Just not your life this go-around, is it?
Sank your life savings, birthday money, Christmas money, bagging groceries at the A&P, watering lawns, taking in mail, every cent you ever put together and got a car. A whole semester at Driver’s Ed – aced your test and got your license, first try.
Answered an ad in the Pico Post – neighbor down the street. Took his Drivers License away – too old to haunt city streets. Had to unload the car, a 1965 Ford LTD sitting in the driveway, collecting dirt, spider webs and pigeon practice. He winced when he asked $250 for it. You bit the second he popped the question. Four-door cabin cruiser but who were you to be choosy? It had a radio, a dead battery and all the tires were mostly flat.
You had enough leftover money to head to Pep Boys and buy a Battery – along with a can of Armor-All and Pine scented air freshener.
Your baby. Didn’t have a name for it yet. Started up. Blew a cloud of dust out of the air-conditioner. Ashtray hadn’t been cleaned out since it got off the assembly line. You limped it to the gas station up the street – half a tank of gas, air in the tires and wiping a years worth of dirt off the windshield.
You had plans. Going to wash the car by hand – with a toothbrush and Armor-All. That was your Saturday project. Meanwhile, you figured out if you drove the car to school and convinced your Auto Shop teacher to let you fix it there you’d save money and get a grade as part of the deal. You saw a road trip in your future. Summer vacation was weeks away and you were free – no more climbing on a bus or hitching rides or begging your parents or conning friends. You could do what you wanted – go where you wanted – do anything you wanted any time. The plans sounded better by the second.
Next morning you got up late – no bus to catch at 6:45. Ten minutes away, you’d get there in plenty of time.
Got to school, turned the corner and drove up to the Auto Shop. Nobody in shop class. First period bell rang so you parked it next to a loading dock and ran off to class, knowing you’d corner the Auto Shop teacher at lunch and make your pitch.
Had a hard time concentrating all morning. Visions of going to look for America running through your head. You decided to name your car Millie – no particular reason, other than it popped into your head and it stuck. Millie was going to have a wonderful life. By the time the lunch bell rang you bolted out of class, stuffed your books in your locked and headed to the Auto shop.
On your way you started hearing thuds in the distance and a crowd yelling – it had to be some Senior function; seemed like every day there was something around lunch having to do with Seniors graduating – all those rituals – all those lunatics.
But the closer you got, the more it sounded like the noise and the crowds were coming from the Auto shop. Something wasn’t feeling quite right.
And there it was – two idiots with sledge hammers, going after Millie, standing on the roof – swinging and smashing every window, crumpling the hood – caving in the doors. Your baby – your child, being murdered in front of everybody and them cheering with every fatal blow.
You came inches from getting your own head caved in by a swinging sledge hammer as you tried to stop the carnage – you were yelling at the top of your lungs that it was your car – you just got it – you were taking it to the Auto Shop to get fixed.
That wasn’t going to happen – after the assault there was very little left of Millie to be salvaged, except maybe the radio.
Investigating the onslaught of obscenities flying out the mouth of a Junior, the shop teacher ran out and quickly realized there was a very big mistake to be had. He pointed to a truly beat up and hopeless looking 1960 Vauxhall Cresta as the designated car of doom.
No consoling you – you haven’t cried that hard since your Dachshund died – your life as you knew it was coming to a screeching, grinding halt.
The assassins dropped their tools and faded into the crowd, who in turn faded into the cafeteria or any place out of eyeshot from the crime scene.
It was just you and a mountain of automotive debris with only a stick of Pine-Scented Air freshener to let you know what might have been.
Feeling pretty awful, but not responsible for the colossal screw-up, the Auto Shop teacher offered to make things good by offering to fix the Vauxhall up and give it to you as compensation for the loss of Millie.
It was small – it was pathetic – it didn’t look like it would go faster than five miles an hour on a good day – it was a car that looked resigned to its fate and completely okay with being reduced to broken and smashed parts. It felt like you were sitting in a Dog Pound faced with the prospects of accepting a questionable dumpster Mutt instead of the pure bred German Shepherd you walked in with.
But you found yourself nodding “okay” and spent the rest of the afternoon, sitting in the front seat of the sad looking Vauxhall, staring somewhere into space and listening to the car radio, which was the only thing working and tuned to KHJ.
Here is a 45 minute dose of Jimmy Rabbit from KHJ on May 24, 1972 to keep you company.
