Walton’s Mercury

A ’56 Mercury Montclair convertible. (Photo by Terry Shea.)

The August 2014 issue of my Hemmings Classic Car magazine has a photograph of a grand 1956 Mercury Montclair convertible on its cover.
In 1956, when I was 12, our immediate neighbors in Erlton (“earl-tin;” as in “Earl”), Steven and Hilda Walton, got a brand-new ’56 Mercury to replace their faded maroon Beetlebomb ’48 Ford sedan.
Erlton was the south-Jersey suburb of Philadelphia (PA) where I grew up until I was age-13. It was founded by a developer named Earl in the ‘20s. All the houses he built — there were at least 10 to 15 — still stand. They are gambrel roofed.
Our house was built about 1940, as was Walton’s, on building-plots laid out by Earl. A lot of Erlton remained undeveloped until the ‘50s.
Walton’s car was a four-door sedan, and wasn’t the solid coral-green of the magazine car.
It was two-tone, dark green and white.
Mrs. Walton, faire Hilda Quincy Walton, founded Erlton Community Baptist Church with my father.
I’m sure there were others, but they were the movers-and-shakers.
They got an old rural chapel, refurbed it, and turned it into a church.
Like the suburbs in postwar America, it prospered enough to move and expand in 1952.
The main highway through town was closed, and the church building moved on flatbed to a new location.
I can still picture it; big doings for our little town.
Once moved, the church building was jacked sky-high so a basement could be built underneath.
The chapel was also doubled in length, all sanctuary.
You could see where the new construction was. The roof was still rippled over the old chapel, but straight over the new part.
Basement complete, the church was surrounded by earthen fill. So the church remains high overlooking the street below.
That wasn’t the end. By now Mrs. Walton, Sunday-School Superintendent, wanted a Sunday-School annex.
A massive brick two-story structure was built about 1955 that doesn’t match the church.
In fact, it looks like a school-building. Its roof is flat.
But now Mrs. Walton had a building worthy of her calling, which was to tell all we youngsters we were going straight to Hell.
Erlton Community Baptist Church moved on, as churches seem to do.
That is, it reflected its membership.
My father got mad when they had to get a new pastor. Apparently the first pastor was approved.
But that guy left, requiring the church get a new pastor, who my father didn’t approve.
My father was one of the deacons, but stormed out when the new pastor was hired.
Erlton Community Baptist Church was moving beyond its founders.
The excuse I perceived was the new guy wasn’t zealous enough; he wanted to discontinue Sunday-evening services.
My father dragged my sister and I to another church far away that still held Sunday-evening services.
My sister and I felt completely out-of-it among strangers, but that was of no consequence.
When our family moved to northern Delaware, Erlton Community Baptist Church fell into the past.
My father did a lot of research to find a church worthy of our membership — that is, one with a HUGE missionary budget. That is, it supported many missionaries.
We found such a church in the city of Wilmington (DE), but my parents left that church for another in the suburbs when the pastor of that city-church started speaking in tongues.
My father wanted to be a missionary himself, along with my mother, who was more-or-less tagging along.
But he was refused by a missionary organization. To be a missionary, you have to be tolerant. I doubt my father could have been tolerant.
But apparently Mrs. Walton continued her role as Sunday-School Superintendent after we left.
I visited Mrs. Walton in 1992; she was in her eighties.
She seemed glad to see me despite loudly pronouncing me Of-the-Devil back in 1957, shortly before my family moved to northern Delaware, because I was trick-or-treating as Elvis Presley, the so-called “bane of civilization” (her terminology).
Her husband Steven Sr. was long-gone; I think he smoked Lucky-Strike cigarettes. How he ever got that by faire Hilda I’ll never know.
The Mercury was also long-gone; she was driving a plain silver Oldsmobile Cutlass four-door.
Steven Jr. had suspended a ball in her tiny garage so she could get it in without ramming the back wall.
She still was at 627 South Jefferson Drive, right next to my original homestead at 625 South Jefferson Drive.
And her house was the same as during the ‘50s, with its strange addition out back.
Waltons were first to build an addition. They started with a porch, but then enclosed that and added more. The final layout was strange, but it added a downstairs bathroom, missing in all our houses.
Our family was next to add, an addition designed by my father.
It added a downstairs bathroom, a picture-window sunroom, and enlarged our kitchen.
Picture-windows were very in back then.
In other words, the kitchen was our original kitchen extended into the addition.
Compared to our addition, Walton’s was strange. It added a downstairs bathroom and that enclosed porch. But I don’t think the kitchen was enlarged. And you had to negotiate an unfinished storage-area to get to that bath, which was behind the kitchen. It wasn’t accessible from the porch.
That storage-area was still unfinished when I visited.

Erlton Community Baptist Church. (The annex at right is not Hilda’s vaunted Sunday-School Annex; it’s part of the refurbed church that was moved.) (Photo by Bobbalew.)

We went up to Erlton Community Baptist Church.
It was the same as when I left. The sanctuary was not enlarged or widened as desired.
By now, faire Hilda was no longer Sunday-School Superintendent, and you could tell she was upset.
She still had a key to her vaunted Sunday-School Annex; they hadn’t taken her key!
She let me inside, but it was impossible to ascertain changes, 33 years having passed.
But apparently the first-floor was no longer what Hilda wanted; she poo-pooed the church Library, offices, the baby-sitting area, etc.
We went up to the second floor. The old Gym was still there, an area I hated because it was where the church-sponsored Boy-Scouts met.
That church troop was an offshoot of Erlton’s Boy-Scout troop, which all the evil Boy-Scouts joined because Erlton’s troop was run by a do-gooder.
The leader of our church troop was a castoff from the Erlton troop. He was also very lax.
My father wanted me in that troop because it was Erlton Community Baptist Church.
But I wanted no part of it, since most of the other scouts were evil.
We also visited the old auditorium where Hilda told us alcohol would rot our brains.
22 years have passed since that visit; I’m sure faire Hilda is gone by now.
Apparently Mercury’s Montclair series was very successful. Packard fixtures on the cheap.
You can see that in the beaked headlight-fairings, which mimic a ‘50s Packard.
Mercury sold even more cars from ’57 on when they broke free of the original Shoebox-Ford chassis — although that was when Ford also redesigned their car to be larger, also breaking free of the Shoebox-Ford.
The Montclair was so successful Ford thought they could market the Edsel, but that bombed.
I’d say it was mostly that silly suck-a-lollipop grill. Without it, the Edsel might have succeeded.


I include this hoary old photograph (Easter, 1954) because it displays the interior of Erlton Community Baptist Church. My sister is visible in the third row of the children in white choir-robes, left-most. Yrs try is also in this picture, but just my eyes are visible. Toward the top of the white-adorned crowd, next to (right) a grinning blonde whose name I don’t remember. The pastor my father approved, Bill Childs, is standing at right, and the choir-director and church organist, Mrs. Dager (“DAY-grrr”) is right of him. Mrs. Dager was a real pill; she was my second piano-teacher (Mrs. Walton was my first, and had a habit of smashing my knuckles with a ruler if I didn’t curve my fingers). Mrs. Dager wasn’t happy unless she got my sister-and-I crying in a lesson. She also loved to blow her nose into a soggy handkerchief, and then stuff that handkerchief into the bodice of her dress. —I recognize others in this photo: Joy Anderson and Phyllis Topham (“TOP-um”). I wonder if either are still alive. Phyllis was the A-student, but Joy was really cute. The boy at left in the second row is one of the Knox boys. Mr. Knox is right of the pastor. I also recognize Elaine Webb, the tall girl in the back. (Photo probably by John Regensburg, a resident of Erlton, also a photographer. He was a member of ECBC.)

• My sister died December of 2011; cancer.