| The icy, nightly bicycle ride to George’s Florist from Conway Hall finally convinced me that I needed a car. Once there, it was a battle between my list of Russian verbs or stoking the roaring furnace at the 17-greenhouse complex, a job where a snow-sparked drop in temperature could threaten bloom damage. So, come spring, I became the proud owner of a used light-blue 1947 Crosley four-passenger sedan, complete with a World War II-surplus marine engine. It was so super compact that, when empty, I could lift its back end off the ground!
By the time my GI educational benefits ran out, the little car carried me (at 50 mph and 50 mpg) to a summer construction job near Santa Fe, N.M., later, to a night-clerk job at Green Acres Hotel on the Harrisburg Pike and, finally, to the Dickinson-supported Washington Semester Program at American University. There, in 1949, I schmoozed with ambassadors, lobbyists and congressmen while researching the politics of the Pan American Highway.
Sadly, though, one dark winter night just before Christmas, in a mechanic’s dingy repair yard, my little Crosley, starved for parts, went to that big junk yard in the sky.
Requiescat in pieces!
Richard R. Renner ’50
Gainesville, Fla.
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