The first car...

One of my friends has a son who just turned 16.
His dad is looking for a car for him.
He called his dad to have him look at a car he found on eBay that he liked.
His dad has bought several vehicles off of eBay and has had good luck, so he checked the car out.
It was a Mustang, and it was nice. The bidding ended in seven minutes and the car was in Florida.
He looked it over and bid the car up to $8,000 before he let someone else get it.
He told the rest of us, "Well, at least I can tell him I tried."

I didn't really think much about it except that I probably wouldn't have the first car my kids get be a sports car. Something along the lines of a 1997 Buick LeSabre with lots of miles and a bit of an exhaust rattle, I could see...but not something that screams "LOOK AT ME! I JUST GOT MY DRIVING LICENSE AND CAN'T WAIT TO GET A TICKET!"

But then I overheard another friend comment about the $8,000 price tag.
I had to chuckle, as I still haven't owned a car worth that much.

It got me to thinking about my past vehicles. They are as follows...


Most recently is the 1979 Lincoln Continental Town Car. I paid $800 for it. It sucks down the gas so I don't use it too often. I'd like to make it show worthy, but as it's 20 feet long it will also require it's own building upon completion of restoration.


I currently also have the 1997 Buick. It has a bit of an exhaust rattle and high miles. It has finally started to rust under the driver's side doors and could use some work underneath it. I'm afraid it won't last long enough for my kids to take their drivers tests in. I'm in the process of finding a suitable replacement as it's been a fantastic vehicle.


Before that I had a 1989 Buick LeSabre that had over 246,000 miles on it before I let someone else drive it who didn't watch the intersection and was ran into by Debra K. B*rkl*y of Stillwater, MN - who apparently stopped for the stop sign but was able to take off from it so fast that she knocked a good chunk off the front of my vehicle and continued on to flatten a stop sign on the opposite side of the road, popping her own back tire on the stop sign. (Not that I remember the details.)

I really liked that car.


Before that, I had my college car. It was a 1980-82 Buick Skylark. We bought it for $300 when I was a senior in high school and I paid for half. I actually think of this as my first car, and it was a good little car. Box shaped and brown, but it had power windows and cruise control and a CB.
Then one day as I was heading down the road. the dashlights all went out and the brake lights came on. Electrical is expensive, and I was too young to fix it. Bummer.


But then there's the actual first car. We (my twin, my friends, myself...people in general) referred to it as "The Turd." It was a 1980 or 1981 Pontiac J2000 (which looked a lot like a Pontiac 2000, 6000, or Sunbird if you are familiar with any of those.)

It was a car you can't forget.
Let me tell you about the The Turd.
And Val, if I've missed anything, feel free to add it in the comments section!



The Turd was purchased by the father-figure for use in his insurance practice. It was a much smaller vehicle than the Buick that the mom-thing was driving and would have much better gas mileage. At this time, I believe the old man was still coaxing life from the 1961 T-Bird and was finally able to put the rusty beast to pasture. (I mean this literally, as the old man was never one to take care of his vehicles the way the rest of the family does.)


So one overcast day, The Turd shows up in the yard. Even in the gloom, which usually makes cars look like they're in better condition than they really are, I could see that the hood had a faded paint job.


And then the old man applied the business bumper sticker. And I vowed at that point that no car I ever owned would ever have one. If I ever get a used car that has a bumper sticker, it will be removed by the current owner before money changes hands. It's like the wrong tattoo being applied badly on a pretty girl, as far as I'm concerned.


It was still a year or so off before Val and I would have our driver's licenses. By the time we had our turns with The Turd, it had both taillights broken out - one by each older brother. (I think all 4 male family members were pulled over for this. They never did get fixed.)

Also, both front windows were off their tracks so you manually raised and lowered them by placing your hands on the them and sliding them to the desired position, being careful not to go all the way down as the all-the-way-down position required getting two pliers out and sticking them down the door to grab the top of the window to pull it back up far enough to grab by hand again. (This started out as a two person job, but I eventually got really good at it!)

The car had two radios. The AM radio in the dash and the aftermarket FM installed below the dash. Neither worked. The horn didn't work either. And the AC only worked in the winter while the heater only worked in the summer.

There were holes in the floor board on the drivers side. You had to keep that in mind when approaching water puddles on a rainy day.


The thing had no balls to speak of. You could put the pedal to the floor and 5 to 7 seconds later it would figure out that you really expected it to actually start moving. On our way to school we always tried to get it up to 55 by the time we reached the first bridge after the first stop sign. On very few occasions did this happen, and it has made every car since then feel like pure power.


There was that one time when we just leaving town and the back window fell out...

Then there was the time when we crossing the road with balloons tied to the car and the car died. (Perpendicular to an oncoming funeral procession.) The car dying was nothing unexpected, as all of our friends knew the car and we knew the routine well. Val would switch from Shotgun to driver while whoever was in the back and I would push.


For a while, we ran it with a bad alternator. We charged it overnight to get us to school and then get a jump start from a friend to get it back home. This worked best during the day as it was hard to see with no headlights on at night.


The transmission went out toward the end of the car's time with us. Dad had it fixed enough to make it move in reverse through second, but "drive" was never to be seen again from The Turd. Because of this, we were not supposed to drive it faster than 45 mph.
However, there were days when we were running late, and we'd have mom write up an excuse slip...and then we'd haul @$$ to the best of The Turd's ability...and if we made it to school on time, we'd stash the undated excuse slip inside the non-working horn compartment and save it for another day.


That is, if the car made it to town at all. Some days the first neighbor that happened along would be the one to help us complete our journey to our education destination.

There was one time when mom got after me for a large dent in the trunk. I didn't know what had happened which seemed to upset her even more. By this time, the metal under the drivers side doors had given way to rust and the trim had fallen off. I didn't see how the dent was as big of a deal as she seemed to think, but I popped the trunk and pushed it back out. (Apparently someone had leaned on it. It had no inner support to brace the outer metal.)

I don't think we ever drove it with the key in it. You had to push a switch for the key to turn completely to the "off" position. We often wondered if other people used it during the day as the gas gauge sometimes seemed lower after school than it did when we parked it.
Well, that was on those times when the wire by the gas tank was actually connected so that the gas gauge could read the fuel level. (I used this knowledge back in high school to help a friend get the gas gauge to work on his Buick Century. He was impressed.)

The back seat wasn't hooked up right and could be flipped forward.
My Bad on that one. I locked the keys in the trunk and dad got them out through the back seat. I'm not sure why we never put it back on. We probably figured it would happen again.


The Turd was also put to pasture before the end of high-school. I don't remember which went first, the fuel pump or the water pump - but they went about a month apart and it was far past time to put any more money into fixing it.

While in college, I only saw 2 Pontiac J2000 vehicles. One was a near perfect version of the one I had been driving that belonged to a girl in my dorm. She lived in S. Dak and one time, on her way home, she ignored the light telling her it was overheating and wrecked the engine.
The other one belonged to someone I didn't know. She'd parked it and went in to the college and the engine caught fire and several fire trucks, 2 ambulances, and police cars were surrounding it when she came back out. Glad we didn't have that one!

I haven't seen one of these cars since then. I even checked eBay a couple of times. I don't know that I'd buy one if I ever came across one in great shape, but they sure could make a tight corner at city speed! :)




Note: All of the vehicles have been removed from the pasture since then and mom has the place in good order, so as not to give you the wrong mental image. I also feel the need to mention that the state of this car caused numerous arguments between my parents. So mom, this if for you. Please read it again. Then ask ask yourself if you really feel I don't remember things as they were. And if you still feel the need to call me at work after I've asked you not to...repeatedly...
to go off about whatever stupid thing dad has done that you're upset about... don't. I'm not taking sides. If you have a legitimate concern about something that involves my kids, you'd best come right out and say it without it being a lead-up or a tie-in to something other than about the kids. You and dad are no longer. Both of you annoy me. I love you both. Let that be enough.