Mason City is a town of around 30,000 people located in Northern Iowa. It’s the Cerro Gordo county seat, and is home to a community college, a music festival, several prairie style structures, including a few designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. It’s also home to the MacNider Art Museum (I love visiting there), and is where composer and playwright, Meredith Wilson was born and raised. The town has a charming little downtown area and decent amenities to offer for its size.
Aside from the MacNider, one of my favorite features of Mason City is an ice cream shop called Birdsall’s. On the day my mom and I went garage sale shopping, that was just about the only place we managed to visit aside from the various yard sales. What’s unique about Birdsall’s is that my mother used to go there for ice cream as a child, and her own parents went there for ice cream in their younger days as well. Birdsall’s has been in business since 1931 -that’s 82 years at this point. It was originally owned by the Birdsall family, but was sold to the Escher family after 20-30 years. They still own it today and run the business the same way it has always been run in the same location (though they also have an offshoot stand in the mall now). They make their own ice cream, and it is spectacular. From the flavor down to the very texture of it, Birdsall’s ice cream is the perfect balance between really good homemade ice cream and premium commercially produced ice creams. It is, in my opinion, the best ice cream ever. It’s a long established fixture of Northern Iowa, and it hasn’t needed to change much over the years because Birdsall’s got the formula right the first time. Even the employees are long-standing. Sure, they hire high school kids in summer time to work there, but they also have full time staff. The day I was there, the guy behind the counter was a gentleman named Mark who told me he had been working at Birdsall’s since he was 16 years old. It is the only job he has ever had or needed, and he’s now 60 years old. There aren’t too many people these days who can say they’ve worked the same job for 44 years.
I bring up Birdsall’s because it’s a timeless classic, and it matches up quite well with today’s featured car, which may not be timeless, but is still a desirable classic.
My mother and I must have gone to over 20 garage sales, and for the most part, I didn’t find much of interest. I only really liked one of the places we stopped that had a bunch of old car stuff that I bought for my own collection. There were 3 sales that also happened to have actual automobiles for sale (not as part of the garage sale, mind you, because I think Iowa has some law against doing that, but the for sale cars just happened to be positioned right nearby where shoppers would be). One was a 1968 Pontiac Catalina that needed some work, another was a pristine 2001 Saab 9-3 convertible, and then there was today’s featured automobile: a 1953 Packard Clipper.
Back in 1953, at a time when good ol’ Birdsall’s Ice Cream Shop was a mere 22 years old, a Packard Clipper could be purchased for between $2,600-$2,800. The clipper was Packard’s entry level sedan, though it could also be had as a coupe. Under its hood, the Packard featured a 4.7L straight-8 engine paired with a 3 speed transmission that produced 150 HP and 260 lb-ft of torque. It was a rear wheel drive car (as were most things back then).
The gentleman who owns this Packard belongs to the same car club that my mom and dad used to be members of back in the 1970’s when they lived in Mason City, though apparently they didn’t know each other back then. He also mentioned that he had donated an old Ford to the Mason City Museum because its model year was either the same as when Meredith Wilson was born or possibly when Meredith Wilson graduated from high school -I can’t recall which now. If it was the year Meredith Wilson was born, then it was probably a 1902 Ford Model A, but if it was the high school graduation year, then it was probably a 1920 or so Model T.
The man with the Packard is trying to sell it, and though I’ve blurred his phone number in the photos, if somebody is seriously interested, they can contact me and if they don’t come off like a complete nut, I will share the contact info. Just FYI, he’s asking $9,500 for the vehicle. That’s kind of high, but it does match up with a listing for a similar Clipper from Hemmings motor news. This Clipper is in very good shape and runs well, according to its owner. I noticed some ever so slight rust bubbles emerging from under the paint on the driver’s side rocker panel just in front of the rear wheel well, but that was the only blemish I found on it during the brief couple minutes I spend sizing up the car.
The 1953 Clipper isn’t what people typically envision when they hear the name Packard. By the time 1953 rolled around, Packard was a mere 5 years away from when its last production car would be made. Usually, the Packards of the 1930’s and 40’s are what you’d think of when presented with the name. The 30’s models featured swooping fenders and elongated hoods with beautiful bright work like you’d expect from an old school, high-end classic car. The 1940’s Packs were still holding on to their role as luxury cars, but that sense of eminence was starting to wane a bit as Packard tried to stay in business by building some cars that had a more mass appeal. It was a move they needed to do following the economic downturn and depression that they’d struggled through in the decades prior. This put them in the black by the time World War II ended, but Packard’s rep as an exclusive brand was tarnished. Rather than bump up the looks of their more expensive models to distinguish them from the “commoner” Packs, the company tried to save money by not investing sufficiently in styling updates. Ultimately, Packard lost out to other luxury brands like Cadillac and closed up shop in 1958.
This Packard Clipper is a nice looking car, but when you compare its looks to those of other brands of its time, the styling doesn’t really stand out. It is true that a Packard of any year was probably a better constructed car made of better quality materials than most of its competition, but that type of thing isn’t something that’s going to get new buyers lining up to purchase brand new ones. It’s the type of thing that makes owners of older Packs glad they bought a quality product. It keeps buyers coming back, but with less frequency because the car holds up well enough that they don’t need to get a new one as soon as they might if the car was a bit less reliable and solid. Kind of a double edged sword, isn’t it?
Now, to bring us back around to ice cream…. Mmmm, ice cream…. The thing about Packards is that like Birdsall’s ice cream, they used top quality materials to make their product. Birdsall’s however, manages to keep things fresh by offering seasonal flavors and new flavors periodically, whereas Packard dug in its heels and refused to try new things when they should have. Both Packard cars and Birdsall’s ice cream are quality products. Birdsall’s at its core hasn’t changed over the years, but it made enough little tweaks and additions to its lineup of products and flavors to keep people interested and coming back time and time again.
It’s too bad Packard didn’t take a page from Birdsall’s book, because if it had kept its original mission of building high-end vehicles, and done just minor adjustments as needed to keep its customers coming back and more customers coming in -like perhaps creating a step-down division for its mass offerings rather than using up the Packard rep on products that were needed but ultimately undercut the exclusive appeal that the brand was known for -and restyled their high end cars dramatically, which would have kept the high quality but made owners of older, perfectly functional Packs long for the hot newly designed model -we might be seeing brand new Packards on the roads these days.
Of course, that wasn’t meant to be, but at least Packard built their cars nice and solid so you can still find and buy a used vintage Packard like today‘s Clipper. Once you have your Packard, load up your friends and head over to Birdsall’s for some of the most fantastic ice cream you’ll ever have.
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