11\TERIVAR YEARS conglomerate. (In addition to the Auburn Automobile TRANSFORMATIONS Company, the corporation included subsidiaries such Brenda Wineapple as Century Air Lines, Lycoming Manufacturing Dazzlingly beautiful, resourceful, and self-reliant: there Company, and Stinson Aircraft.) Cord sold out. By the was something ecstatic about Margaret C. Anderson­ end of the year, the new owners announced they were and at the same time, something composed, willful , closing the automobile factory. Many Auburnites lost not and imperious. She knew what she was about. And she only their jobs but also their lifetime investments. At was always about something. the time, no one in Auburn or in Indiana would have Born in Indianapolis in 1886, she rebelled early dreamed Cord 's bold approach to the Auburn against the upper-middle-class proprieties of an unex­ Automobile Company would someday be celebrated as amined-indeed, uneltf -life. Hating her prosperous a success story. For decades, old-timers spoke sardon­ family, with its love of the material and its fear of the ically of E. L. Cord, if they spoke about him at all. self-expressive, she embarked on a perpetual, rhap­ Today, however, many of these same people recall sodic quest to live life to the fullest, quite as a heroine their association with the Auburn Automobile Company of Henry James might have done could she have with pride. They speak fondly of the era when the com­ chucked the buckles and bustles of her age without pany manufactured the 1935 Auburn Model 851 Boattail recrimination or self-doubt. Speedster, the 1936 Cord 810 Sedan, and the stunning Alas, though, Anderson and her fe llow expatriates Duesenberg Model J, considered by many to be the from the Midwest (Janet Flanner, Ernest Hemingway, most luxurious and powerful motorcar ever created. and F. Scott Fitzgerald, fo r instance) liked to give the These classic cars are collected and showcased, giv­ Midwest a bad name, blaming it for what they found ing the state of Indiana its reputation fo r building superficial, buttoned-up, and stodgy in the America of some of the finest and most beautiful cars in the world. their birth. But in fact there was also something Car buffs wander through automotive museums to quintessentially American about Margaret Anderson. view what many term as "rolling sculptures." This She always believed she could reinvent herself. And enthusiasm is especially evident in Auburn every Labor that she could change tl1e world. In a way, she did both. Day weekend, when members of the ACD Club return At first Anderson studied the piano or, rather, inveigled to enjoy a parade of Auburns, Cords, and Duesenbergs, others to play fo r her so she could listen, enthralled, reminisce about E. L. Cord and his creative design­ to a language never uttered at home. Then she moved to ers, and tour the Auburn Cord Duesenberg Museum, Chicago, enchanted ground she called it, never in the original Auburn Automobile building head­ to miss the Chicago Symphony on Saturday night. To sub­ quarters with its art deco showrooms. The annual fes­ sidize her musical raptures, she wrote book reviews tival, labeled by the state tourism division as one of and clerked fo r eight dollars a week at Browne's Indiana's top five attractions, draws crowds of more Bookstore, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, in the than sixty thousand people. Fine Arts Building. Architecture and lyric poetry also During the festival, owners and collectors park their stirred her soul. classic cars around the town 's courthouse square, and But there was no real venue, she thought, fo r inspi­ spectators mingle, talk, and admire the cars. "According ration. So in 1914 she fo unded The Little Review, a to visitors," said Gregg Buttermore, Auburn Cord bravura adventure in the seven arts that promised to Duesenberg Museum publicist, "the thrill of the Auburn "make no compromise with the public taste." It even­ Cord Duesenberg Festival is that they get to hear the tually published the eclectic writers, artists, musicians, engines and see the cars in motion, something impos­ and thinkers whose names today, taken together, are sible to experience in a museum." synonymous with the raucously modern: Ezra Pound, Much in the photograph has not changed. Buildings Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, Jean Cocteau, Rene and facades are still pretty much the same, including the Crevel, George Antheil, and Constantin Brancusi, as Auburn Hardware and the courthouse. People still well as Emma Goldman, Sherwood Anderson, Dj una gather to admire classic cars. Today, however, serious Barnes, Hart Crane, and William Butler Ye ats. investors spend thousands of dollars restoring an d "I began The Little Review because I wanted an intel­ repainting their cars to look just like the ones in the ligent life," Anderson explained in its last issue. "The photograph. thing I wanted-would die without-was conversation." Rachel Sherwood Roberts is a fo rmer columnist fo r the Or so she later recalled. Once the conversation began, Auburn Evening Star. there was no stopping her. (Actually her friend Janet 42 TRACES .