A Legacy Project

My first car was a 1949 Chevy. It was a two-door sedan with a stick shift on the column. You pushed a button on the dash to start the engine. That was cool. The AM radio didn’t work. That was not cool. The car had wide front quarter panels and a sloping roof that gave the car a teardrop shape. Actually it looked like a giant green mouse on wheels.

This was 1968, the year of the classic Pontiac GTO, with that distinctive GTO green. My green car was like an anti-GTO, faded and kind of ridiculous to look at.

As soon as he saw it my brother remarked on the car’s best feature. It had a huge back seat, a back seat the size of a couch. High school boys noticed such things. He said I might get lucky. I might have a date and we–the girl and I– could move to the back seat and make out. I’d heard guys brag about taking girls out and parking on a lonely back road. I wasn’t sure I was ready for that, but it was kind of thrilling to look back there and imagine future adventure.

The first week I drove the car there was an electrical problem. We got that fixed. Another week the brakes went out on it. It happened in the driveway. The feeling of pressing down on the brake pedal and feeling no resistance, feeling the pedal go all the way to the floor, will always stay with me. We got the brakes fixed. My dad said I was lucky. 

A week later he put the car up for sale.