The Sunday Drive of Miss Mamie Podolwitz

The Sunday Drive of Miss Mamie Podowiltz

by Kelly Travis

Engine oil clung to Mamie Podowiltz’s gloves, sharp and warm like burnt toast. Her skirt stuck to the leather seat, stiff with sweat and grease, and the steering wheel felt as if it were taking the hand of someone who didn’t yet trust her, someone watchful, waiting to see if she’d flinch.

Grease lived in her fingernails no matter how often she scrubbed with lye soap and a stiff brush. At the garage, clean cuticles meant you weren’t working hard enough. Mama sent her to church with gloves and ribbons; grease got in anyway. That was truth.

After her brother, Cecil, left for France and her training began, Mama said, “You don’t have to do this. You could be a stenographer, work at the mill, join the Red Cross like other decent girls.” Mamie couldn’t. She wasn’t fast enough for typing, the mill gave her headaches that made her cry in the dark, and her knitting, bless it, was a crime against wool. All knobby and full of dropped stitches, like she’d been sobbing while making socks for a ghost.

This job was necessity and permission, a way out of the grayness, not just wheels and gears.

That night Mama sat at the kitchen table, darning Papa’s shirt with a stiff-shouldered focus that made the thread hum. She hadn’t spoken since supper. Mamie dried her hands at the stove while Mama finally asked, “Will you take your father's cross?” Her voice was low and taut, like the pulled thread.

Mamie looked to the mantle where the brass cross hung beside Papa’s pocket watch. “Only if I earn it,” she said.

Mama’s hands paused. The house seemed to shrink to the stove’s heat. From the next room Papa’s dry voice said, “Let her.” The sound of his Bible shutting and the soft shift of his chair were not quite a blessing, not quite a goodbye, but enough. Mamie folded a dish towel and left it by the sink.

Even before Cecil left, Mamie hung around Lea’s Livery like a stray cat. Cecil never sent her home. He showed her how to crank engines, warned her not to wrap her thumb, and had her back wagons slow while her heart pounded like she was stealing something.

The boys, too young or too old to enlist, rolled their eyes and flicked dip into the dirt. She didn’t care. She liked the weight of things in her hands, the tang of metal and mild petroleum smell, the way she could make something move.

She remembered the first time someone spat at her boots and called her “motor maid.” The laugh that followed, low and mean,  stuck. She scrubbed her hands raw that night, not from shame but to prove she belonged.

Clean hands, she thought, might silence a town.

This car mattered because it had been used by Cecil. Stubborn and shaky, it listened if she spoke its language. She’d learned its grammar on long Saturdays, kneeling in dust while grease soaked her hem. Once, outside Foley, a snapped fan belt was fixed with a lady’s stocking; Cecil winked like it was magic.

The next morning, the livery smelled of coal smoke, saddle soap, tobacco, and old coffee. Mr. Leas handed her the key without a word, his jaw working. A boy sweeping the stalls smirked. “Think that lady’s gonna get a Ford all that way?” he muttered. “She’ll stall out at some point,” another said, striking a match on his shoe. “Be a miracle if she doesn’t crack the axle.”

Her passenger was Mrs. Elizabeth Brennick, who chose Mamie because her fare was cheaper than Melvin’s. Mamie had driven her around town before, to the grocer’s, the cemetery, once to St. Raphael’s Hospital when her sister took a bad fall. Mamie wasn’t just driving for money. She was proving something: to the town, to herself, to the men who thought women couldn’t handle a clutch. She’d memorized the route, packed a thermos of coffee, and tucked tools beside her seat.

The Model T shuddered to life with a chuff and a growl. Everything was in her hands. Left on the spark, right on the throttle, foot deep on the low-gear pedal. 

Mrs. Brennick said, “Are we off, dear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Mamie said, steady as she could. “We are.”

She lifted the suitcase as if it weighed nothing, tucking it on the floor by Mrs. Brennick’s feet.

The car lurched, then rolled forward. The town passed in jangling frames: dust, a barking dog, an old man tipping his hat,  mocking or not. A boy on the corner waved. “Go Mamie! Go!” She grinned a grin you couldn’t fake.

They rolled out of Sauk Rapids just after dawn, bumping down roads scored more by wagon ruts than motor tires. Dust gave way to mud at creek crossings; Mamie drove the car at a crawl over narrow wooden bridges that groaned beneath her. Children waved from porches. Horses spooked; she slowed to calm them.

Just past Foley the road narrowed, pinched by soft shoulders that pretended to be solid. Mamie saw the rut a second too late. The back-right tire slipped, jolting the car toward the ditch. Mrs. Brennick yelped and braced.

Mamie steered into the slide, hit the low-gear pedal, and prayed. The Model T groaned, wheels spinning in mud. The engine coughed. For a terrifying moment they didn’t move. She killed the engine.

“No, ma’am,” Mamie said tightly when Mrs. Brennick began to ask. “We’re not stuck. Not yet.”

Boots sinking in muck, she unhooked the toolbox, rolled up her sleeves, and set to work. She wedged a pry bar behind the wheel, then fetched the bundle of cornstalks and burlap she kept in the back for times like this, packing them beneath the tire like a crude mat, rocking the car free inch by inch. Her arms trembled more from effort than cold. After ten minutes she climbed back in, slick with sweat, adjusted the spark, and coaxed the engine. The tire finally grabbed and pulled itself free with a wet sucking sound.

Mamie didn’t look at Mrs. Brennick. She fixed her eyes on the road and drove. After a mile Mrs. Brennick murmured, “My husband got stuck like that once, out by Mille Lacs. Waited three hours before someone came.”

Mamie said nothing. She shifted and kept on.

Near Big Lake they stopped at a general store with a hand-cranked fuel pump. Mamie filled the tank, checked the oil, and wiped the radiator cap with her sleeve. The storekeeper watched, eyebrows raised. “Ain’t many girls driving folks these days,” he muttered.

“Ain’t many girls with a car and a war on, either,” Mamie said.

Back on the road Mrs. Brennick dozed, head tilting back. Roads smoothed near Elk River. Telephone poles marched closer. The faint smell of coal smoke drifted in the wind. By midafternoon the skyline of Minneapolis shimmered with grain elevators, smokestacks, and the Basilica dome under construction. Mamie honked the bulb horn once as they crossed the Mississippi bridge to make the children turn and wave.

Six hours. The car held. So did she.

Mamie dropped Mrs. Brennick off on Washington Avenue.

“My nephew runs a transportation outfit,” she said. “They ship parts between depots. He needs a steady hand, and he trusts what I tell him. If you want, give him a call.”

Mamie took the card with hands that knew iron better than elegance.

She didn’t call right away. She walked along the river first, letting the city settle around her. At the livery, she gave her name and asked if they had a cot. They did. The place smelled of straw, iron, and the kind of smoke that lingers in men’s coats.

By the time she crossed back toward the bridge the next morning, a foreman’s letter had arrived at her house, Papa’s name on the envelope. He opened it with his good hand, eyes bright in a way that was rare for him.

Mamie took the job.

The town still had its jibes, but the garage boys who used to mock began asking her for help.She wore the stains into her gloves and added another pair of trousers to the hook by the door. The cross on the mantle felt less like faith and more like the habit of a life she had earned.

In a town that wasn’t ready for her, she was already gone.