Our Cars

After posting about older drivers I got to wondering if my Kia minivan will be my last car. I found myself thinking about my own driving career and my first car. I got my learner's permit at the age of 16. Dad taught me to drive, he was the calmest teacher. Mom was a driver but riding with learners behind the wheel was not her forte, and she screamed, nothing helpful, just in fear. I refused to go take the driver's test until I was 20 and in college. I had a little test phobia which a couple of years in college cured. My folks thought they would have to battle me for the car, we only had one. Instead they began to think I not only I would never get a license but maybe they would never get me out of the house either. Late bloomer.

When I graduated my Mom handed over some savings bonds my grandmother had bought for me when I was born. I cashed them in and off I went to the car lots. I bought a 1955 Oldsmobile 88, 10 years old. One with a 324 V8 and, I think, a Rochester 4 GC Quadra-Jet carburetor. It actually got around 19 mpg on the highway. My sister asked me why young women and teenage boys bought the same cars. I suspect in my world of the 50's and early 60's boys would pick their own car but a girl in my kind of family not be allowed to have a car like that. She'd have to be older and working and I was. I knew nothing about the power in it, the specs were given me later by my boyfriend and soon to-be-brother-in-law who owned a '56 much like it. Oh, it was fun to drive!

I was not clever or wise in my purchase. I just liked the way it looked and it fit my tiny car budget, no car payments. I discovered at the ripe old age of 22 that I could lay rubber with it on the highway. And gas was was 20 cents a gallon then although the Olds actually got about 19 mpg on the highway. I got my own apartment. Ha, ha, parents, fooled you. When my boyfriend went 250 miles away with his summer job I went to visit him driving from Seattle through Eastern Washington as fast as I could, windows rolled down, long hair knotting madly in the wind, I'm free, I'm free!

Towards the end of that summer on a trip home disaster struck, smoke began pouring out the tailpipe. Black smoke, as Bill the Cat would say, "ackk!" I left with assurances from my boyfriend who loaded the trunk with gallons of oil and water, and more from my Dad by phone, that if I took it easy and refilled oil and water at intervals I'd make it home. I did. Ah, the optimism of the young. My baby had to go into the garage and I had to borrow money from my parents to bail it out. It cost as much to rebuild as the car had to buy. And, I now had the equivalent of car payments as I paid my folks back every month for what seemed like forever. It was a good repair job though and I had the Olds until 1971 when I sold it after 7 years to pay for things for the baby my hubbie and I were expecting in the fall. The guy who bought it loved it as much as I did. It was turning into a classic.

Last time I wandered out to look at one for sale the seller wanted $22,000 for it, same colors red and white and in great shape. Heck that wasn't much more than the minivan cost, and certainly had that tank like safety factor going for it. I could get all my granddaughters into with some new seatbelt installations. Sigh. Now I see me driving it up the Columbia Gorge to Portland, and getting my first ever speeding ticket.