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The
first car I actually purchased was a 1971 lime-green Maverick.
It was all I could afford on a graduate-student fellowship,
but it got me between Detroit and Florida at least six times.
It still had plenty of economical miles left on it when I foolishly
traded it in for a 1975 Fiat X1/9.
Where
that car got me was mostly in the bank account, and to and from
(barely) my mechanic's garage. How many times can a throw-out
bearing go bad? I was tired of counting after three, and acting
on the premise that the Fiat was jinxed, I sold it with feelings
of guilt to a high-school kid down the street. Naturally, he
never had a day of trouble with it.
My
next automotive move was a retreat of sorts, to a 1966 Plymouth
Belvedere with a good old 225 "slant six". It wasn't
pretty, and it wasn't fast, but it was reliable, unlike my ex-husband,
who once took apart a Chrysler engine in the kitchen, and desp
ite
promises that it would be "just for a while", left
it there in pieces longer than was healthy for our marriage.
We had two garages and four acres, so using the kitchen for
a machine shop didn't seem absolutely necessary to me. Neither
did the twenty TV chassis in the lanai, but that's another story.
Next
came a classic 1968 Mustang, restored with (all) my money and
the considerable talents of others. Since it was originally
my deceased mother's car, I had quite a sentimental attachment
to it, and drove it for years. Inevitably, it met its fate on
U.S. 19 in Florida in the form of a big Buick driven by a tiny
old lady who was well-past merely needing to get her eyes checked.
These
days, or actually, these years, I drive an eleven-year old Saturn,
now on its second engine. After the beautiful Mustang died,
I gave up on all wheels exotic, wanting only thrift and dependability.
I'm pleased to say that my taste in men took a happy turn along
those lines, too. However, I still think about that white T-bird
of long ago with much warmth and sentiment. After all, they
say a woman never really forgets her first love.
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