My First Car
Learning to drive was an event. Around the same time I was getting my Learner’s Permit, my father was buying himself a brand new sports car. Up until now, my father was forced to drive whatever car he could register under my grandfather’s name, but my grandfather had passed away a year earlier and my father grew tired of second hand cars after all these years. You may be asking yourself why is this?
It all started around 1968 or so. The day before my father was shipped off to Vietnam his wallet was stolen off the beach down in North Carolina. Normally, this would have been a big deal, but my father assumed he’d be dead in a month or two so in the big picture it didn’t matter. As history has shown, he didn’t die. He did, however, come back home to find out that he had gotten two speeding tickets back in the states, while in Vietnam when he went to re-apply for a new license. Back then, a license didn’t have a picture on it, it was just a piece of paper, and despite the fact my father said that he wasn’t in the country, they told him he would not be able to get a new license unless he paid the fines. On principle, he did not.
Cut to almost 25 years later. Before he could buy a new car, he needed a license. Before he could get a license he needed a Learner’s Permit. So as luck would have it, my father and I went take the Learner’s Permit test together. Because I was a Minor, I needed a parent or Guardian to sign my forms to allow me to get my permit. So there we are at the Department of Motor Vehicles and my father has enough proof of who he was to sign me up to take my test, but not enough proof to prove he was who he claimed to be to take the test himself. This is pretty much how every trip to the DMV is with my family. Finally after a huge ordeal, we both got to take the test. He aced it, I barely passed. That’s the difference between studying and not opening the book. Then we also took the mandatory 5-hour course together. Almost immediately, he took his road test, passed, bought his car, got his car insurance, got his insurance cancelled because it was a sports car and he was considered a “novice driver”, got new insurance, got his insurance cancelled because it was a sports car and he didn’t have an alarm, got an alarm and spoiler installed, got his insurance back and finally was able to drive legally. A month later his insurance premiums went up because I got my license and he had another “novice driver” in the household even though none of us were allowed to touch this car.
Shortly after getting my license, I was in the market for my first car. I found it while en route to Denver’s house. It was a 1971 Red Chevy Nova. The purchase price was $475.00 and I truly loved that car. Up until that point, the only one of us that had a car was Denver, Eric and Mark. But inevitably, once you have your own transportation, dating becomes easier. A lot of times they were off doing their own thing. So other than the occasional borrowed car from the parents our mobility as a group had been limited.
Having a car truly gives you a freedom one never had before. It opened up a whole new world to me. I became a chauffeur to my mother who never drove as well as my friends who didn’t drive yet, but I didn’t mind. It came with the territory. Stacey lived about a half hour away and had a curfew, so I’d have to leave social events for about an hour at a time to get her home, even when it was at my own place. I was able to catch Michelle’s basketball games at other schools. And give Sue rides to her softball games and out for ice cream. And, for the first time, drive to work. I still worked at the Pet Food store that George’s parent’s owned and I didn’t get paid a lot, so I only put $5.00 worth of gas in my car at a time. That was okay with me. With a car that old, you never knew if filling it to the top would be a waste of money if it suddenly broke down on you. Plus, back then if gas cost $1.25 a gallon, it was expensive.
My first long road trip was that February. Almost on a lark, and being a romantic fool, I wanted to drive Sue to see her boyfriend on Valentine’s Day. It just so happened that another girl we knew named Jennifer, had a boyfriend going to school in Worcester, which was just about 50 miles west of Boston. It ended up being a 2 for 1 Valentine’s shot ‘o love.
Valentine’s Day was on a weekend, and after a
few white lies to parents, (not by me. I didn’t let them know I was going until I got there. When I called and told them where I was their response was “Your car made it?!?!?”) at the crack of dawn, Sue, Jennifer, Patty and her boyfriend Mike and myself were on our way.
At this time, I had the entire Beatles catalogue on tape taped off the radio when they played every song in alphabetical order for John Lennon’s birthday. Almost as a curiosity, I wanted to see how far I could get before they wanted to kill me. To this day, I am shocked that I got it all the way to Strawberry Fields. Sue told me later that because I was driving and doing them a big favor, they weren’t going to complain. Even I hit my limit at about M or so…
The trip was a lot of fun and went off without a hitch. The funniest thing: the first place we stopped at when we got to Boston was a music store and I immediately ran into the guy that had given me the beer at that High School party years before (see 9/6/11). Unbeknownst to me, we stopped there so they could chip in and get me a gift to thank me for taking me up there. It was a book about the Beatles. It was the sweetest thing and it made me tear up. In the end, my car made it, sans one hub cap, a good time was had by all, and I had gotten to see Boston for the first time.
The first adventure in what will come to be known as the Legend of The Super Nova.