My First Car

I don't remember exactly how old I was at the time.  I'm going to say I was about 15.

I was nearing the end of my paper route when my mom came driving up.  She rolled down the window.
"Your dad wants to know if you have 35 bucks," She asked.
I was a wondering what this was all about.  "Yeah," I probably said. (Pretty deep so far isn't it?)
"Go straight home when you're finished.  Your dad has something for you," she (might have) said.

I'm pretty sure she hunted me down because my parents were very knowledgeable of my habits.  I was always the lone explorer.  When my paper route was complete, there was no telling what time I would actually get home.  I might find myself pedaling all over town pursuing any number of things that might capture my interest or attention.  My only rule was to make it home for dinner.  That was very important.  When I was 15 I think I consumed what my grocery-buying parents probably considered to be about 100,000 calories worth of food.

I finished up my route and hurried home like I was supposed to.  If memory serves me, I really had no idea what was going on.  I just remember it was a "positive" comment as opposed to one that had ominous overtones.  I don't remember anyone ever driving to find me and telling me to get home because I was in trouble.  I'm pretty sure I would remember that.

I don't remember exactly what transpired.  (If I would have had a blog I would have written it down for you so I wouldn't forget it.)  I don't remember if my dad was still home after delivering this "surprise" or not.  At that time he was working at one of our local businesses called Fitz Auto Rebuild.  He was the parts manager, but he also moonlighted as a tow truck driver for extra cash.  The bottom line is, I got home and there it was.  My first car.  A 1964 Chevy Impala SS.

Never mind that it had no engine, transmission, or drive shaft in it.  That didn't matter.  What mattered is the fact that I paid my dad $35 for it and I owned my first car!  Let me explain the condition of this car.  I already explained that it was missing what most people would consider to be very important parts:  The running gear.  To a 15-year-old, that was nothing.  The car itself really was in very, very nice shape.  At that time, a 64 Chevy Impala was not all that old, but also not all that desirable.  It was a full-size car after all--what you would consider a "boat".  It was well before the Hispanics started picking them up for lowriders several decades later.  It had a "less than desirable" factory paint color though.  It was, uh... "Band-Aid colored".  You know the color--Kind of like tan with the slightest tinge of some pink or something in it.  Except for that, it was nice.  No cracked or broken glass, only one dent over the left front wheel, and one little dent way at the back on the same side--Even the interior was nice.  Actually, the interior was practically like new--carpet included.  But like the outside, it too was "that color".  The SS had some nice trim features going for it.  Brushed aluminum trim, bucket seats, 2-door hardtop--It was sporty for a big boat of a car.

I loved that car.  I cherished it.  Now things had changed.  Instead of doing whatever I could to stay away from my home as much as I could, I found myself staying home as much as I could and working on it all the time.  My parents had probably not seen this much of me since we had first moved to Auburn and I started exploring the city on my bicycle.  I would take parts of it off, clean, polish, or paint them, then put them back.  I went over every inch of that car before a suitable donor finally showed up with the missing running gear pieces to make the car whole.

One day my dad again came home with a car on the hook, only this time it was a freebie.  I know it was a  blue 1962 Chevy 4-door, but I don't remember the exact model.  I believe it was a Belair, which is a lesser optioned model than an Impala.  The reason it was free was because it had no title of ownership.  It was an impounded abandoned vehicle, so it would be going to the junkyard after it went through the proper channels.  But hey--there was no reason it had to have all of its parts before it went to its final resting place, right?  It surrendered a decent-running 283 V8, a 3-speed manual transmission, and all the other missing parts I needed.  The good thing about having a whole car to draw from is the abundance of bolts, brackets, and all that kind of stuff.  It was all there.  It also contained a bonus item my dad didn't even notice.  The car had been dragged out of some mud bog or something so the whole bottom half of the car (halfway up the doors) was light brown from dried mud.  Imagine my surprise when we found 4 chrome wheels under all that mud!

With everything transplanted and operational, my new car was only missing one thing:  A shifter.  My 64 SS had originally come equipped with an automatic transmission, and there on the floor hump was the hole and placement brackets for its original center console and shifter.  Because I put in a 3-speed manual transmission, I needed a floor shifter for it.  That was one part I had to buy new.  When I installed it, the placement of the new shifter made it necessary for me to enlarge the existing hole in the hump--turning it into more of an "L" shape.  I remember making a patch of black vinyl and some kind of aluminum trim to cover the shifter boot and hole.

I was really feeling good.  Here I was--about to turn 16--and I already had my first car ready to go!  I had been driving it from the back alley behind our house to the front driveway (our house was only the second one from the corner so it was a short trip), which, up to that point was my maximum traveling distance.  I used washing it as my excuse to drive between the front and the back of the house as often as possible.  When my 16th birthday arrived, imagine my shock when I found out I couldn't drive it until I was 17!  My world had caved in on me.  I was crushed.  It was totally our insurance company to blame for this unforeseen wrinkle in my world.  It seems that they wouldn't insure a 16-year-old driver in a family if there were more than 3 cars including the new driver's car.  Well, because I come from a family of car people, gearheads, or whatever you want to call them, we had 7 vehicles in the family at that time.  So what did I do?  I got my dad's old Honda S-90 street legal and rode that the entire year I was 16.  It wasn't easy.  It can get pretty cold in winter you know.  I remember carefully keeping my wheels in the "safe zones" where car tires had kept the pavement relatively clear of icy snow buildup on my way to work in the winter.  Lucky I didn't have to go far.

That was a long year.  A whole year of owning a car you can look at but can't drive.  I would go out and sit in it, play the radio, work on stuff, clean stuff--whatever I could do.  I remember one Saturday I pulled the engine back out just to clean and paint it, then put it back in.  That's how wrapped around this car I was.  Owning a car you couldn't drive was hard to do.

I remember at one point in later years my mom confided that they really weren't too keen on me having a driver's license to begin with because of my wandering nature.  They knew I liked to be alone a lot and they figured they'd never see me again.  I guess I can understand that.

I'll never forget the day I turned 17 and watched my house disappearing in the rear view mirror of my car for the first time.  It was a very strange and exciting feeling!

1 comments:

Janie said...

That is an awesome story! I wish all of my aunts and uncles would write these cool childhood stories. It's interesting hearing about your home life when you were a kid. I love hearing old gramma and grampa stories too. It shows the side of them that the kids in the family today don't know.