I dedicate my song today to three women who celebrate their birthday today. They are Mary Phelan who lives in County Waterford, Ireland: Pauline Power who also comes from County Waterford, Ireland, and Rita Brooke who lives in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. Enjoy your special day, ladies, and thank you for being my Facebook friends.
My song today is ‘Long White Cadillac’. This song came from “Just Lookin’ for a Hit” album which was released by the country music artist, Dwight Yoakam. ‘Long White Cadillac’ is a song about the death of Hank Williams, who died in the backseat of a Cadillac on his way to a show in Canton, Ohio on New Year’s Day, 1953. Dwight Yoakam considered Hank Williams to be essentially the first rock star and he wanted to pay homage by singing what he considered to be a great song to a great man.
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The first time I ever saw a Cadillac and sat in one, I was 21 years old and it was during a two-year period when I lived and worked in Canada, and during which time I also managed to visit a few American states.
The Cadillac Motor Car Division is part of the American automobile manufacturer ‘General Motors Company’ (GM) that designs and builds luxury vehicles. Its major markets were the United States, and Canada in 1963 when I first sat in this long, long car. Cadillac automobiles are at the top of the luxury field within Canada and the United States. The firm was founded from the remnants of the ‘Henry Ford Company’ in 1902. It was named after Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who founded Detroit, Michigan. The Cadillac crest is based on his coat of arms.
During my first year in Canada, I worked for several months on the Canadian Pacific Railway, serving train passengers. I always opted to work on long-distance journeys which crossed thousands of miles to the edge of Canada and occasionally, even into the United States. During my second year of living in Canada, I eventually finished up living and working in Toronto. I was employed as a desk clerk and receptionist in an upmarket establishment called the ‘Glenview Terrace Hotel’. Being the closest hotel to the airport, we accommodated short stay guests who were either stranded when the airport was fogbound or who stayed one night between long-distance flights, as well as guests who had come to visit Toronto for a few weeks holiday or on business. The bulk of hotel residents overnight would be Americans. These were mostly people of significant wealth. They had to be to pay the exorbitant hotel rates charged.
As the only ‘Limey’ (American slang for a British person) working in this posh Canadian hotel in 1964, I was naturally more noticeable than the native Canadians, and my voice would attract more interest being British. I don’t know what it is about foreign visitors to any country, but in the main, they are often perceived by the opposite sex (who are on the lookout for a date or a sexual encounter), as being more interesting than what they probably are. I was a handsome, young 22-year-old man of single status at the time, with an eye for a beautiful woman. Regarding their age, if they were not double mine, I was always comfortable in their company, whatever the occasion. Indeed, despite currently having a wife who is 14 years younger than my 77 years, when I was 22 years of age, and in my prime, it would not have bothered me in the least to be seen out and about with a woman 14 years older than me.
There was also another aspect to my character which created more interest to the American guests that passed through our hotel. Canada and America have a long and established custom of ‘tipping’ employees within the ‘service industry’. In fact, the simple rule of the Americans is ‘If it nods its head at you, tip it!’ Any Canadian or American hotel worker would ‘expect’ to be tipped and would even stand there until you gave them a cash gratuity after they had performed any service for you. Coming from West Yorkshire in 1963/4, ‘tipping’ was generally unheard of, and getting an additional cash gratuity for merely doing what one was paid to do anyway was something I could never get my head around.
One of the strange facts about human nature (especially between the wealthy customer and the poorer people who serve and service them) is that they generally believe that every worker in the country is in their job to get as much cash as possible out of ‘the customer/consumer of their service’. Consequently, in America and Canada during the early 1960s, any hotel guest would automatically offer the hotel staff who served and serviced them cash tips, and all hotel staff would automatically take them. The only issue under consideration by both sides of the gratuity transaction was the amount of tip given, and depending on that amount, was it gratefully received with sufficient gratitude by the recipient to make the transaction ‘acceptable’ to both sides?
I could never reconcile myself to accepting additional money from any hotel guest for something in my job contract which I’d been paid by my employer to do anyway! At first, when I politely refused to take a tip from a hotel guest, the guest would look at me in utter astonishment, and believing that they had offered this ‘Limey’ an amount small enough for me to judge as being insignificant, their response was to offer me a higher gratuity. When I refused the higher amount also and explained to them that it was the ‘practice’ which I objected to and not the amount offered in gratuity, they looked puzzled and found my stance just as baffling.
Another thing to remember was the ‘standard of living’ disparity which existed on each side of the Atlantic Ocean between Americans, Canadians, and the British in 1964. What the British would have considered being a luxurious lifestyle, the wealthier Americans regarded as being no more than an expectation. There were occasions as the hotel receptionist when being the first person to greet the guests upon hotel entry and departure, there were times when I would be offered more in one tip than I could earn in a week when working back in West Yorkshire in my textile job.
Like many jobs, personal and sexual liaisons between an employee and a service user (guests/customers) were strictly off-limits, but what happened off the job was nobody else’s business. I had a few brief relationships with women who lived in a different province of Canada or in an American State during my first 18 months in Canada. These women would always be attractive in looks, mostly unattached in status, and far wealthier than I would ever be. They would often be quite a bit older than I was. One woman who was a guest, and whose cash gratuities I had always refused, became much closer in her association with me than the hotel manager would have approved of during her brief stay of two weeks at the ‘Glenview Terrace Hotel’. On the morning she departed the hotel to return home, she invited me out to ‘her little place’ in Saskatchewan. The Canadian province of Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the North West Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the United States of Montana and North Dakota. I suppose that it was her way of providing me with a gratuity ‘in-kind’ which she knew I would accept instead of cash, which I never would?
The lady concerned in today’s post of mine was in her late thirties. She was most attractive in her appearance, fashionably dressed, confident in personality, and had been born in the United States, where she lived until her mid-twenties. She had previously gone to work for her American firm in one of its branches in Saskatchewan, Canada, and finished up staying there to live. She said that she lived in the south of Saskatchewan and loved its extreme weather conditions of being extremely hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. She had never married but had enjoyed several live-in relationships with a few men over the previous decade. Her name is of less importance than the intimate time we spent together. It is said that the shorter some relationships are between men and women, the more passionate and intense becomes the experience. Suffice it to say that three days can be long enough time to both live and die in complete contentment.
About one month after she had booked out of the hotel (having maintained telephone contact in between), I took some leave off work and travelled the 1500 miles from Toronto to Saskatchewan to spend three days with my lady friend. She had impressed me as being a somewhat classy lady when I first saw her at the hotel, and ‘her little place’ which she had previously referred to turned out to be a huge wooden ranch with acres of land surrounding the property. When I first set eyes on ‘her little place’, it looked similar to the ‘Ponderosa’ in the American television series of ‘The Virginian’.
My three-day vacation at ‘her little place’ proved memorable and was highly pleasurable. She drove a heavy station wagon around wherever she went, and during my first day there, she invited me to go into the barn with her, where she said she would show me her ‘pride and joy’ that she insisted on me seeing. When she took me to the barn, and not quite knowing what to expect next, I was surprised when she pulled back a dusty old sheet covering a car she had owned for fourteen years. Revealed beneath the cover was a beautiful red car of extreme length. It was described to me as being a model of Cadillac. She took me a drive in it that afternoon, but as I had never driven any vehicle in my life apart from an old motorbike briefly four years earlier, I was perfectly happy with her taking the wheel. In fact, when I think back upon our three days together, I was more than happy to let her take charge and sit in the driving seat in anything we did. That was the first time I ever saw a Cadillac, and even though the car was red and not white, as in today’s song, it was a Cadillac; and like the two nights we spent together, it seemed to go on and on forever and ever.
Love and peace Bill xxx
My song today is ‘Long White Cadillac’. This song came from “Just Lookin’ for a Hit” album which was released by the country music artist, Dwight Yoakam. ‘Long White Cadillac’ is a song about the death of Hank Williams, who died in the backseat of a Cadillac on his way to a show in Canton, Ohio on New Year’s Day, 1953. Dwight Yoakam considered Hank Williams to be essentially the first rock star and he wanted to pay homage by singing what he considered to be a great song to a great man.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
The first time I ever saw a Cadillac and sat in one, I was 21 years old and it was during a two-year period when I lived and worked in Canada, and during which time I also managed to visit a few American states.
The Cadillac Motor Car Division is part of the American automobile manufacturer ‘General Motors Company’ (GM) that designs and builds luxury vehicles. Its major markets were the United States, and Canada in 1963 when I first sat in this long, long car. Cadillac automobiles are at the top of the luxury field within Canada and the United States. The firm was founded from the remnants of the ‘Henry Ford Company’ in 1902. It was named after Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, who founded Detroit, Michigan. The Cadillac crest is based on his coat of arms.
During my first year in Canada, I worked for several months on the Canadian Pacific Railway, serving train passengers. I always opted to work on long-distance journeys which crossed thousands of miles to the edge of Canada and occasionally, even into the United States. During my second year of living in Canada, I eventually finished up living and working in Toronto. I was employed as a desk clerk and receptionist in an upmarket establishment called the ‘Glenview Terrace Hotel’. Being the closest hotel to the airport, we accommodated short stay guests who were either stranded when the airport was fogbound or who stayed one night between long-distance flights, as well as guests who had come to visit Toronto for a few weeks holiday or on business. The bulk of hotel residents overnight would be Americans. These were mostly people of significant wealth. They had to be to pay the exorbitant hotel rates charged.
As the only ‘Limey’ (American slang for a British person) working in this posh Canadian hotel in 1964, I was naturally more noticeable than the native Canadians, and my voice would attract more interest being British. I don’t know what it is about foreign visitors to any country, but in the main, they are often perceived by the opposite sex (who are on the lookout for a date or a sexual encounter), as being more interesting than what they probably are. I was a handsome, young 22-year-old man of single status at the time, with an eye for a beautiful woman. Regarding their age, if they were not double mine, I was always comfortable in their company, whatever the occasion. Indeed, despite currently having a wife who is 14 years younger than my 77 years, when I was 22 years of age, and in my prime, it would not have bothered me in the least to be seen out and about with a woman 14 years older than me.
There was also another aspect to my character which created more interest to the American guests that passed through our hotel. Canada and America have a long and established custom of ‘tipping’ employees within the ‘service industry’. In fact, the simple rule of the Americans is ‘If it nods its head at you, tip it!’ Any Canadian or American hotel worker would ‘expect’ to be tipped and would even stand there until you gave them a cash gratuity after they had performed any service for you. Coming from West Yorkshire in 1963/4, ‘tipping’ was generally unheard of, and getting an additional cash gratuity for merely doing what one was paid to do anyway was something I could never get my head around.
One of the strange facts about human nature (especially between the wealthy customer and the poorer people who serve and service them) is that they generally believe that every worker in the country is in their job to get as much cash as possible out of ‘the customer/consumer of their service’. Consequently, in America and Canada during the early 1960s, any hotel guest would automatically offer the hotel staff who served and serviced them cash tips, and all hotel staff would automatically take them. The only issue under consideration by both sides of the gratuity transaction was the amount of tip given, and depending on that amount, was it gratefully received with sufficient gratitude by the recipient to make the transaction ‘acceptable’ to both sides?
I could never reconcile myself to accepting additional money from any hotel guest for something in my job contract which I’d been paid by my employer to do anyway! At first, when I politely refused to take a tip from a hotel guest, the guest would look at me in utter astonishment, and believing that they had offered this ‘Limey’ an amount small enough for me to judge as being insignificant, their response was to offer me a higher gratuity. When I refused the higher amount also and explained to them that it was the ‘practice’ which I objected to and not the amount offered in gratuity, they looked puzzled and found my stance just as baffling.
Another thing to remember was the ‘standard of living’ disparity which existed on each side of the Atlantic Ocean between Americans, Canadians, and the British in 1964. What the British would have considered being a luxurious lifestyle, the wealthier Americans regarded as being no more than an expectation. There were occasions as the hotel receptionist when being the first person to greet the guests upon hotel entry and departure, there were times when I would be offered more in one tip than I could earn in a week when working back in West Yorkshire in my textile job.
Like many jobs, personal and sexual liaisons between an employee and a service user (guests/customers) were strictly off-limits, but what happened off the job was nobody else’s business. I had a few brief relationships with women who lived in a different province of Canada or in an American State during my first 18 months in Canada. These women would always be attractive in looks, mostly unattached in status, and far wealthier than I would ever be. They would often be quite a bit older than I was. One woman who was a guest, and whose cash gratuities I had always refused, became much closer in her association with me than the hotel manager would have approved of during her brief stay of two weeks at the ‘Glenview Terrace Hotel’. On the morning she departed the hotel to return home, she invited me out to ‘her little place’ in Saskatchewan. The Canadian province of Saskatchewan is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the North West Territories, on the east by Manitoba, and on the south by the United States of Montana and North Dakota. I suppose that it was her way of providing me with a gratuity ‘in-kind’ which she knew I would accept instead of cash, which I never would?
The lady concerned in today’s post of mine was in her late thirties. She was most attractive in her appearance, fashionably dressed, confident in personality, and had been born in the United States, where she lived until her mid-twenties. She had previously gone to work for her American firm in one of its branches in Saskatchewan, Canada, and finished up staying there to live. She said that she lived in the south of Saskatchewan and loved its extreme weather conditions of being extremely hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. She had never married but had enjoyed several live-in relationships with a few men over the previous decade. Her name is of less importance than the intimate time we spent together. It is said that the shorter some relationships are between men and women, the more passionate and intense becomes the experience. Suffice it to say that three days can be long enough time to both live and die in complete contentment.
About one month after she had booked out of the hotel (having maintained telephone contact in between), I took some leave off work and travelled the 1500 miles from Toronto to Saskatchewan to spend three days with my lady friend. She had impressed me as being a somewhat classy lady when I first saw her at the hotel, and ‘her little place’ which she had previously referred to turned out to be a huge wooden ranch with acres of land surrounding the property. When I first set eyes on ‘her little place’, it looked similar to the ‘Ponderosa’ in the American television series of ‘The Virginian’.
My three-day vacation at ‘her little place’ proved memorable and was highly pleasurable. She drove a heavy station wagon around wherever she went, and during my first day there, she invited me to go into the barn with her, where she said she would show me her ‘pride and joy’ that she insisted on me seeing. When she took me to the barn, and not quite knowing what to expect next, I was surprised when she pulled back a dusty old sheet covering a car she had owned for fourteen years. Revealed beneath the cover was a beautiful red car of extreme length. It was described to me as being a model of Cadillac. She took me a drive in it that afternoon, but as I had never driven any vehicle in my life apart from an old motorbike briefly four years earlier, I was perfectly happy with her taking the wheel. In fact, when I think back upon our three days together, I was more than happy to let her take charge and sit in the driving seat in anything we did. That was the first time I ever saw a Cadillac, and even though the car was red and not white, as in today’s song, it was a Cadillac; and like the two nights we spent together, it seemed to go on and on forever and ever.
Love and peace Bill xxx
