Grandpa’s car of choice was a Buick. In my childhood, any discussion about a Buick centered around whether the car was a four holer or not. The “holes” were stylized vents on the side of the car where, in the past, the air vents for the cylinders had been.

Riding with Grandpa was always an adventure. I still have a scar over my right eye to prove it. Grandma and Grandpa took me along one day on a drive to the bakery. “We won’t be gone long,” Grandma had said. However, they were away an awfully long time and when they finally did come home, I had a big bandage on my forehead. Grandpa had had to brake suddenly. The force of the stop sent me flying out of Grandma’s arms headfirst into one of the large round knobs on the dashboard of the Buick. “Couldn’t you hold onto him any better than that?” Grandpa screamed at Grandma. She yelled back and criticized his driving. Neither of them was yelling, however, when they arrived back and had to tell my parents what had happened.

My cousin Jan was better acquainted with Grandpa’s driving (in)ability. For some time, she worked in the same office as our grandparents and rode to work with them. She reported how Grandpa would be speeding down the highway at 80 saying that he never drove faster than 55 mph. At high speed, he’d be swerving off the road onto the shoulder and back.

Then there was the time that he offered to take my cousins’ other grandparents, Myrtle and T.A. Olsen, home. With Grandma in the front and the Olsens in the back, Grandpa shifted the automatic transmission into “R” instead of “D” and tromped on the gas. The Buick went careening backwards. The Olsens got a terrified look on their faces, fearing they were about to die. Going full speed astern, the car crashed into the brick flower box in front of Uncle Joel’s house and demolished it. The ironic part about this incident was that Joel’s wife Mary Anne had re-parked Grandpa’s car in the driveway facing outward, so that all he would have needed to do would have been to drive forward on departure. He blamed that accident on Mary Anne. “Never leave a car in reverse.” Of course, a car with an automatic transmission cannot be started in reverse. There were, thankfully, no injuries involved.

In 1981, Grandpa was becoming increasingly senile and family members had often expressed their concern that he shouldn’t be driving anymore. Before they could act, Grandpa hit a girl while driving home from the Rose Bowl Bowling Lanes in Roseville, Minnesota, in his 1971 Buick Skylark, sending the child to the hospital with minor injuries. At that point, Dad and his brother Joel took the car away from Grandpa without taking his stubbornness into consideration. A short time later, Joel dropped Grandpa off at the Rose Bowl, saying he would pick him up a few hours later. At the bowling lanes Grandpa began telling his friends and one of the managers that he needed to buy a new car. The manager then called a friend at Kline Olds in Roseville, Minnesota, who came to pick him up. When Joel arrived at the Rose Bowl, he was told that Grandpa was gone and was in the process of buying a new car. Joel raced to Kline Olds just in time to see Grandpa driving away in his new white 1981 Oldsmobile Cutlass.

One night Dad received a phone call from someone at a filling station in Eagan Township, Minnesota, on the opposite side of town from where Grandpa lived. “Do you know an I. Edward Bloomfield?” the man wanted to know. He then explained that Grandpa had driven his new Olds Cutlass across a field directly into the guardrail in front of the cashier’s office. The startled gas station attendant had run out, opened the car door, taken Grandpa’s car keys and asked for his license.

While driving home that night, Grandpa had lost his orientation and had been driving around for miles trying to find his way. When he saw the lights of gas station across the field, he headed directly for it. Although Grandpa was mad at the attendant, he willingly got into Dad’s car to be taken home.