CARS
Dorothy Parker’s preferred car was a limousine driven by someone else. But, ah, what she missed by not getting behind the wheel! The freedom of the open road. The tyranny of the balky carburetor. The convenience of getting around. Cars are mythic, iconic and prosaic. In this issue, our writers dive into how the automobile has shaped our lives.
Cadillac Dreams
Word Count 1508
When Dad drove up to the house with Mr. Tutt’s Sunday drive car–a mid-1980s Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham painted a decidedly aftermarket shade of matte fool’s gold, my cousin Q and I snickered.
The joke was on me when Dad tossed me the keys.
“Tutt give me a good price for it,” he explained.
Mom was out of her seat on the porch swing with hands on her wide hips. “He should have paid you to take it,” she replied.
“He got no use for it no more,” Dad continued. Story was, old man Tutt had shot his right foot off while cleaning his shotgun.
I Blame Dave Ramsey
Word Count 1172
I blame financial guru Dave Ramsey for everything that happened and should probably sue him for six thousand dollars.
I was twenty five years old, newly divorced with a mess of finances, including a joint loan with the ex on a perfectly lovely 2005 Ford Explorer (though I’m pretty sure the heater went out moments after we bought it).
In his infuriating book, Total Money Makeover, Ramsay recommends the following:
· Stop spending money on stupid shit.
· Don’t take out any loans except a mortgage.
· Ten percent of income to savings, ten percent to charity, and no more than forty percent to housing expenses. (As a teacher, that left about fifty dollars a month for food, gas, clothing, entertainment.)
Demon Car
1979 Pinto
A girl left Memphis for college in Connecticut during the 1970’s. The girl’s mother wore earth shoes and kept her long grey hair in a braid. Whenever her daughter spoke, the mother’s face would light up like the sun breaking through the clouds. My parents never looked at me like that. One day, the girl was driving on the highway near Middletown, Connecticut when something fell off the truck in front of her. She swerved to avoid the object and was killed.
Months later, I saw the mother at the grocery store. Her shoes did not match and her once tidy braid was now frazzled and unkempt. It was the first time I realized a parent could lose too much of herself in her love for a child.
One of the Worst Cars Ever Made
Word Count 882
They say you never forget your first.
Mine was a 1973 Chevy Vega mini-station wagon. It was tan, with a brown plaid plastic interior. The exterior was squat and featureless. Still, being butt ugly was the least of this car’s issues.
The spring of my senior year in high school, my parents told me that they were giving me a car for my graduation present. They also made it clear that they would not be taking me to college in the fall. I was on my own to move into the freshman dorm.
Though the car seemed an extravagant gift, I soon learned that my choices would be limited.
The Longest Ride
Word Count 1141
My head was pressed tightly against the car door as I sat lopsided in the passenger seat. I stared absently out the window. The sun was low in the sky and its glare seemed to radiate from a thousand points. I looked at the barren gold of dry desert grass that stretched on and on until it melted into the horizon.
My inside throbbed every time I shifted. A wrong twist and I felt I could rip apart. But I knew it was time. It simply could not be avoided. I needed to pump. And the car needed to continue forward. With great effort, I reached down to the breast pump at my feet. I tucked each funnel neatly through the slit in my nursing bra on both sides and pressed the ON switch. I held a funnel in each hand as the machine went to work.
Driving Lessons
Word Count 622
When I was four, as I stood clutching my mother’s skirt on the back porch, she announced, “Typing and driving are two things a woman can never learn too early.”
My mother smelled of Chanel No. 5 and black and red typewriter ribbons. She wore high heels most of the time, and dresses with belts that showed off her narrow waist.
I typed easily at ten. I learned to type sitting on the floor next to my brother. We had typing competitions on my mother’s Smith Corona manual, copying pages of George Washington’s World, the book my mother used to teach us how to read.
Roadside Assistance
Word Count 763
My 12-year-old brother taught me how to drive our Volkswagen bus when I was 10. In the 1970s, we always had VW buses since they were one of the few vehicles that could hold all nine family members at once. My brother and I, the two youngest, would drive around our front yard making figure eights, and occasionally cruise up and down the dirt road at the end of our street. It felt exhilaratingly powerful.
But the thrill quickly shifted to near terror when we headed out onto actual highways not walking distance from home. Way too much of our youth was spent stranded on the side of the road. My father usually drove a company car back and forth to work, leaving the rest of us with VW buses and bugs that he never had serviced.
Returning from the Philadelphia Airport to drop off a few sisters on a frigid, windy January night, the engine started sputtering on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. My mother was able to pull to the shoulder before the VW completely died.
God Can Hear You and the Kids Are Watching
Word Count 748
“When my mother got behind the wheel of a car, she could really scare the shit out of you,” I overheard my son say at a social function once. It might have even been a family funeral. I don’t believe the body in the coffin had died in a car accident, so why he was discussing my driving habits is beyond me.
The friend raised his eyebrows, and my son added that a couple of his friends loved that about me: “The wind in their hair, fingers gripped around the roof handle -- but most of the others would beg off at the first suggestion of carpooling.”
How Not to Sell a Car
Word Count 846
This is a 2010 PT Cruiser with a bunch of miles on it--all in all like 143,600 of 'em. This car is not in pristine condition or anything, but it is okay, not terrible. I did back into a telephone pole once just lightly so there's a little crack in the back bumper, but nobody would ever notice it unless they looked directly at the bumper, and why would they?
It doesn't have any bumper stickers on it. No My Kid is Smarter than Yours or I HEART my Pitbull or anything. I never put any bumper stickers on it (not even to cover the little crack) because some people are crazy, and they'll run you off the road or shoot you if your bumper is endorsing the wrong political candidate or if they don't agree with your philosophy.
Road Rage
Word Count 1883
When it arrived – new in a box all the way from Japan – it was my mother's first car. I can't remember why she had to have a car. Dad had our 'family' car. The known world was filled with dads in family cars driving these big cars fast, quite often while drunk. This was a great era for a lot of men. Nearly everything was boxed up for them. Women and kids lived in boxes Climate change didn't exist and driving big cars came guilt free. My mother's Honda N600 with its modest nose, toy tyres and automatic transmission was then, to most men, a shopping trolley with an engine. But in the outer Sydney suburbs, where we lived it was a clown car, or something only a woman would drive.
My mother did not care. She read books like 'Small is Beautiful' and 'Diet for a Small Planet' – and our small family became vegetarians eating small pellets of 'TVP' (textured vegetable protein) and dad was forced into pacifist Quakerism – which involved a big drive to the nearest Meeting House.
Shift Work
Word Count 1577
First, assemble your by-line article clippings from the university newspaper and paste them into a scrapbook purchased for a dime at Woolworths. Pack it in your suitcase with your summer clothes, which includes nylon stockings, garter belt, and a pair of white gloves. At the Minneapolis airline terminal building hold back tears as you hug your bewildered parents good-bye, climb the steps, and board the plane for New York City.
Once arrived in the fabled Greenwich Village, thank your older college friend, Peg, for letting you sleep on her foam rubber sofa in her beatnik pad up on the sixth floor. Begin pacing the pavement in search of a newspaper job.
Mickey Mouse Fix
Word Count 1006
My first car, a 1972 Plymouth Duster, was 10 years old when it came to me, painted several shades of white and already a shitbox. It had been recommended by a mechanic cousin who was into demolition derbies. The engine, he said, was a slant six, and it would last forever, which was all that mattered. It was a car for someone who drove aggressively, he said, which meant everyone in the Boston area.
The Duster educated me in Mickey Mouse fixes. When the exhaust pipe came detached from its muffler, I slid a soup can over the end of the pipe, crimping the can as best I could around the pipe and then the muffler, then securing both ends with hanger wire and wrapping the whole can in duct tape, which would melt and smoke a little.