Good Ol’ Black and White

I love cars. I’ve loved them from the start of my life. The first car I remember was a 1956, 4-door, black and white. I remember being small enough to stand on the front seat, my mom holding her arm out so we wouldn’t go tumbling to the dashboard at every stop sign. We. It was probably my sister and I.

I remember the day we were driving somewhere when a bee got inside my sunsuit and stung me in the back seat. Well, not my back seat…

I remember going to the bakery with mom and bringing home 10 loaves of bread, each wrapped in brown paper, on a tray in the back seat. This was after she got tired of making enough bread to feed 5 growing kids, after she got tired of hearing us whine that we wanted soft bread like the other kids got in their lunches. They smelled so good and looked so fine lined up along the back seat like that.

I remember the day we got a flat tire on the dirt road that led to my aunt and uncle’s ranch. It was in a little dip of the road with sandstone canyons on either side. I felt like we’d narrowly missed a firey demise. My dad sent me up on the top of the ridge to fasten a red bandana to a fence post, hoping to warn oncoming traffic of the danger ahead. Another time we tried to make it home from the ranch in a rainstorm, only to get stuck in the mud. We had to walk back to the house in the rain and the muck. I think I lost my shoe.

We kept that car way past it’s due. Way past. Lots of winter days it wouldn’t start. The muffler needed fixing, but we had no money to do it, so most of the time I was supremely embarrassed to be picked up at school.

Finally, one day when I was 15, I arrived home from school to find a shiny silver Ford Fairlane in front of the house. Not new of course, a ’66 (it was ’71) but still very fancy. Power steering, electric windows, and oh-my-God, air conditioning.

I got to drive that car the day I got my license: June 9, 1972. In Rapid City, South Dakota. But that’s another story.

This trip down memory lane was inspired by this New York Times article about the new small cars – including the Smart. I can’t wait for the day the US is covered with tiny little fuel-efficient commuters like these. If I wasn’t afraid of getting squished by all the Hummers in my neighborhood, I’d drive one today.

But then, I love cars.