Esmerelda, a Car with Spirit, Carries On

Fred Ordway and Bob Crane, both class of '49, may own Esmeralda II, but they probably don't know that their black and blue Chevrolet leads a night life all her own.

Esmerelda II is no ordinary car. True, she was spawned of a punch press and a Detroit turret lathe sometime in the early '30s, just like millions of others. But there the resemblance ends.

For Esmerelda, late in life, has developed a penchant for bringing boys and girls together. In her spacious back seat and on her soft front cushions literally hundreds of couples have sat and talked of the world and the meaning of things.

To work her life's mission, Esmerelda first had to give up her most prized possession--the use of her motor. Immobile, she stood for months, swaying gently in the night breezes, beside Radcliffe's Briggs Hall.

And her battered doors opened and shut for compatible couples.

The trail from Detroit to Cambridge was not straight, and Esmerelda's early years are clouded in obscurity. But these facts are known: last year, sometime in the early spring, she was given to four Radcliffe girls by a group of Harvard undergraduates.

At this time, Esmerelda was unable to move under her own power, and the trip from the Houses to Briggs Hall was accomplished with the aid of a towing car.

At Briggs, a ruling of the Annex administrators gave Esmerelda her big chance: it was made law that no male visitors would be allowed inside a Radcliffe dormitory after 10 o'clock at night. Boy and girl would have to part company on the doorstep henceforth.

Where to say goodnight? Where to find answers to soft questions?

Esmerelda stood swaying gently in the night breezes. Some say her tarnished headlights rolled owlishly.

At any rate, her comfortable interior soon filled the gap, and until the end of the year, Esmerelda heard no harsh words. Sometimes a small line would gather patiently on the lawn outside, waiting for a chance to get in.

When school was over they tried to sell Esmerelda for charity, but no one would take the little car that wouldn't run, and so she passed back into the bands of her former owners.

Today, her innards repaired, she does backbreaking work until the sun goes down. She lugged a daybed and an armchair through the Square yesterday.

But at night she parks by the indoor Athletic Building, where it is quiet. She rocks a little now and again. But there is something in her bearing that attracis boy and girl yet, and whenever her Leverett House owners aren't locking she takes in lodgers.