Cars gone by.Part I

I’ve been thinking a lot about past experiences. Reminders of them come up at work or seeing someone young to silly things my siblings did (never me, of course!). One of the things we were talking about was cars that we had. I’ve had few cars, so I thought I’d go through some things with them…

 

1962 Dodge Dart—this was the first car I ever purchased, the year was 1977.  The payments were a big $25 a month and I paid $700 for it.  I actually wish I still had this car.  It was baby blue and had a push button transmission on the left side of the steering wheel.  I was just out of high school when I got it. There was so much going on that summer. I worked full time at an insurance company and part time at McDonalds and spent every spare minute with a group of friends from Campus Life. There were movies, softball games, skating rink things, a trip to Colorado and more.  That car was abused. I remember stuffing as many people in it as possible (no seat belt laws then) to go somewhere-I think we had 14! I would love to let some unsuspecting person go “move the car” for me only to come back in a few minutes later (they were always timed) to ask where the gears were. Even now, I don’t see any cars with the gears on the left of the steering wheel. I always imagine them looking down on the floor, examining the right side of the dash and steering wheel, glancing at the seat and the ceiling, and looking totally confused. It was so fun. It is also sad to remember that one night late, I was taking people home and needed gas.  We all scraped pennies together and bought a quarter’s worth of gas…and that was enough to get me home! Those were the days… I gave the car to my brother when it had a piston problem.  It would have been several hundred dollars to fix it, but it would run until the piston went through the wall and ruined the transmission.  I think my brother drove this 6-7 months until that happened.

 

1979 VW Bug—the car with a stick shift.  I had only driven a stick shift one or two times before buying this car.  It took me 3-4 days to find reverse (no one told me you had to push the stick down before going into reverse), so I had to park in places I could drive forward or coast back out of a parking space.  Some ignorant soul tried to tell me to never put in the clutch, which caused problems for about 5 minutes. After that I had a lot of fun with it! It reminded me of my older brother’s bug he had in high school—his friends would physically move it to places like the goalpost of the football field or in front of the doors to the high school where it couldn’t be driven off, but had to be picked up and moved.  It also reminds me of a younger brother’s VW and the picture one of his friends drew of him riding in it, head out the window and hat flying off his head. My VW died in a car accident. It was one of those nights between Spring and Summer when the Sun was in your eyes in certain directions. I didn’t see a stop light and—praise God—the 3 year old in the front seat of the other car was not injured.  My poor bug, though….I could see the road through the floor from the backseat. Time is getting me here…I will have to finish later.  Bugs also remind me that my niece has been driving one for over a year. Hmmm….now I feel old!