived in a large grey house near the levee.

     The crawfish we bought in the delta would now be put on to boil and Dad would share the contents of the "luggage" with the family. Then it was on to preparing a Filipino smorgasbord of adobo, rice, boiled crawfish, boiled squid, fish, and anchovies. We all ate heartily as this was one of our favorite meals. We will always cherish this one of the very few memories of Dad's ethnicity that he enjoyed in the company of Uncle Maning and Aunt Mim. These were the rare times when we were exposed to Filipino people sharing the good times in their native language of Tagalog, which, sadly, none of us ever learned to speak.

     After spending the night with them we would load up and head back to Mobile sometime late on Sunday afternoon. Another stop at the French Market for long loaves of French bread and chocolate éclairs to take home and we were underway. The Station Wagon was now fully packed and Mom and Dad would later in the evening unload four, tired, sleepy, kids at our home on Main Street. We always looked forward to this monthly trip in the Station Wagon.

     There was no place the Station Wagon couldn't go. It transported us to church, school outings, shopping, vacations...whatever. I never remember it failing mechanically or even having a flat tire. God seemed to have his hand on that vehicle. We rode in it hot and sweaty from play, cool and refreshed from a swim at Crystal Springs, or shiny and crisp for Sunday at church. It was a vehicle that we lived in and loved. It is the family car I will always remember... Our “Station Wagon”.