Story Weekend: First Car
You may have earned the money to buy it, or it may have been your parents’, or you may have stolen it. Whatever! One way or another, most of us have feelings about our first car. I’d love to hear yours.
If you’re new to Story Weekend, here’s how it works: I pick a theme and you share something from your life that relates to that theme, however you interpret it. Thanks to all of you who’ve been contributing. As always, there are a few “rules”:
▪ The story must be true.
▪ Try to keep it under 100 words. Embrace the challenge! That’s about six or seven lines in the comment form. I want others to read your story, and most people tend to skip if it’s too long. I know how tough it is to “write tight” but I hope you’ll accept this as a challenge.
▪ Avoid offensive language.
Have a good weekend, everyone!
Her name was Bessie and she was a nine-year-old green Volkswagen Beetle. My boyfriend and I took her on auto rallies near Berkeley, California where we were living. Gas was twenty-one cents a gallon, plus you received a drinking glass every time you filled up. We sang along with Maggie May on the radio as we toured the countryside. We had no idea what you were supposed to do to win a rally, but we were having fun and by the time we moved away, we had a full set of glasses.
She was a 1981 Orange Chevy Citation. Ugly as sin, but only cost $50. I called her the Great Pumpkin. Smelled a little funny sometimes. I was one of the few people I knew with a car at 16 and I drove the wheels off that girl. I also wore out two different Pearl Jam Ten tapes in that car.
Her name was Bessie as well. All my cars are named Bessie’ however she was a 1966 Mustang. White with red interior and bench seats. My first party car and we had a blast while listening to Heart’s Dog and Butterfly cruising Williamson Rd.
My very first car was a white 62 Comet. My mom and dad owned it, and when it broke down, they had gotten a newer car. I babysat all year long and was able to repair the Comet and pay my insurance. Which ended up a good thing, because I only drove it about 1 month when I wrecked it. I bought my next car which is really like my first. It was a dark blue/black Plymouth Fury. I was working at the time and paid 150.00 for it. Changing gears was quite interesting as it had push buttons in the dash.
The steering wheel was so small and looked like it belonged in a race car. This is the car that took me back and forth to work and school..Oh, school, hmmm…that was the car that my friend and I ditched in also. In the 11th grade, I spent one of my 9 weeks absent at least 2 days a week. Sometimes even more. I can’t believe I passed. When my Dad and Mom finally found out, they grounded me forever…then of course I had to do it one more time. This time my Dad told me if I did it again, he would make me quit my job and sell my car. I never ditched school again. 🙂
Pontiac Fiero. Let’s just say that the local tow truck drivers and I were all on a first name basis. If they towed the car to the shop after the shop was already closed for the night, I would get a call by 7 am the next morning without having to reach out to them! Enough said.
Never bought a Pontiac again!
At the tender age of 17 I had saved enough money for a down payment on my own car. Fresh out of high school with a new job, at lunch with my friends one day I spotted it….a 1970 green Cutlass Oldsmobile. She became mine the next day and we became best friends. Oh, we got into so much trouble. Dragging main street, racing home before we had the police out looking for us. She was the sporty edition and she had plenty of horsepower to keep up with any other cars out there. She will always be the measuring stick that I use against all of my other rides. So far I’ve not found any that compare. That’s the way it is though with your ‘first love’.
This is entitled my second car because…well I just can’t talk about my first. Some car dealer ripped my father off when he went to buy me a car and I will simply never forgive that dealer, or the way he disappointed my father. My second car, though, I bought myself. It was a lovely, brandy new VW bug (1969). I loved that car, perhaps because I did pay for it myself. It got me through snow over its bumper on the country roads of Hunterdon County, one day it actually floated down a road next to the river in Piscataway and it gave me 108,000 miles of sheer joy, all for $1799.
On my 16th birthday, not only did my parents have a big ole party for me but gave me my first car, a brown Chevy Nova… Freedom!!!! (I thought)… I now had the responsibility of picking up my sisters from school, practice, friends’ houses and I was errand girl, too… none of that mattered… I had a car! Lots of responsibilty and cost but I HAD A CAR!!! I got onto a minor car accident 2 weeks later (which I felt AWFUL about) and ran out of gas on the way home from the Homecoming Dance and learned TONS of lessons. I loved that car!
My first car was a 1965 Mustang that I got while in college. I loved that car. It took me on many adventures, and caused me to get more speeding tickets than I would like to admit. After the engine blew up, I sold it for practically nothing (Ouch). I have owned many cars since then, but none so memorable as my Mustang. Oh how I wish I had kept that car, especially now that classic Mustangs are all the rage. Well, the good news is that I am now in a relationship with a wonderful guy who happens to own a 64 ½ convertible Mustang. I may be older now, but some things never change. It’s more fun than ever cruising with him in the Mustang, looking for new adventures.
SWEET:)
It was 1971, I was sixteen and bought a 1958 Volvo with my own money, $50. It had a standard transmission that I didn’t know how to use so a friend taught me about the clutch and endured my stalls in Southern California traffic. My first solo drive I was rear ended by an obviously drunk fellow. There didn’t seem to be any damage to me or the Volvo so he drove away before we could exchange information. When I tried to drive away the Volvo kept stalling. I thought it was me messing up the gears again because I was upset. After having the car towed I learned one of the motor mounts had broken. I ended up having to junk the car because the motor mount attached in to the block and I couldn’t afford to have it drilled out of a $50 car.
I was a late bloomer. Got my license at 29 and bought a car with my income tax refund for 500 dollars that had been sitting in a farmer’s field for years and came with it’s own add ons such as mouse nest in the spare tire well and the ability to stop completely whenever you made a right turn. His name was Ralph and he was a Dodge Aspen with a full front bench seat that would have been great for going parking if I hadn’t been a working mother of two toddlers.Living on the out skirts of a small town meant that when my daughter boarded the bus to school and was asked if Mommy was home today and having her reply ‘No daddy says mommy spends all her time with Ralph. We never see her anymore’ meant that I was the queen of gossip central for many a year. I never sorted out those poor lost souls who had nothing better to do than monitor my whereabouts. I became a set of fading tail lights on an old country road leading out of town.
Loved it and still…LOL!!!
My first car was a 1931 Model A Ford which I purchased from an eldery couple right before I left to attend college at Florida State. It was a four door sedan and looked like brand new. While many of the boys on campus had new expensive cars, I had no trouble attracting girls as they all liked the idea of riding around in an old buiggy like mine. It had special meaning for me because I was born in 1931 in Rocky Mount, NC.
WOW,…how cool would it be to see her once again! Unless you are aware that she met her demise, someone is probably buffing her fenders right now. If you kept her serial or VIN # the Model A Club of Anerica may be able to track her down for you and the present owner will no doubt be pleased to take you for a spin:) LOVE the OLDIES!!!
I called her ‘Red’ because she was such a beautiful, red convertible volkswagon that belonged to dad…my parents gave her to me when I graduated from High School. I loved taking her everywhere with the top down, my art supplies and canvas’s piled in the back. ‘Red’ saw me through my college years and my family took care of her when I went to Florence. In hindsight, I wish I had kept her…she would probably win top prizes in car shows today.
My 1st “very own” car was a new blue ’67 MGB! I had wanted “racing green” but I was too impatient to wait for one to cross the pond and B felt just right when I took her for a test drive; she downshifted beautifully and had the softest leather seats that smelled sooo good. I recall my driving gloves were just as soft and smelled as good too. My husband and I took B on road rallies and she held the road like no other:) B provided many good times, as the wind blew through my hair, and we were “Happy Together!”