Jim Kennedy’s Car Collection

My Dad (the Plymouth Man), John J. “Bart” Kennedy, was born in Haverhill, Massachusetts, on August 20, 1924. When he was three years old, his parents bought a home on Eighth Avenue, in Haverhill’s working-class Irish “Acre” section; except for his Marine Corps service during World War II, Dad lived in that house for the rest of his life. After attending Suffolk University in Boston on the G.I. Bill, Bart began a 35-year career as a civil engineer with the Metropolitan District Commission of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; his33-mile one-way commute demanded dependable transportation. In 1953, a friend introduced him to a secretary in the Massachusetts Department of Public Works, Mary Roche. Mary had been born in Lowell on October 8, 1925, where she lived with her parents and sister and commuted by train to downtown Boston. Three years later, John and Mary began a matrimonial journey that lasted over 40 years and produced three reasonably well-adjusted children. For reasons never fully explained but consistent with Bart Kennedy’s loyalty, the Kennedy Family always drove Plymouths.

 

The last car Dad owned was a 1995 Emerald Green four-door Plymouth Neon Highline, purchased in late 1994. After he died in 1997, Mom continued to rack up miles on his final set of wheels. As she motored towards age 75, Mary Kennedy arguably valued her car keys as much as her children (but not quite as much as her grandchildren). By early 2000, her three kids decided a new ride would be safer and help her maintain independence for a few additional years. We chose a Neon in the mistaken belief she would be familiar with how the dashboard buttons and levers worked, reducing the amount of learning and change. To our surprise, Plymouth had introduced a number of updates and improvements since 1995, most of which proved baffling to Mom. We ultimately resorted to pasting hand-written labels and color-coded stickers on the dashboard to aid in the operation of critical systems.

 

We purchased the Neon from Clark Chrysler-Plymouth in Methuen, Massachusetts. Dad had bought his last few cars from Clark, after a falling out with his long-time dealer, McGregor-Smith Plymouth in Haverhill (something about a “Free Red Sox tickets with Purchase” promotion announced the day after Dad had bought a car). Despite the sign above the showroom, no one named Clark had been associated with the business for decades. Irving Grinnell Clark had launched a Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in downtown Andover, Massachusetts, when auto manufacturers resumed production after World War II. By the early 1950s, he had sold his interest in favor of other entrepreneurial opportunities in Meredith, New Hampshire, and Sarasota, Florida. Irving Clark died in Meredith in 1974 at the age of 79. The new owners, named Barenboim and Leoff, retained Clark’s name on the business, even as they expanded to include Dodge and Jeep brands and relocated several times over the following six decades. Only in 2018, once the business had been sold by Mr. Barenboim’s son to a larger automobile dealership conglomerate, did the dealership name change, from Clark to Kelly. Erin Go Bragh, as my people say.

 

For ten years, Mom happily motored the “Silver Bullet” around town and further beyond city limits than her kids would have liked. Then, after a few incidents that raised the existential question of how many replacement parts does it take before a car is no longer the original vehicle, she reluctantly decided to park the Neon permanently and surrender the keys. Those keys were handed to her eldest grandchild, who journeyed on adventures from Knoxville, Tennessee, to Asheville, North Carolina, to New York City and Eastern Canada (or, as we like to call it, Wicked Northern Maine). I acquired the car in 2012, when the cost and complexity of parking in Manhattan apparently outweighed the pleasure of possessing such a sweet ride. Nevertheless, the “Silver Bullet” continued to be called into service by the youngest family members during school breaks and summer vacations. By late 2018, however, when Mom died, the Neon had relocated to Northern California.

 

This 2000 Neon, the newest of my fleet, is also the most bruised and battered, the most weathered and worn. And yet, for that reason, this one remains the most valuable. This Plymouth is a car one of my parents drove, along the familiar streets of my old neighborhood in Haverhill, Massachusetts. This one is the last in a long unbroken line of Plymouths that graced the short asphalt driveway at 93 Eighth Avenue, wedged between the stone back door steps built by my grandfather and the row of hedges he planted at the property line when Dad was a boy. This one most reminds me of how I developed my love for Plymouths, and why my childhood memories are (mostly) happy ones.

 

This one I will keep forever.