A Car is Worth a Thousand Words

Why do chicken coupes only have two doors? Because if they had four they would be called chicken sedans! Oh how we love our little sedan...

This is David on our first adventure driving our car. It was our second day on the island and we wanted to go out and explore. The adventure we faced was that the car broke down a few miles away from the apartment. Luckily, my handy husband was able to fix it within fifteen minutes. He bought a new belt, borrowed some tools, and the car was working just fine. We had purchased the car from the previous interns. They emailed us a picture, we sent a check, and we were excited to drive the car for three months. When we realized we were going to be here for two years, we had second thoughts about keeping the car. So far nothing has changed. It is still our means of transportation. The steering wheel is on the right side, the tape player works, so we use an adapter to listen to our iPods, and it seems to be the tiniest car ever made. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but it's miniscule. The engine looks like a lawn mower. Notice how much taller David is and how small the hood is in perspective to his body. 

We can't complain. I mean even though it doesn't have air conditioning, and the floor rusted out so there were holes under the carpet (David luckily fixed that!), and insurance out here is basically as much a year as it was to buy the car, it still gets us to the beach, to work, to church activities, and it acts as a very romantic chariot when we go on dates.

Sometimes this is the face we have when we are stuck in traffic, or when David has to take his days off to fix different parts of the car. We may not have it for very much longer, but the memories we've had driving it around will be cherished forever.

Have you ever thought about how many memories you can have in one single car? The reason I decided to post such a random part of our lives is because I was thinking about all of the cars I've ridden in or owned in the past. So many of them are linked to fond memories. 

Daddy's Lincoln: My dad had a Lincoln town car ever since I can remember. It was a boat, but I thought it was so luxurious growing up. It was silver and the interior was gray leather with shiny wood on the dash and around the radio. As a child I used to tell my dad that I wanted his car when he died. My favorite memories in that car were our monthly trips to Bellingham, Washington. My dad worked at a car auction up there for twenty-five years. It was a tow company where they would sell the crappy cars that were broken down and left on the side of the road. It usually only lasted a couple hours. I hardly remember the auctions themselves, but I can remember the hour and a half car rides with my dad. We always went to Burger King for breakfast and ate on the way. We would listen to old country music and talk about everything. There were a couple landmarks that I distinctly remember. There was a huge rock that became a signing rock. People would sign their names in paint and the thing was covered with all sorts of colors. I would always ask if we were close to the rock yet. We would also drive by a small little house that sold honey. My dad loved that honey and would never buy anything else as long as we lived in Washington. Another thing I remember about any road trip with my dad was his CB radio. "Hey Southbound, got a copy?" My dad would talk to all the truckers and ask if there were any "Bears" their way. It wasn't until later that I realized that he was asking if there were cops in that direction. 

Mommy's Truck: this one is harder to remember because I was so young. If you know my mom, you cannot picture her driving a truck! It was a gold truck with a canopy thing on the back. Emerald and I would sit in the tiny seats that faced each other behind the driver and passenger seats. My mom still talks about that truck. She loved it.

The Family Motor Home: There are so many memories to even write down. We drove this thing to Disney Land, Utah, but most importantly, Church Property. The church owned some land in Washington that was right by a river. We went there so many times with the ward or stake, and also by ourselves. That motor home had could sleep six people, just the right number for our family. 

The Big G: We called our GMC suburban the Big G. It was the motor home on a smaller scale. We drove Simon and Asialene to Utah when they started college and we drove tons of missionaries to and from transfers in Washington. Simon drove this beautiful vehicle in Pennsylvania with his family up until a couple years ago. 

My Green Jetta: I loved this one. I had always wanted a green jetta and when I had just received my permit, my parents surprised me with one. I remember the night my dad drove home from California. He used to drive back from the auctions for different dealers. He'd do it to save money on a plane ticket and they'd pay him for driving it. He also loves to drive long distance. It's relaxing for him. Anyway, when he came home Emerald told me to go in the garage to see him for something. I still have a perfect image in my head of my dad wiping off the car as I walked in to make sure it was perfect when I saw it. I was so excited! It took a little bit to learn stick shift, but when I got it down I very willingly taught friends (and boys!) in high school. That little car is filled with memories. We drove around on weekends going from house to house, driving by KFC and Papa Johns to get free food, and of course "drive by's" by the houses of whichever boys we liked at the time. We were so dumb! I drove it to my own piano lessons, and later to houses of children that I taught piano to. I even took Dr. Cooper home several times after long evenings at the office, and I drove it around Provo my freshman year of college. Toward the end, the starter broke. My dad fixed it, but I had to start it by pushing a button instead of turning the key. I used to be so embarrassed by this, but now that I think back it's pretty cool that my car started with a button!

My Highlander: this is the car that I had when David and I first met. It's still waiting for us at home and hopefully I will be able to get used to the idea of the steering wheel on the other side, and also driving on the right side instead of the left!

Friends' Cars: Jessica's mom's Astro van, her Dodge Colt, Celeste's red jeep, Karla's LIncoln, Haylie's truck- all of these cars bring back fond memories of high school. Kelly's Tahoe and Natalie's Tahoe were great in Provo when it snowed and David took me on our first date in his blue truck. He misses that beautiful piece of work. It broke down one day when he was meeting my family and I at Snow Bird. 

Speaking of David's truck, he has a great story about his first car. I'll have him tell it...

I have some great memories from some of the cars that I have driven over the last ten years, and some not so great memories. I’ll start with the first car that I drove in high school.

I lucked out when I got my license. My mom had just bought a new car and she still had about six months left on her lease on a Ford Explorer. The Explorer was only a year old and was loaded. I don’t think I appreciated that car until it was gone. I would still like to drive that Explorere even ten years later. So, once the lease was up on the car we had to turn it back into the dealer and I was without a car for a few weeks. I had been saving my money by bagging groceries, knowing that we were going to turn in the Explorer and I would need to buy a car. Well, one night my mom called me from her cell phone and told me to wait in the garage, because she had a surprise for me. I knew she was up to something, but had no idea what was in store. After a few minutes the garage opened and my mouth dropped. My parents bought me a brand new Jeep Wrangler. It was a dream come true. I spent the next few hours driving around to all of my friends’ houses showing off my new Jeep. Throughout my short life, I don’t think I had ever been as happy as I was then. The next morning I woke up and drove to seminary with a permanent smile, only to come home to some bad news. My mom called me upstairs and said something like this, “So, your dad and I have been talking and we don’t think we are going to keep the jeep. You will be going on a mission soon, and we don’t want to buy this car and then sell it when you leave.” I was devastated! It was like my dreams had been snatched from my soft teenage heart. It was like waking up Christmas morning and finding out that your presents had been stolen. It was awful. My parents, bless their hearts, tried to smooth things over by telling me that we would buy the car that I was looking at, which was an old Toyota Land Cruiser. The thought of that did make me feel a little bit better, but that smaller, more realistic dream was snatched from me as well. The next day after my parents returned the Jeep, (I still wonder what they dealer thought when they brought it back) my grandpa called and said that he had given some guy money in exchange for work and his ’88 Camaro. My grandpa was always helping people out like that. Well, to make this long story a little bit shorter, I ended up with the Camaro. I don’t know if there is a car that was more closely associated with mullets, camo shirts, and domestic violence than a 1988 Camaro. This thing was as white trash as it gets. We played it up though. I acquired a few classic southern rock tapes, and pumped those in the car whenever the windows were down. I don’t want to sound ungrateful, because I am grateful that my parents bought me a car, but going from a brand new Jeep to a used up Camaro was a hard thing to go through as a teenager. All of my friends weondered what happened after I showed them the Jeep and then rolled up to school in a Camaro. All I could do was laugh. I was pulled over in that car driving at night about a dozen times. When cops see a car like that they immediately pull you over, it doesn’t matter if you weren’t doing anything wrong. Most of the time they would take one look at me and realize that I didn’t fit the description of someone that would be driving that car. They would let me go without a word. One time I was pulled over by about ten Mexicans in an old truck. I had a huge dent in my door from someone who backed into me at a church dance. They told me that they could fix my car for eighty dollars and it would look brand new. For some reason I believed them and let them fix it, but not until I negotiated a better price. I was working while they fixed the door, so I didn’t know what they were up to until they came to tell me it was done. I walked over to my car to find out that they had just put bondo over the dent and then sprayed it with primer. I was pissed! My door looked worse than it did with the dent. I paid them twenty bucks, they treatened to take my life, and I never heard from them again. I have tons of other great memories from that car, but this post is already way too long. When I left for my mission I put the car up for sale. A young black kid ended up buying it for five hundred dollars and thought that he got the deal of a lifetime. Apparently his feelings about the car changed, because it was found abandoned six months later. The DMV notified my parents, since the title was never changed, and told them they could have it back for two hundred dollars. Regrettably, they passed up the deal.

I wanted to write about my other cars, because they have progressively become worse and worse if you can imagine that, but Shalynna doesn’t want me to write anymore. She is telling me to go make my own blog if I want to write more. That is funny because my name is on this blog too, isn’t it?

I couldn’t have told the story about the Jeep better than David. I think that is the funniest thing in the world. Anyway, this is another very long post, but but I’d lik to leave you all with a short documentary that my brother made. His first car was a Honda civic and he drove it until the day it did not pass inspections anymore. He’s a pretty goofy guy, so I’m sure you’ll get a laugh by watching this.