Friday, February 15, 2013
Rollin'
I’ll never forget my first car—a light blue 1980 four-door Pontiac Phoenix hatchback. It was a battle-tested veteran by the time I inherited it. Following a low-speed run-in with a utility pole early in its life, it forever thereafter sported a not-so-subtle dent extending from the left-front fender almost to the trailing edge of the driver’s door.
That car gave me some of the best leg workouts of my life, as it lacked power brakes and thus couldn’t be stopped without an enthusiastic stomp to the floor. And boy, did it ever have a touchy accelerator! Mash the pedal two-thirds of the way down and…nothing. Take it just past that point with anything less than a surgeon’s finesse, and I’d elicit disapproving stares and head shakes from adults convinced I was just another teenaged boy in a beater driving like I was going out for the Indy 500. Maybe they weren’t too far off base….
LaMontae, the lone senior among our current group of teens, recently told me he got his first car—a Cadillac born in the same decade as he was. LaMontae’s a pretty low-key guy, so he doesn’t wear the pride of ownership on his sleeve the way a lot of teenaged boys do. But you can see it if you look. And I suspect it’ll be a lot more noticeable once he gets his ride fixed up the way he wants.
LaMontae and his mentor, Gordon, went to the local Pull-A-Part recently, searching for a few replacement odds and ends. They drove Gordon’s car, as LaMontae’s is in need of a new battery. The shopping list that day included a front seat (to eliminate the need for an ingenious exercise ball-prop that keeps the seat from permanently reclining) and a gas cap. They priced the seat and bought the cap.
Once they got to LaMontae’s home and attached the new part, they jumped his car. It came to life and they were able to give it a once-over. The power trunk release worked, so they popped the lid and looked inside—only to discover the hideout of the car’s original gas cap!
When Gordon shared the story of the part-shopping trip, he prefaced it by saying he guessed he and LaMontae hadn’t accomplished much that day. I beg to differ. Inefficient efforts to fix up imperfect cars, and the chance to share a laugh over “Remember the time we…?” stories down the road are the stuff relationships are made of.
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Great story, Matt, and very true. I think all of us remember that first old "beater" car and the relationships that formed around it. Mine was a 1977 Honda Accord hatchback with the "Hondamatic" engine (it had 2 gears but no clutch; you just shifted it into 2nd gear around 30 mph).
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ReplyDeleteYour post stimulated long-buried memories.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was a teenager we lived in midtown Manhattan where I went to a prep school a 30-minute subway ride away. Several years after WWII ended and the home-building business revived, my Dad moved us out of NYC up to New Rochelle, where our new dwelling was an old farmhouse. This was a long distance from the school, but my folks wanted me to finish there, so I commuted via public transportation every day during my junior year. This required, first, catching a bus, then a transfer to an electric trolley, next a train ride behind a puffing steam engine, finally a one mile walk through a park up the hill to the campus. I think all this took two hours or more each way – assuming no delays en route.
For my senior year my Dad presented me with my first car - an elderly Packard hand-me-down sedan that was, as I recall, one of the last manufactured before the entry of the US into the war. It was a basic vehicle, dark blue, with rust holes on the bottom of the driver’s door, but it ran OK. It had cloth-covered bench seats front and back, a 3F, 1R gearshift on the steering column, and started with the push of a button independent of the ignition lock. I learned to drive by navigating round and round between the trees in a field behind our house.
It turned out I was the only kid in my class with a car, so, for a while, it provided me with a bit of badly-needed prestige. Now and then some of my classmates would crowd into the car with me during lunch-hour – I had to keep warning them not to fiddle with the starter button, for I always parked in gear, and poking at this inviting control caused a neck-snapping jerk. Alas, my fantasies about how this car would expand my horizons came mostly to naught – I was at that time very awkward with girls and the school was all male, so commanding this vehicle never led to any stirring adventures, romantic or otherwise.