My Story in Lists|Cars I've Had

In our family, we received a car upon graduation of high school with acceptance to college. Mom and dad never said the college part was a requirement, but since it was a given that we were going to get our degree, I assumed that it was part of the deal.

My first car would be what Matthew would refer to as a ghetto car, only better. It was red. It was sporty. It was a stick shift. It was a Ford Capri. It looked similar to a Mustang. My friends called it a Crapi but that was all my fault. In my youth I abused my cars horribly. My Capri was no exception.

We found the car by chance. My uncle who lives up the street from us knew we were on the hunt for a car and someone on his block had a car for sale. Mom took care of the transaction as dad was still in Texas with the boys which was a pretty big deal for her. For me, the big deal was that it was a stick shift and I had never driven one before. Since it was going to be my mode of transportation, it was imperative that I learn.

Luckily for me, mom knew how to drive a stick shift. She learned shortly after she married my dad on an old VW Bug they bought. Also luckily for me, mom is a thousand times more patient than I am. I didn't do well with all the jerking during take off and the clutch on the car was pretty touchy so it wasn't an easy car to learn with. It often felt like a bucking bronco. But learn I did.

There were scary moments as I learned how to move from neutral to first and then second, like the time Eliz, my cousin Mark and his cousin went with me to Disneyland. I still wasn't consistent with the clutch and my take offs made it appear as though the car had violent seizures. Looking back, I suppose it was brave of me to drive, or stupid...whichever.

As we left Disneyland, the exit was one with the prongs sticking out of the driveway to prevent vehicles from attempting to enter. We were so scared that the traffic would stop such I would end up right in front of the prongs and as I would start off in first gear I would jerk forward and then backwards, puncturing my tires leaving us in a horrible predicament. Fortunately, that didn't happen and we lived to tell the tale.

Once I got the hang of the manual transmission, there was no stopping me. I really liked my car, but that didn't stop me from being hard on it. Still, I had some good times with that car.

There was the time that I was driving on highway 71 with my best friend Leslie. It was a foggy night and like always I was going faster than I should have when suddenly this white looking apparition appeared to come up from the road. I slammed on the brakes and whatever it was seemed to come up through the bottom of my car in a white haze.

Leslie and I were screaming as my brain tried to make some sense out of what was happening because as much as I thought a ghost was coming up from the floor boards, I knew it couldn't be true. I suddenly realized that the fire extinguisher must have discharged and that's what was causing the white haze to travel about the vehicle. Our screams turned into hysterical laughter and for months the powdery substance stuck to everything and everyone who sat in the passenger seat.

Worse than that was the fact that I rarely never put engine oil in my car. My negligence cost me dearly. One day as Leslie and I were driving from school to downtown Los Angeles, a loud clunking sound begun to come from the engine. At first I thought someone had put a bag of rocks or boulders in the hood of my car. My first inclination was to turn the radio up and hope for the best, but the sound persisted and since we happened to be coming up to the off-ramp to my house, we agreed it would be best to get off the freeway. It was a good thing because as we coasted through the intersection my car just died.

We got out to push the car through the light and some nice guy came and helped. Funny enough as we were pushing the car through the intersection, we saw a friend of ours whiz by. He drove by without even slowing down. When we asked him about it later, he laughed and told us that it looked like we had things under control.

For the life of me, I can't remember how I got the car home, but somehow I did. A few days later my grandfather and Uncle Joe stopped by the house to take a look at the car. My uncle gently asked me when it was that I last checked the oil. Checked the oil??? But the oil light hadn't come on. Turns out there was not a drop of engine oil in my car. They filled it up, told me that they wouldn't tell my dad (who was in Indonesia at the time) and it started up, but it wasn't the same after that. I was able to drive it for over another year until it broke down for good. This time as I drove up the 101 with another friend on our way to SLO (San Luis Obispo). Not a fun time at all.