Pavement Alerts: the tri-colored push button transmission 1956 dodge

My father died of a heart attack, in the Central Valley of California, on Valentine's day, 1987. (My father was a stoic in many ways, and though he was a wanderer and an adventurer in his way, he and my Mother had returned to California after a restless yet accomplished lifetime which took him from Pennsylvania to Boston to Palo Alto to Naval office training to the South Pacific to Hawaii to California to a one year tour of Europe in 1958 (just Dad and Mom went-sending us to live with a childless couple we barely knew for a year-to mixed results) to Illinois and finally back to California for his final years.) I remember because I was 5 months pregnant at the funeral and they played my favorite church hymns - were they also my father's favorites? Or were they my Mother's? Did she choose the funeral program- or was it their standard scripted funeral home fare? (I seem to remember that the funeral service itself took place in one of those "temporary" buildings that they use for overcrowded schools- they are really like mobile manufactured homes. It was an open casket, but I could not look at my father laid out to rest in that trailer. Didn't he deserve better? No matter, I could never have looked at him in death. Such a private man in life should not be inspected on his death.)

Photo above of Main St., Coopersburg, PA

The old time ones that were also my grandparents' favorites and the hymns that were sung in the beautiful old church out in the country of Old Coopersburg, PA- the one we walked to every Sunday during the early years when we three sisters summered at Nana and Popop's house, so as to give our parents a break.

The land just blocks from Main St., Coopersburg, PA

Or was it just a coincidence? I didn't know my father well enough to know his favorite hymn, although we all went to church every week that I lived in his house. At his funeral they played "How Great thou Art"" and "Our God our Help in Ages Past," on a tape player. It was funeral home muzak I suppose. My mother wore a royal blue brocade dress; I seem to remember after the service, my Mother was negotiating the delivery of the funeral floral displays- to where was she sending them? I don't know. There are things that you remember. Small things that mean nothing.
Stoic though he was - he never spoke of the war - one of his few obvious and improbable pleasures was buying the car on the "showroom floor". He had a weakness for the car on display. So if he might give in and buy a flashy car one year, years later for his next purchase in penance he would buy a stripped down white Rambler with no carpet, no air, and even no radio! My father could be unpredictable. This last car made him cross when he had to take our family on one of those awful road trips and this time he couldn't listen to sports radio! what was he thinking? he had gone too far this time buying a car with no radio even!
Before he bought that stripped down Rambler