Ed Carter, Ahead of His Time

When I was a kid my sisters and I would spend our Saturday mornings riding around in my Dad’s car while he did errands. The loop was usually the same, the bank, since it was back in the day before ATM’s to get cash; the hardware store to get whatever items were needed for the weekend’s chores, since we were the in house handymen and painters; the grocery store, since my Dad wanted to eat and was without his executive dining room over the weekend; the liquor store, for cash if we missed getting to the bank before noon when it closed and for other things they sold at the liquor store – to us kids it was for the free lollypops ensuring future customer loyalty; the chain saw and lawn mower store, since we were our own lawn service; and lastly the car wash since my Dad liked his cars really clean and although he trusted his children with saws, power tools and climbing up on the roof to fix the antenna he wanted a professional to wash his car.

Long before my sister Janet was born and Margaret was just toddler, nick named George, I was used to riding in the front seat of my Dad’s black Corvair on our Saturday errands. As we drove up South Avenue in New Canaan heading towards Belcher’s, the chain saw store, with the windows open and my father singing at the top of his lungs, “Michelle, my belle,” I would lay down on the floor of the front seat in embarrassment.

“People are looking at us,” I would plead.

My father would just laugh. “They don’t care,” he would say, but to pacify me he would take me into Breslows, the candy and magazine store and buy me a Heath bar while he picked up a Car and Driver Magazine.

My dad loves all things about cars, especially the radio and he loves to sing.   From the time I was about five and protesting his public displays of singing with the Beatles on the radio he would tell me what his dream job was.

“I want to be a rock ‘n roll weather man.”

This seemed nothing but mortifying to me, but his dream did not change the older I got. This was an idea that was way ahead of its time. MTV was yet to even be a twinkle in anyone’s eye. The Weather Channel was double decades away. My father loved rock ‘n roll, making up songs on the fly and really should have been a meteorologist because he has been entranced by weather his whole life.

As I sit today with so much news surrounding me about the weather, blizzards or snownatos or any other made up term for what is happening out there I think my Dad was so far ahead of his time. I would welcome rock ‘n roll weather as a way of learning what is going on. I so quickly tire of repetitive and constant weather reporting. I am sure that the GDP is adversely affected by this constant blah, blah, blah about what might be happening days before it comes.

So Dad, I am sorry I lay on the floor of your car crying about your singing. I was so wrong. You were once again years ahead of your time. If only I had promised you an executive dining room at home if you opened a rock ‘n roll weather station you might have given up the corporate life and now I would be a rock weather princess.