My Dad gave me a car when I graduated from college in 1962. It was a 1953 Plymouth that he bought for a dollar from a friend whose hobby was scouting out good used cars. I have no idea what criteria he used to evaluate these finds because this car used a quart of oil each week and the radiator leaked constantly. After a dicey year in grad school with this vehicle, I decided to get something more reliable. I gave the blue bomb, my name for it, to my brother. He fixed it up and it was still running around Putnam County 10 years later.
The first car that I bought was green, but words fail me to pin the shade of green. What do you call a green that looks like it was mixed with overcast skies and a cold rain? Volkswagen bugs came as they would and you took what came. I had no choice. For three years, this fledgling teacher, so conservative in her outlook, drove that little bug with no gas gage or window defroster. As an added bonus the “heater” wouldn’t turn off in the summer time. After only three years, the beast needed a valve job, which my brother thought was odd, and I did too. I decided that it was time to change.
She, and she was a “she”… was green too. The paperwork said “ivy green,” but in my heart it was deep, deep forest green, the kind of green that says strength and mystery all at once. This car, was the marvelous manifestation of Lee Iacocca’s dream, a 1966 Mustang. It cost, if I remember correctly, with my traded VW, $2200. A fortune? Yes. But it was a turning point purchase, marking the moment when I finally felt competent at work, when I didn’t try to emulate what I erroneously believed to be the correct image for a teacher.
I can remember pulling into the parking lot at school with the top down. Oh, did I mention that it was a convertible? That I had an eight track with all of the current hits at the ready? What a difference between that mousy bug with no radio.
Can a car transform you? Or, in this instance was my transformation, my growth in confidence, the late summer force that compelled me to buy this car? Who knows? But I loved that car.
That is, until it began to snow and I found out quite quickly that beautiful doesn’t mean traction on anything above a barely wet road. A slight rise in the pavement meant that if I slowed down even a little, I was stuck. Those gaily-clad hubcaps spun around along with the wheels, their cache useless. Even today I cringe at certain hills where I have vivid memories of being stuck, having to ask fellow drivers who were now stuck behind me, to help me get the car moving.
What to do? My beauty, my delicate little, well, not-so-little car, was incapacitated by snow. I tried snow tires. Didn’t work. I added cinder blocks and kitty litter to the trunk. The latter two did help somewhat to rebalance the weight and add some traction on slippery surfaces, but there were still hills, notably those that I had to climb to get to and from work, that proved to be problems.
I bought studded snow tires. The studded tires and the extra weight got me through the last winter with my Mustang.
I remember her, that purchase at 26 years old, as I take my Honda fit in for its snow tires, thinking of how the circle turns. The Honda, while equipped with all kinds of do-dads and safety features, holds the road firmly. It has never gotten stuck on a hill. It is not that awful Volkswagen green but is small, blue and conservative… with a place for my cane. It is not a convertible, but it does have a sun roof … nothing like a dark green Mustang convertible, with the top down and an eight track blasting out “Brazil ’66: or “A Taste of Honey” and a driver who is 26, doubly healthy and sure of herself.
