If These Walls Had Ears by James Morgan

tell them all the amazing things she had heard that day.
    As planned, Jessie and Charlie did dance in this house. They belonged to a dance club, a group of eight or ten couples who
     organized dances at one another’s houses. Jessie would open all the French doors, and Charlie would move back the furniture
     and roll up the rugs. Jane’s job was always to wind the Victrola and change the records—or, if they were using the player
     piano, she had to change the rolls and pump the piano. Her parents and their friends mostly fox-trotted or two-stepped, so
     Jane would play current favorites like “Always” or “Rhapsody in Blue.” If somebody was feeling frisky, they might request
     “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Carolee and her group were also dancing by the time she moved to this house. Carolee’s coming of age
     had coincided with that of a new dance called the Charleston. On nights when Jane deejayed for her sister’s crowd, she played
     songs that rocked the entire neighborhood—“Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue” and “If You Knew Susie Like I Know Susie.” Jane learned
     to dance early, because some of the older boys and men would ask her to take a turn around the room with them. If she could
     prevail on someone else to take over her duties—Charles would do it, but then she
owed
him—she would get to enjoy the party even more. Jessie was happy for Jane to dance. Dancing was a celebration of the soul.
    * * *
    So is humor. Jane Armour McRae remembers her father as charming, outgoing, the kind of man who would walk guests out to their
     cars and never stop talking. People could hardly
escape
his hospitality. His dour photographs aside, the man obviously had a sense of humor. How else could he have created the Nu
     Grape car?
    Nu Grape was going well. Over at the White City pool, you could hear young girls say, “If you can swim all the way across,
     I’ll buy you a Nu Grape.” The distinctively cinch-waisted bottle certainly helped. “She has a shape like a Nu Grape bottle”
     was another popular saying—usually from the young men watching those girls swim in the pool. But though business was good,
     Charlie decided he needed a gimmick. Selling had gotten sophisticated. With radio, the public had lots of new demands on their
     attention. You had to reach out and
grab them.
The idea Charlie came up with was to build a car in the shape of a Nu Grape bottle.
    He began with a Chevrolet chassis, but by the time Charlie got through with it, you wouldn’t have recognized it as a Detroit
     product. Actually, the car became a kind of work in progress. At first, it didn’t have the roof I saw in that first grainy
     photograph—just two seats up front and a back end shaped like the Nu Grape bottle. The radiator looked like a bottle cap from
     the start. Naturally, the car
had
to be painted purple. The back opened so Charlie could carry cases of soda, or proposals, or whatever a Nu Grape bottler
     needed to have on hand. Immediately, the car achieved Charlie’s purpose—people all over Little Rock knew about “the Nu Grape
     car.” It was good for business. As for Charlie’s image, he had finally acquired a degree of that Southern eccentricity he
     had admired so in Louisiana.
    He took to driving the Nu Grape car back and forth to work every day. At night, he would park it out in front of the house
     so people couldn’t miss it. In the mornings, before he went to the office, he would drop Charles and Jane off at school. Poured
     them out with everyone watching. They weren’t the least bit embarrassed. They loved the car, found it enormously funny. Their
     classmates considered Charles and Jane celebrities because of it. The car also advertised the fact that Charles and Jane had
     a never-ending supply of soft drinks cooling in their icebox at home. After school, 501 Holly was a very popular hangout.

    To help sell soda pop, Charlie Armour create this car shaped like a Nu Grape bottle. fane and young Charles