Wheels

I was never much of a gear head. Cars did little to impress me, although I did admire the shape of some. I used to draw approximations of my favorites with colored pencils, lone images on an expanse of white background. They looked as sleek and powerful as I could render them, spewing exhausts of billowing smoke and flames. I imagined myself in the driver seat peeling out and laying rubber. I never got far in those imaginings before cops were in hot pursuit. But boy you should have seen me allude my pursuers as I gave them the slip worthy of James Bond.

The first car I actually got to drive was a tug-boat of a white family-size Ford station-wagon. I used to drive that machine one handed while stretched out and wedged into the driver's seat as if I were burrowing for comfort in a living room recliner. In doing so within weeks I broke the back of the seat. It was cocked in a screwy angle from then on for the duration of our ownership of the car.

Afterwards my father bought a gray 1976, Pontiac LeMans with black bucket seats and a shift on the floor. She was a vehicle worthy of a race track and I had a teenage reverence for that car that to this day still has a place in my heart. My sister who turned sixteen in the course of events also got to drive that car. One night shortly thereafter while drunk and emotionally volatile she drove that car up over the curb, across the length of a front lawn, through the street facing wall and into the living room of a sleeping geriatric couple. The embedded car was totaled.

When my brother turned sixteen he bought a Dodge Dart equipped with an 8 track player. He let me drive it off and on. One day I drove that car a hundred plus miles up and back from Cape Cod, at a steady 95 miles an hour. Even though we parked the Dart in the street the next morning after the trip you could smell the worn, exhausted engine the moment you stepped out the back door of our house. Some time later my brother tried to kill that car as a prelude to buying another. He drove that Dart around an oval dirt track at a reckless speed that threatened to flip the car over. Hours later he called it a draw. The car was too well built to fall prey to a rutted dirt road track.

A short while later my brother and I pooled our money together and bought a sporty little two seater from a slick talking fix 'em and sell 'em used car sales man. The first night we drove it the car protested in smoke and squeals. We had been had. The engine and drive shaft were shot. When we went back to the sales man for our money back he pointed to the dotted line and our signatures and just below that the clearly worded clause, Sold as is.

Next we got a cargo van and our father paneled and outfitted it with a bed that had underneath storage. We also installed a high end radio and tape deck and four kick ass speakers. It was party central. And no more than a couple days after my father finished with the paneling two of our soused and wrestling cohorts put several holes through the walls. The next day we patched the holes with scraps of wood, and shortly after that four of us loaded up the van and headed west. For the next several months that van was our oasis and home. When we returned thousands of miles later we promptly sold the van for less than it was worth.

Our following car leaked copious amounts of oil. Every morning we looked there was a new puddle beneath the car. We brought it to our mechanic and it did not leaked while at his garage. This happened three times, back and forth, with no resolution. On one hand you could call our mechanic methodical, on the other, slow. Our car was often tied up for over a week while he went through the motions of sussing out the elusive leak. The third time we asked him to find the leak he had our car for ten days. When he told us once again that there was no leak we wanted to brain him with a heavy pipe. Ten days he had our car. For nothing. Except of course his bill. We picked the car up late that afternoon. We hadn't had the car back more than two hours when we were driving down one of the main roads through our town. Without any warning someone in a car driving in the opposite direction hurled a rock at us. It shattered our windshield. And we were once again without a car and at the mercy of our mechanic.

That was our last car purchased together. Afterwards we each got our own vehicle and moved out of our parents home. I bought a yellow little Japanese import. This was at a time when I was among the Ranks of Cargo Of Despair and we were invited to exhibit our creative works at the art gallery of Springfield Technical Community College. As part of that show I provided spray paint and an open invitation to use my car as a canvas. A good dozen people took me up on my offer. The results was a varying riot of color, style, and technique. Shortly thereafter I paid my parents a visit. A couple of days later my mother told me that after I'd driven off following my visit one of her next door neighbors had come over and asked, "How old is your son?"

Years later there are still some autos of my youth whose shape and design I covet. They are for the most part high dollar cars with get up and go reputations. Had I only saved the color pencils of my youth I might sketch a couple autos, each one belching smoke and flame. You would think them slick and sleek and able to out run any cruiser driven by crook or Johnny Law. 'Cause that's the way I draw them.