How I Roll

My blogging buddy Bone has been reminiscing about his past vehicles and it sounded like a good topic to me...so here it goes.

I have to first start off with wayyyyy before I ever got my driver's license.

When I was 14 or so I tried to drive my dad's truck in the back yard...we had a very big backyard and no one ever noticed, because I didn't get too far. It was a stick shift...more on that later.

So jump ahead to age 15 and I have a job babysitting the manager of our trailer park's kids in the evening. I have no idea where these folks were every evening, but they were paying pretty good cash for me to watch their kids. The driving part comes in where? Here... I would get off the bus from school and walk directly to the office, where they would give me the keys to the electric golf cart to drive over to their place and pick up their kid. That was so cool to be driving the golf cart!

Okay at 15 I was old enough to get my Learner's Permit. But my Mom didn't want me to have one because she didn't want her car insurance rates to go up. That sucks that your parent's insurance goes up even if you don't drive anything...but just because you could drive something. At any rate, I was 17 before I got my permit and that was because I signed up to take Driver's Ed at school and had to get a permit for that. I passed the class quite nicely.

At age 19 I move out into my first apartment. Still no car and still no real driver's license! At age 20 I was working for an Electric company in the mail room and part of my job was driving the company car to the post office to pick up our mail...still no driver's license, but no one really checked...I had to show them my license/permit to get the job to prove that I was a US citizen and they didn't check again to see if I could drive legally. good thing I never got into an accident or in trouble. LOL! Also lucky for me all these cars that I drove (a VAN too!) were automatic transmissions.

Somewhere in here the guy that I was living with comes home one day with a car for me. As it is pulling up to our apartment there is smoke billowing out from both front tires. I'm the daughter of a mechanic...I KNOW THIS IS NOT GOOD. Dumbdumb runs up all proud of himself and says "I bought you a car! How much do you think I paid for this car?" I roll my eyes and say "If you paid more than $1,000 you're a "explative" fool!" He of course was thoroughly ticked at me for the rest of the evening, because he had paid much more than $1K...in fact he had financed the darned thing and I got to pay for it. Oh by the way, the car is a STANDARD Transmission...no one has yet taught me how to drive one of these things!

I drove the car a bit, but never going any faster than 2nd gear. Still no license and I don't remember if we ever got the thing titled. We sunk more than $3,000 into the car trying to get it to run...brake calipers and universal joint...the brakes never did work right.

I eventually got smart and left Dumbdumb and the stupid car... I went to go live with my mother.

A friend of mine from work offers to let me borrow her car to get my first ever driver's license. I passed the test with flying colors.

One day my mom tells me that this girl at where she works is selling her old car for $800. It's a 75 Super Beetle. And she thinks I should buy it. I still don't know how to drive a standard. *sigh* I buy this car and find out it needs some work done on it. It stalls out every time you let up off the gas. I call up the mechanic and the part is only $8. Wow! so I arrange to get it fixed. Over $100 later the car still isn't any better...and we are moving farther away from where I work, so now I really need a car that I can drive. Bone just reminded me to tell you that I NEVER drove this car. I couldn't! It was a standard and I am yet standardly challenged.

A friend of mine from work drives me over to the Ford Dealership where she knows a guy. Thank Goodness! Finally I arrange to buy a 1990 Ford Tempo...but I'm trading in the Super Beetle on it. My friend offers to drive the Beetle to the dealership...she complains the entire way "How in the World did you expect to ever drive this thing?" I don't know...my mom wanted the darned car. She had dreams of me fixing it up to it's former glory.

A few weeks later I had to drive to my mom's job to get our house key because my little brother had locked my house key in the house after I specifically told him to not shut the door with the keys in the house! GAH! So we drive there and while I'm waiting for my mom to get the keys the girl who sold me the Beetle comes over and asks how I got there. She wondered if I was able to drive the Beetle all the way there...I told her "Nah, I traded that thing in on a new car!" LOL! She had sold me the car because she didn't want the dealer to junkyard the Beetle. Oh well.

So I had the Tempo for 10 years and it was a great car. It didn't give me any trouble really...but we decided to get something bigger when Darly came along. So we then got my Explorer...that I'm still driving. It's 13 years old now and still going great.


One of these days I want a Purple car. I have always wanted a purple car. DH says no way. But you know as soon as I can, I'm getting a purple car. Oh and my purple car won't be a Standard.