When a teenager turns 16 and gets his driver’s license, it’s a big day. But THE most exciting day for a teen is the day he gets his first car.
Getting your own car is totally more cool than driving your mother’s minivan, or worse, your granny’s Buick. Having your own car says you’ve arrived on the threshold of adulthood, which is as far as most of us ever wanted to go in that direction in the first place.
Unlike those who still pilot Mom’s minivan around town, you can decorate your own machine to show your style. You can hang all the fuzzy stuffed animals you want from the rearview mirror and slap on a bumper sticker that says, “Adults Are Stupid.”
Car ownership seems to come really early these days. For the lucky teen whose parents are both working two jobs to keep her dressed like an adolescent influencer and pay her bill for the latest iPhone, that first car may be waiting for her as soon as she gets home from her driving test.
Before the ink is even dry on her license, she’s off in her new Nissan, blasting her new Bose audio system through town with her hair flying out behind her, a carefree almost-adult driver in control of her machine.
And more likely than not, Mom and Dad did spring for the very newest model, complete with bells and whistles. They’re going to make sure their princess has the finest, even if they have to break into their retirement savings to pay for it.
Unfortunately, my parents didn’t get the memo about the fine vehicle they owed me. I don’t think they robbed from their retirement to put me behind the wheel.
My first car was not new. It was not cool, even physically, since it lacked air conditioning. It did not have an audio system. It barely had brakes.
I was about to be a senior in high school. My boyfriend had graduated the year before and gone on to college, leaving me without a ride to school, which was three miles away.
It was the fall of 1962, smack in the decade of classic muscle cars. A 1963 Pontiac Grand Prix would have been a wonderful early graduation gift. I hoped. I daydreamed. I got my hair ready to fly out the window as I roared down the streets of Pasadena, California, in my dream car.
Then one day my dad came home with my car. I rushed outside to find not the 1962 black Grand Prix of my dreams, but a navy blue 1949 Chevy coupe. It was a standard 3-speed with the gear shift on the column. Not a single bell or whistle. It muttered rather than roared down the street when I test drove it.
“It’s transportation,”
he said, “and I got a good deal.”
I knew better than to argue with one of Dad’s good deals. It would get me to Pasadena High School if I prayed hard enough. After spraying the scratched dashboard with a can of left-over baby blue paint before I could protest, he tossed me the keys and wished me luck.
Even in those days, most kids had cars, which they parked in the school’s parking lot. Many of the guys had good part-time jobs, and they spent their earnings on their cars, decking them out with 12-coat candy apple red paint jobs and flames on the fenders. They couldn’t wait to saunter out to the parking lot at 3 p.m. and slide into those fine cars as the rest of us watched to see who owned them.
Then there was me and my 1949 Chevy with the spray painted dashboard. After the first day’s ribbing about my “jalopy,” I learned to get to school early, park it in the very back, and run away from it as fast as I could.
In the afternoon, I deliberately hung around school until I could see that the lot had cleared. Then I ran out, cranked Old Blue up and puttered home the back way, hoping no one saw me.
My parents didn’t have to worry about my speeding. The Chevy’s top speed was 50. Above that it would slip out of third gear and I would find myself coasting along in neutral. It wouldn’t even get up enough speed to fluff my hair up, much less cause it to fly out behind me glamorously.
My dad didn’t give me gas money. He just stuck a case of oil in the trunk and gave me a quarter to call home if the Chevy quit.
When my own son was ready for this first car, you’d think I would have had some sympathy and bought him a cool ride. But I was my father’s daughter after all. My husband and I bought our kid a bank repo,old Ford pickup that had no wheel rims and no AC, but it did have a nice hole in the floorboard where you could get fresh air and watch the road streaking past under you. We named it Little Red.
Like me, he got to Magee High School early and came home late.
And if he was disappointed that his hair didn’t fly out behind him as he cruised along, he never said so.
