On the way home for lunch, I opened my windows to vent the heat and also, because I love to blast the radio on a wonderfully sunny Spring day. Suddenly, I was reminded of the THREE summers I spent here in Tally with a car that a.) didn’t have cold air and b.) only the back windows rolled down. But my history with weird and funky car stories goes way back…

(do dool loo, do dool loo – say it fast – you’ll get it. This is a dream sequence!!)

In pre-kindergarten, my mother picked me up at noon from the private school. She drove a late 70’s VW bug in a faded shade of light blue. It had been her college car so it was relatively old by 1983. I remember the hole in the floor, in the backseat, behind the driver’s side. My father had covered it with a wooden board but sometimes I would move it and lay on the seat looking down at the road rushing underneath us, scared that I would somehow fall down there and get run over.

Around this same time, my father owned a Toyota Corrola; the boxy 80’s kind in dark blue. The headliner was falling down and I remember – although I had been admonished when I did – running my hand along it, feeling how smooth the vinyl felt as it gave under my fingers.

Soon after, my parents had a Mazda 929 in maroon. We gave this car to my cousin and I heard it spontaneously combusted while driving on the highway.

My father briefly owned a custard yellow Oldsmobile Delta 88. He parked it at the train station once, right before going on a trip and came back to find it had been overtaken by a colony of ants. So he made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, placed it on the floor and left it for a day. When he came back, all the ants had congregated around said sandwich and with a large garbage bag, he had solved the ant problem.

My first car was also a Mazda 929 from 1989. It was old when I began driving it in 1995. It was old when the rive shaft gave out on me in my sophomore year of college. But it was big and tank-like and had oscillating air vents. I loved that beast.

And then, my Infinity. The little sedan with a lot of pickup… once you hit 20. This was the car with no cold air and shitty windows. The car whose A/C fan would stop working but kick back up again if I went over a speed bump… fast. I was so glad to be rid of that hunk of junk but thankful that the Honda dealer gave me a thousand for it.

I’m happy to say that I finally own a new car, once whose A/C works and has clean seats and no holes in it.

So, do you have any horrific car stories?