Friday, October 20, 2006

What's your favourite car?


I don't mean right now, but when you were a kid. The favourite car that your dad owned. The one you went on trips in?

Mine is definitely my dad's 1971 Chevy Chevelle. It was brand new off the lot (Daddy never bought used), silver with navy blue leather interior. Boy do I ever look back fondly at that car. We went on tons of car trips in it. Toronto for Jump-up, Ausable Chasm to hang at the beach and Plattsburgh New York for shopping. I spent many hours in that car trying to keep my brother Mike's drooling head off my shoulder since he fell asleep within 10 minutes of any car trip. If you know him, ask him how most of his adult car accidents happened.

When he was awake we used to play this game where we'd lightly put pencil to paper and seismically graph the road with every bump. Hey, this was 1970s Quebec and the roads were bumpy enough for this to be fun. Who needed a dvd player?

Like me, my parents weren't ones for kids music so it was Daddy's 8-track tape player all the way with Dionne Warwick or Sam Cooke playing. To this day hearing "I'll Never Fall In Love Again" or "Chain Gang" without thinking about sitting behind my mum on the right side in the car. Because that was my seat. Mike and I never swapped.

The little back window didn't go down all the way and we had no a/c so we used to swelter in that car. There was a hump in the middle on the floor between my brother and me. The front seat was one long "couch". Which was good because it meant that my dad couldn't reach when he tried to stretch behind him to smack us when we were misbehaving. He hated when we made tire skid noises when he turned corners. Among other things. A lot of other things. He reached back at us a lot.

I just loved that car. Back then it seemed like a frumpy "dad car" to me but looking back at photos it sure was a cool ride. My dad painted it gold one year because silver was "second place" and it never was the same after that. If I ever got the opportunity to buy a vintage car, that would be the one. A silver one with blue interior, of course. So what's your favourite car?

kxx

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