A Brief Review of Earl Swift's "Auto Biography: A Classic Car, an Outlaw Motorhead, and 57 Years of the American Dream"

I stumbled on this book while trolling the shelves at my local library, and I am glad I did. Once I opened the cover, I could not put this book down. While it is a highly focused work about the owner of a Mock, NC junkyard and collectible car business, its themes probe far deeper and wider elements of the recent American experience. The author asserts that "What makes America who and how we are is in no small measure tied to pour status as the most automotive people on the planet.... Arney's cars are time capsules not only of automotive engineering and design, but Americanism itself." At the center of the story is Moyock Muscle owner Tommy Arney and his associates: best friend Skinhead, ex-exotic dancer Victoria Hammond, also known as Slick, and Painter Paul. And then there are twelve previous owners of a 1957 highland green Chevrolet Townsman six passenger station wagon, thirteen if you count Arney.

Auto Biography then is a story of a 1957 car and 13 Americans living in the Tidewater area of Virginia and North Carolina. The car is reflective of the golden age of automobiles in the 1950s, its optimism and the Jet Age. How can I forget a 1957 Chev, since while growing up my best friend's family car was a purplish 4 door sedan that featured gunfights on the hood and a dashboard that simulated a jet fighter, with its clustered gauges and speedometer?

At the heart of the book is the story of Arney, a man I am grateful to have never crossed paths with. He introduced to there reader as a man who is "Crazy. Brash. A rough customer. Charming, Funny shrewd. A case could be made for any and all of them, to which I'd add: a scholar....He is a historian, a curator of memories, a student go American popular culture in the mid-twentieth century."

Arney is also brutal and violent beyond description. as the author sums up, "Arney's hands have been known to usher lengthy convalescence. He has stabbed at least two men. he has bitten, chewed, and swallowed a mouthful of neck for ma third, and ripped the scrotum of another. And when an associate lied to him once too often, Arney knocked him unconscious and bored twice through his kneecap[ with a Black & Decker cordless drill. Unsatisfied, he drilled into the tip of the man's head. He failed to hole through before the bit snapped.

Besides Arney there are twelve other stories, some quite engaging as well. There is the story of the first owner of the wagon, a boilermaker by the name of Thornhill, and then his grandson a veterinarian, who inherited the car.  In secession then we are introduced to a body shop owner; struggling and free-spirited single mother; a gay physician and his partner; pawnshop winner; any sailor; high school dropout with a father who was obsessed with old cars; born again Christian garbageman; electrician and hotrodder; and fairly Arney who along with painter Pal respires the vehicle.

So this book is the tale of a car and its owners, reminiscent of a 1947 German rubble film that I once viewed that traced the history of ownership of an Opel through the Nazi era and immediate post-WWII aftermath. On one hand, the story is sad, in that it chronicles the difficult lives of so many of the characters. But the story ends with a restoration. If an old car be put back together good as new, perhaps so can a person who went through a valley of sorrows.