Take me for a ride in your car car...

My first car. A 1955 Mercury, previously owned by my voice and piano teacher... a real tank!

Ok.. enough about family for now, we'll get back to them in a bit. Now we're going to talk about cars!

I love cars. I've had a bunch of them in my life, and I've had my favorites and some real tankers, but I've loved them all at one time or the other. My first car, seen above, was one that my father thought would be a 'safe' car. It's a good thing he paid attention, as you'll see in a minute. He got research from somewhere about the safest cars and would let me have no other than what was on the list. So my cars were never 'cool', but I AM almost 62 years old, so there must have been method in his thinking.

If you notice, this car is not particularly intact. I was taking a friend to work after school (and this is truly another story for another time, as he was dating my best friend at the time and later... well... we got very close (grin) ). We parked across from his work when I heard a squeal of tires and leaned AWAY from the window just as a 1949 Ford hit the driver's side door. And drove off down the street, with pieces of my car careening behind it. The license number of that automobile was LCY 995. 1961. I remember it well. I wrote the license number in the dust on my dashboard... assessed damages to us, got out, cool and collected and burst into tears when I saw the side of the car. The perpetrator was a 16 year old kid who wasn't supposed to be using Dad's car. No insurance. He hit a car just before he hit mine, and was leaving THAT accident when he lost control and hit me. I've often wondered what kind of person he became.

The good news was that the car became the BEST car to take anywhere! We used to take it up in the hills; we used to paint to for football games; we put Band-Aids all over it; it was the most fun! It cost $500. We got $450 for the accident, which would have done nothing to fix the car, as the front axle was tweaked, but when added to the $225 that we got when I sold it, allowed me to get that '56 Ford!

I loved that Ford. I used to drive it as if it was a stick shift auto, starting in low and moving through the gears so decisively that it's a wonder the transmission wasn't sitting on the ground at some point in time. I could take ANYTHING in that car (partly due to the fact that I BELIEVED I could, and never backed down from a challenge)... I can do that now in Mom's Cadillac, but somehow it ain't the same (grin).

I moved from the Ford to a Buick... the biggest car they ever made, a 1962 Le Sabre. I think I had 3 or so accidents in that car, none of which were my fault (well, I might have been driving a little ASSERTEDLY). I also had several tickets at that time, but quickly learned that wasn't as much fun as the accidents, so I quit breaking the law (grin). I was on assigned risk for a while... I can't imagine why! Several cars ran into the Buick... and never left a mark! It was some car car.

After that, I had several cars that were not loved as intensely as the first cars. Then Joe and I had a volkswagen camper, which served us well. I gave it to him when we split, so he would always have a place to go OTHER than my house. Cheap at twice the price, believe me. As the shirt says, better to have loved and lost than to live with the psycho for the rest of your life.

As I had no car after joe, i took on my father's delivery truck, a 1969 Ford van. It had 90,000 miles on it when i got it, and I did some of my first, best traveling in it. sigh... It required a lot of attention, but I was younger and had the time... I drove it for 8 more years (!) finally giving it away after I got my 1985 Astrovan.

Now I have my Astrovan. It's a nice van. I like it a lot. I loved it's younger sister, the 1985 version, which was a FAR better vehicle than the 2002... isn't that a shame? But again, it gets me where I want to go and I can sleep in it and drive it for hours and hours...

and I LOVE to drive in the car car..

me!