Category Archives: Dad – as in “You’re Dad was quite a character!”

Unsafe at Any Speed

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At lunch today my husband and I talked about our first cars. His was a 1948 Chevy.

Knowing that he is not all that mechanical, my first question was, “How did you keep it running?”

“It never broke down,” he said.

Now, that’s just not right.

Growing up, I don’t remember a single car we possessed that didn’t break down. My earliest memory is of sitting next to Dad as we careened down a steep hill, all the while he was frantically trying to re-attach the steering wheel to the column.

Dad owned clunkers where the engine literally dropped out on the road as we were driving or overheated at the slightest incline. (One time I watched Dad resolve the problem by pouring a can of cola into the radiator, but that’s another story.) We once spent an entire month camping in the mountains because the car broke down as we pulled in the campground and we had no transportation, or money, to drive down to get a new part.

I remember riding with my older sister in the first car Dad bought for her. We were sitting at a stoplight. People started pointing and shouting and it took us a while to realize the car was on fire. In our defense the car had the engine in the rear, so it wouldn’t have been immediately obvious to us.  I mean, we didn’t have the radio cranked all the way up and we weren’t fighting over the rearview mirror to check our hair and make-up, if that’s what you’re thinking.

So, my first car was a slightly burnt, hand-me-down from my sister (as were all my clothes by the way – I mean they were hand-me-downs, not burnt – that would be weird.)

One problem was the heater. Heat was conveyed to the interior of the car by a system of ducts connected to the cylinder head. I don’t know much about cars, but I do know I often arrived at school slightly dizzy from inhaling exhaust fumes.

There was also no Park. The display read “R-N-D-L”. No “P.” I’m sure that originally the manufacturer installed some sort of system whereby the car stayed where you parked it but by the time it reached me, that portion of the car was no longer working. My only option was to find a level place to park. In my first week of driving I often came out of school to discover the car had rolled across the parking lot, jumped the curb and sat sweetly in the grass.

On a morning drive to school my love/hate meter shot from one side to the other several times.

“I love this car,” I’d say if I was lucky enough to get it started and out the drive. My love continued unabated, until I hit a bump.

“I hate this stupid car,” I’d yell when the motor shut off. As the car rolled onward I screamed and cursed it, until I’d hit another bump, which caused the motor to engage and I’d make my panicked way to school with the needle on my love/hate meter jumping wildly.

My first car?  It was a Corvair. The car declared by Ralph Nader to be”Unsafe at Any Speed.”

I have to agree with Ralph.

Mama Never Told Me

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As a painfully shy teenager, my mother spent hours trying to teach me how to get a boy to ask me out. While Mom lived in fear that I would never go on a date, I lived in fear that I would.
The first thing she tried to teach me was how to bat my eyelashes. Evidently boys found this irresistible.
“When you’re talking to a boy,” she said as we stood in front of the bathroom mirror. “Tilt your chin down and look up through your lashes. Now, blink several times in a row.”
I looked like a bobble head with an eye infection.
The next thing she tried was to shorten all my skirts. She had a friend lug her sewing machine over to our house. I stood in on a chair in the middle of the dining room and Mom gauged how short my skirt should be. “Put your arms down by your sides,” she said. “I think we should mark it at the tips of your fingers.”
“Dad,” I shouted. “Help me out here, would you?”
His only comment as he walked out to the safety of the barn, was “You have to have the right bait if you want to catch a fish.”
Mom’s friend diligently stitched up the hems on all my dresses.
At school I walked from class to class hugging the walls, terrorized of exposing myself but Mom’s idea worked. A boy asked me out.
“And he’s a senior,” Mom bragged to her friends.
He took me to the homecoming dance where I refused every request to move toward the gyrating in the middle of the gym. I calculated that his height would require me to move my arms above shoulder level which would reveal my backside to the entire school.
To my relief (and probably his) we left early. When we were fifty yards from the driveway the engine went dead and the lights went out. We rolled to a stop in front of my house.
“Is there something wrong with your car?” I asked.
He leaned across the seat toward me, lips puckered. I backed up against the door. My mind raced through everything Mom had coached me to do, but the coaching sessions didn’t cover kissing.
“Just a minute. I have to ask my Mom what to do next.” I jumped out of the car and ran to the house. He was gone before I’d made it to the front door.