The sun was directly overhead when 92 year-old Theodore Gaillard Pinckney’s “good eye” caught a gleam through the dining room window. He balled up his napkin, abandoned his wife and dining companions, and to set out to find his disposable camera. Sunlight had bounced off a chrome bumper in the parking lot of their retirement residence in Durham, North Carolina. It could mean only one thing, the mint green, 1958 Chrysler Imperial was back. Pinckney cut his camera search short and rode the elevator to the ground floor. He found a residence director with a camera willing to do the honors. They had to hurry. No one had seen the car drive up. The owner could just as easily climb back in the Chrysler and drive away before Pinckney, a heart patient with diabetes, could reach it.

 

 And it wasn’t just the car Pinckney wanted photographed--he wanted to pose next to it, hand on a fin. He wanted to lean against the freshly waxed exterior, his cap cocked to one side, foot braced on the curb, and appear for all the world as the beauty’s proud owner.

 

That Pinckney could feel kinship with a stranger’s car is understandable. It’s not so much the nostalgia he feels for style or design.  Nor is it a pining for by-gone days.  His fascination lies under the hood. Engines were simpler back then. Gears were finely engineered. The sounds of whirring, mechanical pumps clicking, and the smell of grease, oil and gasoline – all rise from his DNA.

 

  Pinckney was 12 years old when he forfeited a day of crabbing beneath live oaks and hanging moss on the banks of historic Beaufort Island, South Carolina. That day he would accompany his father to work.  Roger Pinckney IX was the owner of Pinckney Well Drilling and Pile Driving Company of Beaufort, South Carolina. The senior Pinckney, a slight man, had a giant’s reputation after building a house in nearby McPhersonville for his entire family—at the age of 16.

 

His father could do anything, it seemed. He built docks and bridges. He even rescued sunken boats. “Storms would come along and wash barges and boats [into the waterway],” Pinckney remembers. “Paris Island had a big barge and it sunk.  My father took the job to raise it.

 

The senior Pinckney’s reputation and interest in pumps and underwater work had probable roots in his father’s legacy. Roger Pinckney, VIII, according to family legacy was a “potential” crew member on the legendary 40 ft. submarine, the H.L. Hunley.

http://www.history.navy.mil/branches/org12-3.htm This Roger Pinckney had been a civil engineering student at the State Arsenal of Cadets in 1860 and joined the Confederate Navy when South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union. Pinckney was assigned to the recently built C.S.S. Chicora  in Charleston in 1863.  Then word went out that the disaster-plagued Hunley had a mission so dangerous that no assignments were being issued. The call was for volunteers, small volunteers.  The sub was reported to have only five feet of standing room. Pinckney stood 5’2”.

 

A coxswain had already been selected, and eight men were needed to operate the ballasts and propel the crankshaft. A long line of potential crewmen stood waiting.  Any man wanting to volunteer was asked to take one pace forward. According to the story Roger Pinckney, VIII told his grandchildren, the entire line took one step forward. Pinckney was number nine, and was thus “spared by one count.” (collected in Roger Pinckney of England and South Carolina by Ellen Gray Hawkins.)

 

For years, a museum dedicated to the Hunley and located on Broad Street in Charleston, displayed a replica, diagrams, and information on the fore and aft hand-pumped ballast tanks used for submerging and surfacing the sub. The Pinckney offspring knew the story by heart.

 

Yet, asked how his father, a generation later, could raise barges and do such underwater work,  Gaillard Pinckney looks surprised; then, raising his startling three-inch eyebrows says:

 

class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">“He put a bucket over his head! His wouldn’t let his workers do it -- he did all the underwater work himself.“

 

When Roger Pinckney, IX wasn’t drilling wells or building docks and bridges, he was  moving houses on rollers, building seawalls,  and repairing gasoline engines. Then there were the family cars to maintain.

 

“My father had a Lexington, a 6 cylinder touring car. A 1922-23 model. My older brother had a 1929 Moon coup, also a 6 cylinder. My aunt gave it to him as a gift. He painted it silver and put a sign on the spare tire cover that read, ‘Roll on You Silver Moon.’”

 

 Cars became not only a major source of entertainment for young Gaillard Pinckney, but would one day supply a steady source of revenue. His brother in-law gave him his first, a 1922 Ford Model T, CD (Center Door).  The only door was on the passenger’s side in the back seat!

 

“It had no license tag,” Pinckney says,  “I was 17 years old and drove it around in the woods.”

 

Then came The Great Depression. Young Gaillard Pinckney’s tutoring ended when, like many other South Carolina businessmen and planters, his father was forced to seek work in another state.  Gaillard Pinckney found work near home soliciting dry cleaning between Beaufort and Yemassee, South Carolina. For this, he needed a larger car. Before long, he spotted just the thing.  A 1927 Dodge Brothers, perfect for hanging customer’s clothes in the back seat. But it was parked in a preacher’s garage. The preacher had paid $20 for the car, but was willing to let it go for $18. The younger Pinckney had struck his first deal.  Soon, he was bouncing down the dirt road between the two towns. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4av9a7zVirg&feature=related

 

 

Gaillard Pinckney loved the car. “It had a Star of David on the grill.  The gear shift was the reverse of a standard gear shift.  And the generator and the starter was a combined unit.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8r7wPT5P30&feature:related The Dodge Brothers had competed with Ford’s Model T, and was generally viewed as an upscale choice. Pinckney’s version had four cylinders. He soon sold the Model T for $10.

 

Eventually, Pinckney traded in the Dodge for a ’31 Plymouth. “It was free-wheeling. You didn’t have to use a clutch to change gears.”

 

Later, he purchased a 1928 Model A Ford—the first year the Model A was built. “I bought it from a friend’s father in 1939 for $50. Somebody offered me $75 for it, so I sold it.”

 

Next, he bought a 1934 Ford that had been in an accident, “It was a two-door Ford. Painted the wheels Catawba Yellow. Then I bought a ‘33 Chevrolet. Left front wheel was bent, and an axle was bent. Had to straighten it out and put a wheel on it. Painted it blue, with green wheels and white sidewalls tires. It looked good. That was 1939. Sold it for $135. My sister had a ‘33 Chevrolet that was in bad shape. I swapped her for the ‘34 Ford. Traded her car for a 1937 super deluxe four-door sedan Chevrolet. 18,000 miles on it. Paid $600.”

 

When Gaillard Pinckney and his brother Roger returned home from WWII, they found their father in declining health. Roger took over the pile driving business, and Gaillard, the well drilling and pump repair. Gaillard Pinckney didn’t have a wife until 1953, which gave him plenty of time to indulge his car and government surplus interests.

 

“After WWII, I bought more surplus from the government than any other man in Beaufort County. I bid $350 on an amphibious tank. I wanted it for a toy. I was highest bidder, but the government rejected the bid and withdrew the tank. So I bought a Military Half-Track combat vehicle, bullet-proof steel all over it. It had a Big Diamond T truck engine in it. Had wheels on the front and tracks on the back like a tank. I used it to help move houses. I bought two Russian Jeeps—one and a half tons each. The U.S. had built 50,000 for Russia during the war, but Russia rejected them. The U.S. used them around this country in airfields. Both had been wrecked. I jammed two of them together and made one vehicle.”

 

During a career that spanned 40 years, Gaillard Pinckney finally surpassed his father’s record for drilling over 5,000 wells in Beaufort County. He continued to repair some of the pumps he sold well into his eighties.  He outlived two wives and today, lives with a widowed childhood sweetheart he married and moved from Beaufort three years ago for health reasons.  He misses Beaufort. Left behind is his home, a 1941 Hudson he bought brand new, and a 1971 Toyota, which sits unattended on an unused commercial property owned by a friend.  In his front yard, a rotary engine Mazda from the ‘70s lies buried beneath a tarp and thick blanket of moss and leaves.

 

 

Fortunately, Pinckney moved a partial collection of his favorite miniature cars to Durham. They range from a 1903 two-door Cadillac, to a 1941 Plymouth and 1971 Dodge Challenger. His favorite: a green, 1935 Deusenberg SSJ roadster. “ It was top of the line then,” he says.

 

But the collection isn’t enough. Once a month Pinckney tells his wife, “I’ve got to get back down there. “ He thinks about the Hudson and sighs. “I’ve got so much to do.”

 

By Pamela Tandy

Pamela is a journalist (both online and print), has taught persuasive writing, and has a masters degree in creative writing. She is also a budding animator and videographer.

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Comments(1):

1. Gilliard

   Good job Looney!

   Friday, October 16, 2009 John