365 True Things: 107/Cars

Today while I was out and about, I saw two vintage (like, 1960s) VW bugs, both powder blue. They reminded me of the first car that I remember: a 1958 dark green VW bug. Like the one shown above, but not blue (and perhaps without whitewalls), and ours had a wood-and- metal roof rack. I remember the hood— which was actually the trunk—with its vertical handle and the colorful enamel Wolfsburg crest. And the plain painted metal dashboard, with the crest again on the horn.

My, how cars have changed.

My father bought that car in 1958 while we were traveling in Europe for a few months. I do not remember an iota of that journey: I was three. The VW bug was my only souvenir. And it was traded in (for a Toyota     . . . Tercel? black-and-yellow license plate TBS 008) well before I came of driving age.

We also—this would have been my mother's car, I guess—had a blue Chevy station wagon. That was the car we took to travel on summer vacations to Lassen National Park and the Mendocino coast, and it's what my mom used to deliver me to whatever activities I had. Though there was a lot less of that when I was growing up than there is now.

The car I learned to drive in was a 1970-ish white Chevelle. I still to this day cringe when I think of the cement parking garage pillar I scraped on one of my first outings. My poor mother . . . the things she put up with.

My own first car was a 1975 lime green Honda CVCC (Civic) hatchback, bought for $3,000—half my money, half my dad's. I called it Elsie, for "Little Car." I did love that car, and it took me near and far over the years. We finally sold it in 1987, moving up to a red Toyota Corolla FX16, zoom. And now, since 2000, I have a Toyota 4Runner, which I will soon be shopping around to replace.

I am a woman of allegiance: just three cars in forty years. I like that about myself.

And during those years, I've only been in two accidents, both without casualties: one, on my birthday in, oh, 1975—the first rain of the season in L.A. (Yes, I was that driver; and now that I think of it, it was that Chevelle, poor old car.) The second while driving on an icy interstate a few years later, in my Honda: the dang road threw me into a guard rail! (And a dozen years later, Pennsylvania sent me a bill for the guard rail! I laughed!)

Today, I consider myself a good driver. A bit fast maybe, but confident and safe. I have only gotten one speeding ticket that I needed to attend traffic school for. And that's pretty good, considering . . .