by Donna Hruska

Approximately 1825 Words

I’ve often wondered just where Vance Packard would rate me if he saw some of the cars I’ve driven in my time.

Not that I should be surprised. I should have foreseen my automotive future right from that first phone call.

“Honey,” my husband said. (He’s very affectionate at moments like this.) “I’ve bought you a car!”

“You’ve bought me a what?” I asked. After all, I knew the state of our early marriage bank account just as well as he did. “What with?”

“Well…” he answered, “I didn’t buy it, exactly…”

“I assume you didn’t steal it…”

“Oh, no. Well, you see…What I did was… I traded the old lawnmower for it.”

“Oh, well,” I answered. “For a minute there….the old lawnmower?”

“Yes.”

“The eighteen inch electric? For a car?”

“Yes.”

“I see,” I replied.

What I saw when he brought it home was an ailing Packard of ancient lineage, lumbering into our driveway like a proud dowager who has fallen into adverse circumstances. Her once shiny gray-green paint was dull and pock-marked with rust, her chrome pitted by time. She was in that middle-age of cardom–neither young enough to be modern nor old enough to be antique. In short, she was a junk.

“What do you think?” my hero asked, with a wry grin.

“I hardly know,” I answered, peering into her dust scented depths.

When I descended into the car, (and I use the word advisedly, since she had obviously been designed for the wealthy burgher type and I am 5’3″ and 110 pounds wringing wet on the day after Christmas) I could see that the interior was not really too dilapidated.

She roared off sedately, as if asserting that though her beauty was gone she had not lost her pride. There was no power steering.

“At least, I’ll build up some arm muscles,” I grunted, as we lumbered around a corner in a wide arc.

“Well, it’s transportation,” I replied to my husband’s questioning look when I returned from my test ride.

“Good!” He hesitated. “And uh…dear…if anybody asks, it’s your car, right?”

Brave soul I’m married to.

With the addition of a few strategically placed cushions I found I could see where I was going, and the old jewel did get me to the grocery store. Of course, there weren’t any turn signals on it and by the time I reached home my left hand was usually blue from signaling out the window.

And then, the few times that I did brave the traffic to go downtown (we lived in a small midwestern city at the time) the parking attendant at my favorite department store had some difficulty locating me. However, after that first trip he never forgot me and soon learned just where down in those gloomy depths to hand the parking ticket. Furthermore, I never lost my car in the parking lot. It stood in haughty grandeur above the common low slung models.

Unfortunately, our neighbors failed to appreciate her nobility and persisted in seeing only her rusty exterior and hearing her mighty chugging as she thundered down the street. When their dissatisfaction began to take the form of pointed throat-clearings and slamming the draperies shut when I drove by, we knew that the end had come for the Lady Packard and me. Even the most determined status snubbers can only take so much. Still more unfortunately, no prospective buyers were lining up in anticipation of owning such a mechanical marvel. I finally had to sell her for fifteen dollars to a junk dealer who shook his head and muttered to himself as he drove away. Since the lawnmower we had traded for her had been worth about ten dollars we didn’t come out too badly financially. But it did seem such an ignominious end for one who had been a queen in her day.

If the first car was a deteriorated aristocrat, the second was plain working man, all the way. It was relatively expensive, costing twenty-five dollars, but it was easier to handle, and I could turn a corner without requiring as much room as a school bus. It was a Chevrolet, built in the late ’40’s, a dull gray-black coupe, its character about as colorless as its paint shade. Except for the hole rusted through the floor under the mat, it lacked any major flaws, always started and made up in adequate transportation what it lacked in beauty. It made the move with us to the city suburbs and was instantly out of place in a neighborhood where even the paper boy arrived in a Mercedes Benz on snowy days.

Then even its dependability began to fade and it was time to say good-by to another jewel of automation. This one we sold for seventy-five dollars with a profit of fifty dollars. I suppose that was an advantage of moving to a higher cost of living area.

Next followed a period of being a one car family, memorable mostly for the conversations between my husband and myself, the dialogue resembling an old melodrama:

“I must have the car.”

“No, you can’t have the car.”

“But, I must have the car!”

“No, you can’t have the car!”

My sister moved in with us just in time to stave off divorce proceedings. She brought along a Ford, not too old, distinguished by its bright robin’s egg blue color. My father, its former owner, possesses only blue cars.

This car even had power steering and a seat high enough for me to see where I was going without getting a crick in my neck. But, our automotive idyll ended when my sister’s husband graduated from college and came to collect her and her auto. In place of his wife he left his car.

This was really the piece de resistance of my collection. It, too, was a family car, (our family gets its money’s worth) light blue, of course, with a mileage guage reading something over 14,000 miles. Of course, that was the second time around. Someone, trying to cover up the numerous rust spots, had daubed blue paint over the badly faded original finish, giving a nice polka-dot effect.

The interior wouldn’t have been too bad except for the fact that my brother-in-law had a dog. Well, actually, it wasn’t just a dog. It was a German shepherd. To tell the truth, it was a neurotic German shepherd puppy. The basis of its neurosis was that it couldn’t stand to be left alone, and, since my brother-in-law had to leave it locked up in a small house trailer while he was in class, the dear puppy took out its frustrations by chewing on things, things like sweaters, shoes, draperies, a twenty volume set of encyclopedias, etc. When doggy was left, even more confined, in the car, he chewed on the upholstery. It was in shreds, with foam rubber sticking through in various places. This was alleviated somewhat by the gay beach towel covering the front seat.

The cracked window was a little touch I added myself when I misjudged slightly in pulling around a truck stalled at an intersection. The finishing touch to its appearance was added when I embarked with the six children I had managed to accumulate in the years since we became a two car family.

But appearance wasn’t Old Blue’s only problem. As Lee, our service station mechanic said the first time he drove it home after servicing it, “Driving this car is a real experience.”

He was right. It was an experience. For instance, if we were driving along and had to stop suddenly for a changing light, in addition to the number of small children who came flying over the back of the front seat, the rear view mirror would fall off and the transmission would shift into neutral on its own. It also shifted into neutral when we stopped slowly, hit a large bump, or just drove along watching the scenery.

Then there was the problem with the accelerator. It stuck. Oh, it didn’t stick going fast so that we couldn’t slow down. It stuck so that we couldn’t speed up. This was an inconsistent fault, however. One never knew when it was going to happen. It most commonly occurred when we had just pulled out into a lane of heavy traffic. If I tried to speed up by pushing the accelerator to the floor, it suddenly shifted into passing gear which caused something to bang with a teeth-jarring jolt in the back end, said jolt in turn causing a shift into neutral and the rear view mirror to fall off. Driving that car was an experience, all right. Holding your head and crying didn’t help much either.

Early last spring my husband decided that maybe we ought to look around for another car. I don’t know if my hysteria influenced him or not. No more family cast-offs for us, either, he said. He knew exactly what he wanted. This news brought a big smile of relief to the face of Lee, the mechanic, when I told him the next time I went in for gas. His smile dimmed somewhat when I told him what my husband was looking for: a 1963 nine passenger station wagon, with air-conditioning, few miles, in perfect condition, and of course, at a bargain price.

Undaunted, I haunted the used car lots and read the classified ads assiduously. Eventually, we found exactly what we were looking for and bought it. It is a paragon of suburban motherhood accouterments with leather upholstery and power everything. It even has power seats that raise me to new heights of uninterrupted vision at the push of a button.

I watched Old Blue roll down the driveway in the care of her new owner with some regret, however. Driving that car had its good points, too. It satisfied my sense of adventure. Besides, I no longer get all those extra sweepstakes envelopes when I drive into a new service station. After all, who could use $2500 more than that poor disheveled lady in the rattle-trap with kids hanging out of every window.

I’ll probably even have to buy a vehicle sticker now, too. Village officials had never pressed the matter with Old Blue.

Ah well, don’t re-classify me yet, Mr. Packard. The way the children are working on this new car, they may have it whipped into condition in no time.

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