My First Car

 Oh THE first car. 

Not MY first car but the first car that was 'mine', was a 1963 or '64 Plymouth and dad paid $300.00 for it, a pretty good deal at the time, I'm sure.  It was sky blue with the same color interior and it had a push button ignition!  That was cool, nobody else had a push button dashboard. Push button windshield wipers and headlights, too.  Now, it certainly wasn't the car I learned to drive in, that was a 1954 Chevrolet.  Looked like a big box with wheels, kind of like babies' feet, no shape, just something that gets you from point A to point B.  Still, for a 17 year old girl, it was freeeedom!
 
One weekend I spent washing and waxing it, cleaning the interior and getting it all as spiffy looking as I could so it wasn't too much of an embarrassment to drive or be recognized in since there were a few dings in it.  It didn't look too bad by the time I was done, other than the missing hubcap.

  I remember coming home from school one day and as I walked closer and closer to the driveway, I could see spots all over my car.  Literally SPOTS, great big forest green spots!  "What the heck is that?" I'm thinking.  The closer I got the bigger the spots were and I simply could not figure out how they got there, they weren't there when I left that morning (must have been some reason why I couldn't drive it yet...).
Later that evening when I could catch my dad alone,  I asked him what happened to the car and why were there big green spots all over it?  "Well, I took a can of whatever spray paint I had and spray painted all the rust spots, honey!" 

Oh! My! Gosh! You! Didn't, Dad!!!  Why on earth would you do something like that?  I waxed it, Dad!  "Well, wouldn't want that thing to rot out from underneath you now".
At the time, I thought that was the stupidist thing I had ever heard.  Besides, it wasn't like it was a NEW car.  And it wasn't going to fall to pieces underneath me because I wouldn't have it that long, Daaaaad. 

Luckily, I didn't get that car until right after I graduated from school, so no one I knew would see me driving it.  Or so I thought...

  I drove that for two weeks until I got tired of hearing how I was the owner of the clown car, everyone I knew seemed to see me in that Dr. Seuss car.  So another weekend came and I spent that weekend taking an SOS pad and scrubbing EVERY SINGLE one of those green spots off!  It was hard and it took me almost the whole weekend, but by gosh, by Monday my car was all one color again and "spiffy" just like before.
I find it slightly amusing that that car survived ME and I eventually sold it for $200.00.   That summer, I played with that car!  I used to take it out with my childhood buddy, Chris, and we'd go drive to places we'd never been to before.  Once we drove out into the country, out by Lawrence Livermore Labratory, when there were still rolling green hills and cows in the fields.  We found another place that had been used by others in Jeeps, they didn't really have ATV's back then in 1972.  We thought it would be fun to try some of those hills until I high-centered it once and that was the last time I went joy riding like that.  I do not remember how we got it off the mound, probably a safety valve in my mind because the reality was too scary.

But you know, that little car took me to my first job that summer after graduating, it took me to my boyfriends' house and to the store and all those myriad trips we have to make when we first get our license.  I loved driving, never got tired of hopping in it to go somewhere.  And I bet I even cruised the boulevard in Walnut Creek at least once.   I know I did when I got my REAL cool car, the one I paid for...

But it wasn't until years later as Dad and I were sitting and reminiscing about our youth--and his first car was a Model T!--I spoke up about those gigantic, hideous green spray painted spots he put on that car.  "Well.." he says, "You know why I did that, don't you?"  Uh..duh dad.  So the rust spots wouldn't grow. 

"I did that so I could easily find your car anywhere in town...".  Yes Dad, now I understand.  I still love you and I still miss  you.   Bless you for loving me!  (: