Description
"Auto Biography" relates the story of a 1957 Chevrolet 210 Townsman station wagon and the thirteen people who have owned it--a working-class grandfather who bought the car fresh from the factory at Norfolk's Colonial Chevrolet, that man's veterinarian grandson, and a shipyard worker who took his poodle to the grandson's clinic; a motor head who ran a body shop, an unhappy couple in the outer suburbs, and a struggling single mother; a gay physician and his partner; a pawn shop owner and a navy sailor; a high school dropout who'd grown up among his father's old Chevys, a born-again garbage man, and an electrician; and finally, an oft-arrested rounder and self-made businessman named Tommy Arney, who in March 2011 set out to rescue what had become a rusted-out derelict with birds nesting in its ruined seats. Woven into this narrative are two thematic threads. First, the story examines the stages through which our relationships with our cars pass as the vehicles age, stages akin to those of a doomed marriage: lust, abiding love, companionable reliance, and heartache (and the last's substages of disappointment, disgust and abandonment). Second, it explores the car's role as an emblem--of achievement, social status, and connection to America's cultural center--as it morphs from gleaming showpiece to aged beater, and passes among owners of descending financial means and stature. Fall 2012 to Present