Car love
This is written in response to a "writing warm-up" over at 451 Press. I cheated - this took me about 35 minutes. I obsess a bit over spelling and such. Sue me.Considering mobility – namely vehicular mobility – is equated with freedom, I have a tender place in my heart for all kinds of vehicles. I have three favorite vehicles:
a ’69 Camaro, an ’86 Chevy short box, and what I am driving now – a ’03 Chevy Avalanche. To say I have an ongoing romance with all things Chevrolet is something of an understatement.
The first real car I drove (that was not my parents’) was a muscle car. My boyfriend at the time was a mechanic and we found the Camaro body and frame rusting in an acquaintance’s back yard. Four hundred dollars later, we had a project on our hands. We scraped together enough money to buy a second-hand rebuilt engine and over a weekend, my boyfriend and several of his buddies (and several cases of beer), they had her running. The exhaust was done professionally, and she didn’t purr, she roared. The paint was original, and when she was buffed out, light maroon. I wanted to paint her and have it detailed but cash was hard to come by so it never happened. She was not the fastest car and she had some quirks to it – like a window that didn’t like to roll up quite right every time and a door handle that would stick on occasion – but I loved that car. My boyfriend put a stereo system in her that would rattle every window in a six-block radius. When we broke up, he got custody of the car.
The second vehicle I fell in love with belonged to a different boyfriend (whom I eventually married). It was a Chevy step side short box. A mechanically gifted brother-in-law tweaked the engine so that that truck wasn’t happy until she was cruising at 90mph and she still had gears left. She was jet black, chromed out, and had a wood-floor box. I tell my husband that is why I married him – so we could have wedding pictures taken with that pickup. When kids came along, a pickup was not going to work all that well with car seats and gear, so he sold her. I still regret that decision. (Not the having kids part – the selling of the pickup is what I regret.)
The vehicle I am driving now is my current love. She is a bright yellow Chevy Avalanche (with a black stripe where the ‘body cladding’ would be – I am not a fan of all that plastic). With four doors and a removable tarp over the box, she has room for kids, gear, and then some. The back seat folds down and if I don’t take off the tarp, I have an enclosed 8-foot box. I have hauled everything from 10-gun gun cabinets to carpeting in all kinds of weather and never had any trouble. Like the previous Chevy pickup I drove, she is happiest cruising at 90pmh or better. She handles like a dream – more like a performance car than a 4-wheel drive pickup – and I’m going to have a hell of a time trading her off (I don’t plan to anytime soon, but that day will come, I’m sure.)
While there were several vehicles before and in between those three, I can honestly say I loved those three the most. It may seem strange to “love” a car and write about it as if I am writing about a family member, but when you spend as much time in vehicles as I do, I find it difficult not to anthropomorphize them.
3 Comments:
Quite alright, we all have a tendency to be anal about things. I am constantly hitting the spell check button because i can't spell so it takes longer than it should!
Chevy rocks! We had a '66 Nova, SD built himself a 65-66-67 truck (he bought 3 junkers for $200 each and combined them to make one workable one), and I have regular heated fantasies about a '69 Chevelle SS convertible that lived in the old town. He has his eye on a 4 door Silverado now that the older boys are independent.
I simple love chevy.
MY friend had a mild fender bender. Her car's front needed new paint and a repair.
So my husband decided to installed new chevy fender and bumper to our love car.
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