A varoom of one’s own

Why is it that everyone’s favorite car is one that is no longer in the hands of the person who revels in its greatness? Why is it that the favorite car is so often a car that was only in the owner’s hands for a short period a long time ago?

Is it perhaps because our favorite cars never really existed at all?

For example, my favorite car that I ever owned was a four-door 1956 Chevy Bel Air. It was aquamarine and ivory and had a 265-cubic-inch, V-8 engine. These days, when I tell the story of that car, I say it was my first car. It lives on that way in my memory. I’ve told the fib for so long that unless I really think about it, I don’t remember the turd-brown Dodge Coronet that came first, a hand-me-down from my brother and my dad before him. And if that old half-ass Charger has been shallowly buried in my subconscious, I’m in full-blown denial about the brand-spanking new 1980 Ford Pinto that followed the ‘56. Truth be told, my dad bought me the Pinto to get the old Chevy off the street in front of his house. To this day, I’m ashamed that I gamely accepted the new car’s reliability over the old car’s utter hipness.

I bought that ‘56 for $250 from a guy who worked down at Bohrer Brothers’ lumber yard. The family of one of the Bohrer Brothers lived across the alley when I was a kid. Mike, the oldest, could vomit at will, and I envied his ability to get out of tests at school. Steve Bohrer was several years older and had burned out his brain on barbiturates before he fell asleep with a lit cigarette and died in the resulting fire. I got the $250 for the car by re-roofing the fire-damaged building where Steve had cooked the books. He’d been a bully who beat me up with fair frequency when I was little, so I didn’t much care that he died in the fire. In retrospect, he kind of did me a favor.

I think the year must have been 1978. I argued with my dad about the purchase of that old car. He thought the $250 would be better saved toward college, but I was convinced that I would be better off knowing how to work on cars. I also began buying Hot Rod magazine, visions of a muscle car with flames racing through my head. Maybe I’d get some of those top-heavy hot-rod girls like on the magazine covers.

After I had the car in my possession, but before I actually had it running, I made some modifications, which included a 150-watt eight-track stereo system with four speakers. I also built a ratchet-like device that held up the back of the front seat, and, once released, allowed it to lay nearly flush against the bottom of the back seat. In my over-sexed, 16-year-old mind, I’d be ready if one of those hot-rod girls ever came along.

I can’t recall exactly what I did to get the car running. It seems that I had to do something mechanical, like replace the generator or the water pump or something. I also did my first tune-up prior to turning the key. I remember a neighbor helped me gap the points.

When the car started, after my minor and ham-fisted mechanical efforts, it was like I’d given birth or more precisely like I’d just started the process toward a birth.

It’s amazing, really, how many of the circumstances surrounding that automobile do remain fresh in my memory. My best friend at the time was a guy named Pat Schulenberg, and we were at the Dairy Queen when we named the car, “The Jet,” in honor of the hood ornament. Pat and I used to cruise Harlan Street every hot summer night, drinking beer and smoking pot and trying to pick up the oh-so-knowledgeable high school cuties. I remember a moment when Pat and I drove around until we could pick up a clear signal to the FM radio station from Omaha, parked on a country road on a hill out south of town toward the drive-in, listening to Ted Nugent’s “Stranglehold” at the top volume of that 150-watt stereo.

I remember the moment when John Law, a small-town rebel type whom I had enormous respect for, helped me to ream out the master brake cylinder. I don’t know why that memory stands out more than the time his sister Cindy flashed her suddenly ripened breasts at me, but it does. I remember every second that I spent with the public school’s coach’s daughter on The Jet’s modified front seat.

I’ll tell you why the truth or falsity of that ‘56 Chevy is beside the point: the car was a symbol, and symbols are never the concrete substance of what they are. In fact, they are more what they aren’t than what they are.

I would never say, when talking about The Jet, that the body over each headlight was rusted though and dangerous as a rusty razor blade. It was a design flaw on the ‘56 that winter’s mud and salt collected in that little pocket above the headlights. I would never mention that the car overheated at stoplights or that the seat actually had a mouse nest in it, which I covered up with a blue, synthetic fabric seat cover or that wooden clothespins were clipped to the fuel line like a Mohawk to prevent vapor lock. Nor would I ever mention that The Jet took minutes to go from zero to 60. I would never say those things because they weren’t the important things about the car then or now.

What was important about the car was it was the first thing that was truly my own—my bedroom wasn’t my own, it was my parents'; the Coronet wasn’t mine, it was my dad’s. My life wasn’t my own; it was my school’s, job’s, parents'. To me, that ‘56 was more than steel bound by bolts, rust and welds or just a symbol of freedom. It was freedom.