My first car was a 1968 Ford Falcon... dull blue color with a big rust spot on the trunk. It had belonged to my Dad's Aunt ("Aint") Jo, who died back when I was 8 years old. The car sat out behind my grandparent's garage for years. If memory serves me right, I paid $200 for it when I was 15 years old... put in new seat covers, a radio and carpet in the floor board.
Now tons of kids at Robert E. Lee drove some pretty nice cars. Smokey and the Bandit had just come out... and there were a lot of kids driving really nice Trans AM's, Z-28 Camaros, Firebirds, etc. Some of the people who drove the really nice cars didn't want me to park the old Falcon next to them. It was pretty funny when I'd hear... "Hey... go park that piece of crap somewhere else." (I'd think to myself... "At least you don't have to drive it!")
The Falcon didn't have air conditioning, so during hot weather I left the windows down all the time. This lead to a lot of practical jokes. Sometimes when I walked out into the parking lot at REL, my car would not be in the parking space where I left it. Since it had a standard transmission, all someone had to do was get in, put it in neutral and push it somewhere else. Todd Diviney was the biggest culprit... playing the old "now you're warm... now you're cold game" as I searched through the parking lot. One time Todd moved it completely over near the tennis courts. I almost never found it.
Leaving the windows down also created opportunities for people to have fun with the car while I worked at Burger King. Back then, Broadway was the main drag in Tyler... and weekend nights meant tons of people hanging out in the BK parking lot. The manager (Steve... an ultra nerd) would always say... "Galen... you know those guys... go out there and tell them to stop loitering in our lot... I've called the police." So... I would go outside and let them know... "Hey... the manager says you guys need to leave... he's called the cops". They would usually give me a hard time, saying stuff like... "Hey... tell your manager I'm going by to see his wife when I leave here". I'd go back inside and tell Steve... "Hey... those guys say they know your wife." Steve would stand in the safety of the dining room looking outside the window like he was trying to figure out who they were... I don't think he realized it was a joke. Usually on the nights that I had to be parking lot sheriff the guys would fill the floor boards of my car with beer cans, bottles, hamburger sacks, etc. It took forever to get that stuff out.
The craziet part of driving the worst car at Robert E. Lee was the horn. When the steering wheel turned too far to the left, the horn would honk. I'm sure it had some kind of short in it, but turning the wheel too far sometimes resulted in some funny situations. It also seemed to hack some people off. When leaving the horsehoe drive near the band hall, it meant I had to turn the wheel too far left. The horn would honk (and keep honking) while people standing along by the old gym and bus pickup area would either wave or flip me off. After a couple of weeks of this tons of people were flipping me off... some yelling stuff like "Hey fatass... who are you honking at?" I'd just wave (or flip them off) and try to only turn the wheel to a point where it didn't honk. This resulted in me almost hitting the dumpsters one time.
Half way through my junior year the old Falcon died. The second or third clutch went bad and ordering the parts left me on foot more than with transportation. Pretty soon I moved up to a 1974 Plymouth Duster... which was a big improvement. At least it had air conditioning. Man... was I glad to get rid of the Falcon.
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2 comments:
And I always thought I had the worst car in high school! I drove a dull light blue 75 Mustang II. It broke down all the time, so I spent a lot of time walking. The sad part is I paid my uncle $1,000 for that car! Well, I think you've got me beat!
Kathy Green
I didn't have my own car til I moved away from home, but we had the worst old acrs in Tyler. A baby blue cadillac - you know, one of those 14 blick long cars and an old Ford station wagon. I have no isea what year that wagon was, but ibt was white with a red interior. What made it the worst was Chris had a BB gun and hit the upper corner of one of the back side windows and it cracked the window and that spiderwebbed the whole glass. Mom brought us to school in that car and every time we hit a bump, pieces of the window would fall out! OMG! With all the really nice cars (in my eyes, YOUR car was nice!), I made Momma drop me off at Safeway, even when it was raining!
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