Before today’s 24-hour news cycle, hot Augusts were known as the dog days. Desperate editors pushed reporters for strange stories to perk up circulation. “Man bites dog” tales made it to the front pages.
The shock of my name in the Gazette’s “A Look Back” feature last month reminded me of the time I overreached by chewing out a newsman. I got into a epistolary debate with the Gazette’s longtime former editor, Ed Shanahan. Fifty years later, Ed and I enjoy a smile and nod relationship. Ed wisely moved on to a life of books.
I should have joined him.
Instead, I’m confessing to writing a series of Keynesian mash notes questioning editorial decisions affecting our family’s livelihood.
In the 1970s, I was fully involved in our family automobile business, Cahillane Motors, and also as chair of the Northampton Redevelopment Authority. My challenges were to address task after task.
The NRA was building the city’s first industrial park. Our charge was to use the law of eminent domain to acquire land owned by individuals and businesses in a 90-acre site off Damon Road. The board proceeded with guidance from the state and its in-house attorney. Any proposed site for a government land taking had to be declared substandard, which was a stretch.
Fifty years ago, Northampton elected a new mayor. Sean Dunphy was 28 years old and in his first elected office. I’d met the mayor campaigning for Democratic candidates. Only 15 years before, my dad had been the new mayor, which gave me insight into civic issues. Dad grew wise to the budgetary impact of a city family with five school-age children, like mine, compared to a tax-paying business.
I was invited to lunch with the mayor and Tom Growhoski, his city solicitor. I’d written a paper on industrial development at Holyoke Junior College. For the report, I interviewed the Northampton Chamber of Commerce director. He stated Northampton’s future prosperity hinged on a new industrial park to absorb a larger share of local taxes.
This wasn’t news to me, as our father and other citizens had formed the Northampton Industrial Realty Development Corporation in the 1950s. Shares had been sold to business owners all over town with the purpose of luring Kollmorgen Optical to leave Brooklyn and come to Northampton by paying for the move. The NIRDC was a bold gamble that paid off. One, maybe apocryphal, story was that the wife of founder, Otto Kollmorgen, had visited Northampton and loved its beautiful setting in the Pioneer Valley.
Given a business background, believing in the city’s need to grow, I accepted Dunphy’s appointment to the NRA board. City councilor Francis Hogan, chair of the NRA, sadly passed away a few months later. The job of NRA chair fell to me as the mayor’s choice, despite being the least experienced volunteer. Five years flew by as the Northampton Industrial Park and Pleasant/River downtown study were completed.
In 1975, Dunphy accepted a gubernatorial appointment to the Appellate Tax Board in Boston. I concentrated on business, resigning from the NRA. We expanded by adding Dodge cars and trucks to our dealership, also founding a defined-benefit pension plan to reward our loyal staff.
Forgetting that “no good deed goes unpunished,” business in the 1970s got better until it got worse. In August 1971, President Nixon took the U.S. off the gold standard. The dollar dropped in value, costing Arab oil producers millions. A barrel of oil quadrupled from $2.90 to $11.65 in six months.
Our automobile business was on the front line of America’s gasoline woes, and a near casualty of 1970s stagflation and the Vietnam War.
The 1973 Yom Kippur War triggered an Arab Oil Embargo as the oil producers formed OPEC, to make a solid bloc. Gas pump prices were below $2 a gallon. Availability became every driver’s problem, gas station lines formed. In 1974, Congress invoked a 55 mph national speed limit.
Massachusetts’ drivers alternated gas purchases based on odd or even license plate numbers. At a political fundraiser, I overheard a once sensible Lincoln owner bragging about his Ford Pinto’s gas mileage. It was darn near un-American!
Gas prices continued upward. Franchised dealers were committed to sell what the factory sent us, and it was hard. Compact Japanese cars that had been rotting dockside in American ports suddenly sold out, and the transformation of our industry was underway.
My front-page friend, Shanahan, covered gas prices like the second coming, while I was creating “Mad Men”-era car ads for his back pages.
That got my Irish up.
We traded snail mail on the quality and economy of American cars. In letter after stressful letter, I railed that Ed’s gas charts were killing me. In one letter, I referred to a quote from New York Times columnist, James “Scotty” Reston. Ed replied, “your arguments are elitist and a difficult sell.”
Today, in retrospect, I’m still proud that I was survival driven — family and employees in mind.
Our typewritten missives had their day. Average gas mileage has more than doubled since the 1970s. Gasoline is at every pump for three bucks or less. Hybrid and electric cars are here with more on the way.
Editor Ed’s inky Gazette prospers in print and on all screens.
Feeling as old as Yoda, this keyboard knight yields! I long ago delivered my last automobile.
Yet, “My dreams they are in.”
Jim Cahillane lives in Williamsburg. His family’s dealership fed generations from 1934 to 2006. Jim’s, “The Best Place of All: An Irish-American Memoir of Pluck, Luck & Automobiles” (2004) is at Historic Northampton and local libraries. Jim’s column runs monthly on third Tuesday.