A Little More about Little Cars
After reading about Car World, my friend Heather wrote, "My parents owned a whole series of MGBs, and I can't tell you how many weekends my father spent underneath or draped over the hood of them. Our last one had a curse on the brake system, and I spent hours reading in the driver's seat, waiting for my father to give me the go-ahead to push the brake pedal to the floor to drain the brake lines."
Heather's parents are my age. Not having a patient daughter with a book, I had to be the one to press the pedal to the floor when Craig bled the brakes. I hated it. Why did we love these little cars?
"Then," she continues, "For some reason the battery would never hold a charge, so the car would have to be started once a day and driven around the block, just so we could get it to start when we needed it to. After I got my driver's license, the only time I EVER got to drive the car was on its daily trips around the block.
"The greatest treat, though, was riding in it with my dad. He'd put the top down and buckle my sister into the front and let me sit on the ledge in the back, and we'd zoom off to the beach."
And there you have it: When you drive it with the top down on a beautiful day, it's all worthwhile.
I used to put Pirate in a harness and tie a short traffic lead to the roll bar. That way, he could ride in the boot without jumping or falling out. He had a bad habit of yapping and shrieking with excitement when he rode in the car, though. Couldn't help himself. My friends would say, "Did you drive by on Speedway yesterday? I thought I heard you."
Sometimes a convertible comes in very handy. Once we went to the sewage treatment ponds east of Austin, birdwatching. You can see all kinds of great waterbirds there — greater and lesser yellowlegs, roseate spoonbills and every kind of heron. But wouldn't you know, Pirate jumped right into the worst of the oxygenation ponds. This is where they dump the raw stuff to settle out.
Pirate hopped out all pleased with himself, coated with unthinkable stinking sludge. We ran from him screaming when he shook. Craig sincerely wanted to leave him there, but of course I wouldn't hear of it. We just put the top down and drove home, fast. We held our noses and screamed some more whenever we had to stop for a red light and the gagging miasma settled over us.
Oh, little cars, I'm glad we survived you. Except for motorcycles, we were always the smallest thing on the road. Heather says, "I cringe to think about how they toted us around in it now that I have kids. They strapped both of us into the front seat with one lap belt across us. Of course, this was in little tiny Sarasota, where the fastest speed limit was 40 and Suburbans and Expeditions didn't exist yet."
That's the way we did in those days. I always pictured myself hanging from a lap belt with the car rocking on its rollbar over my head in a cloud of dust. But that was a daydream. That car's body would have crumpled like a kleenex. Yikes. Once again, I lived to reminisce about my reckless youth.