Saturday, June 19, 2010
3:19 AM
Baby, You Can Drive My Car
Mid 60's Buick Electra. My dad bought one of these for our family the year they came out and although it was a huge, tank of a car, everyone who was into that sort of vehicle ooh'd and ahh'd over it for quite some time. Ours was actually a convertible, rather than a hard top and it was a deep blue-green color with black interior, rather than the white that is pictured here. Still, you can see the design of the car which was, according to my best recollection, exactly the same as this one. Our had all of the bells and whistles that the technology of the day allowed and it was quite the rolling luxury queen. Twice a year, when parade times rolled around, we always received requests from various organizations who wanted to use it to haul the homecoming courts, etc. down Choctaw avenue. It was perfect for that because it really was a long, shiny show car. My mom, who was/is less than 5ft. tall adored that car. She had to stack two pillows on the seat in order to be able to see over the steering wheel, lol, but she felt like the beautiful princess that she's always been to us when she drove down the street in that big, gas-guzzling thing so I'm glad we owned it. She deserved that and so much more. *Related notes: It had power everything. Power windows, power locks, power seats, power convertible top, etc. Inside of the glove compartment, was a little red power button that opened the trunk. It had air-conditioning, heat, stereo radio and every other "extra" that my dad could have put on a car in the 60's. It was quite a car. Once it started to age, I was embarrassed to be seen in it for the most part because it was just so HUGE, but when it was new, it was an impressive mode of transportation for the family whose house was almost always in need of paint. (Dear 4th ward neighbors, you're welcome for the comical juxtaposition) My dad had his own unique ideas regarding the organization of priorities, don't you know. lol I guess I remember that car more than any other we owned simply because we owned that one the longest. I wouldn't want to drive it now, but I do wish we had pictures just for old time's sake. I don't have any idea how much my dad paid for his prized Buick but the memories I have of care-free Sunday afternoons spent cruising down the highway in it with the wind blowing through our hair are worth far more than any inflated price he possibly could have paid.*random related memory: Bernie, Kevin, and some girls snuck our Buick out of the driveway one night and used it to run away from home. You'll have to ask Bernie what the running away thing was all about because I was much too young to understand any of it. But I wasn't too young to laugh at the stories they told the next day about how my dad beat the steering wheel and cussed all the way home, after going and finding them somewhere around Wetumka. LOLOL
Dear Bernie: If you're going to go to all of the trouble of running away in mom's car, which is eventually going to get you killed by dad, then at least make it worth it by choosing a fun destination. Wetumka is hardly worth the kind of ass whipping that a boy can get for grand theft auto. LOLOL