RITE OF PASSAGE IN AMERICA: YOUR FIRST CAR

Growing up in America in the '60s, especially as a guy, getting your first car was a rite of passage. You had wheels which meant freedom to leave the house when you wished without having to ask to use your parent's car. My first car was a red VW Beetle. I bought it for $500 from a next door neighbor who was a backyard mechanic back before there were computer chips and you could still be one. This was probably May 1972, just before graduation, and I was thrilled not to have to take the bus into school after 13 years. One day someone from admin came up and wanted to know if that red VW was my car. It seems some of my classmates had pranked me, picked up the car and deposited it on the grassy median next to the parking lot. Of course, I had not thought of needing to register it with the school-hell, I was t-minus one month from getting out of that place. So, I smoothed things over with the authorities and properly parked my Bug in the lot.

Just before graduation, June 1972. I had begun growing my hair out.

 

That summer, I had taken it to Williams VW over on Saginaw St. for some repair. I received a call one morning from the cops. My Bug had been found in a field in Eaton County and they wanted to know where to tow it. I told them to take it to the dealership. Evidently, one of their idiots parked the car and left it unlocked with the keys still in the ignition and somebody stole the car from their lot.  I was holding down the fort at home while my folks were on vacation so I called my brother. He came along for a chat with Williams and negotiated a reduced price considering their fuck-up. I think the VW eventually threw a piston and I traded it in for a brand new car- a 1973 Chevy Nova! 

In this era, the cars Detroit produced were crap. Rustproofers such as Ziebart were flourishing to try and prevent what was locally called "Michigan Cancer" caused by all the salt used on the roads during the Winter. Sure enough, within a few years, the damn driver's side floor rotted out. My friends referred to it as my "flintstonemobile". It was the last American-made car I bought for decades as I, unpatriotically in some quarters, went with the Japanese models-first Toyota then Honda.

Back in the day, you had a big choice of colors for a new car.

There were even more available during the '60s. Now, you can only choose from a handful of miserable colors: black, white, silver/grey, blue and red. That's it and they suck.

C, after going decades not driving while overseas, relearned two years ago. She is quite fond of our car, a Hyundai Sonata which she has named Sonya. In a way, this is her first car. She wrote an ode to her:

My name is Sonya. I am sleek

and grey as a seal, except

where my charge backed me into a dumpster

and put a large dent in my tail.

 

I don’t hold it against her.

She is fragile and sometimes frightened.

Still, she is my cargo, and to be cared for.

 

My role is to carry and to protect.

We turn on WKAR and let Bach

spool out his wide ribbons of harmony.

 

The other carriers seem to follow. Even the big

black SUV blasting metal, speeding

and weaving and passing on the right.

 

Even the dark hood at the cross street,

peeping out like a moray eel from a cave,

shy but double-jawed. I feel my charge

 

anticipate the impact and flinch, thinking,

Please let me be in shock till I get to the hospital.

I nudge the dark head back with a quodlibet.

 

My charge breathes deeply, flexes her hands

on the steering wheel. Then the blast

of a horn makes her jump. Weave it in

 

to the music, I tell her, it is only

a flourish of trumpets. It’s our saving

fiction -- I am not really conducting

 

the traffic, but let us think that I am.

Am I not, after all, a Hyundai Sonata?