Past my first car, none of the rest of them matter.
I am 16 and it's 1963 and I get a '57 Chevy, lavender with a while top and white rolled and pleated leather interior, 283 with double 4 barrels and a three speed in the floor. and I am the envy of my crew. My girlfriend paints the interior lights with lavender and it looks surreal when that is on and we're parking. I am working my first job, soda jerk at Halls Drug store which carried it's own envy like being the bartender at the hottest bar.
"Parking" is the term my generation used for making out in a car while it is stopped. "Stupid" is the term my Dad used for making out in a moving vehicle. And what was parallel parking? Double dating? I actually had my buds use my car as leverage to get a date when we'd double date and we triple dated several times when scheduling conflicts arose.
The British Invasion is launching and I have 4 speakers for an AM radio and that is music to my ears as well as those around the car. It is the greatest period of time in radio and music history and I hate it every time I have to turn the radio off.
Unfortunately, letting me get that car is like giving a loaded gun to a trigger happy bandit and the cops that patrolled my hood, The Heights, had me pegged as Public Enemy #1. Speeding tickets and a trip to the assigned risk pool with auto insurance companies aka "who gets stuck with that idiot this month" doomed my run into a real American Graffiti life and my Dad sold the car and I had to wait.
An aside. One of the cops that pulled me over and let me go the first time was a customer at the soda fountain where I worked and now walked to and from work. He came in a week after the machine love of my life had been sold and said he was sorry that I lost my car. He told me things were pretty quiet on Friday and Saturday nights and he missed hearing me before he could see me.
Whenever I hear the phrase "too much of a good thing" I think about me and that car.
