Vroom, Vroom!

By J. Leslie Riseden

Special contributor to

The Steel Country Bee

Let’s get one thing out right up front. I am no classic car expert. What I say about cars in the following paragraphs is as I remember them, and is certainly subject to the fog in my brain that rolls in with 50- year-old memories. So, if you are a classic car nut, and I misstate some technical data, please forgive me.

I had two big brothers, and in those days, it seemed most young men worked on their cars themselves. I have fond memories of seeing them stretched out across the engines under the hood of their cars ... fixing and changing, replacing and repairing, listening and grinning. Sometimes there would be three or four of them on a Saturday morning, working together on one car or another. Teenaged boys with black grease smeared across their white tshirts and sweat dripping from their brows. My dad and brothers knew just about all there was to know about cars. Whenever something went wrong, it seems they always knew what it was, and almost always could fix it themselves. Absolutely none of that rubbed off on me.

Anyway, we all remember our first time, right? I’m talking about the first time you sat behind the wheel of your very own car. I was 19, and my father co-signed a bank loan for me to purchase a five-year-old 1964 Rambler Classic sedan. The purchase price was about $400, and it took me a year to pay off the loan, from the proceeds of my $1.70/hour job as a grocery store cashier.

My very own car. A four-door ton of turquoise steel and vinyl. This was the car in which I learned to drive a standard transmission, on the column. (I still remember: “First down, second up, third down.”) It had a great radio (AM only, of course) and a dome light that would have adequately served in an operating room. It seemed big and boxy; I’m sure I could have set up a card table in the back seat. I had to check the oil at every fill-up, and make sure there was water in the radiator, and air in the tires. It was anything but cool, but it was mine, it took me everywhere I wanted to go, and I loved it.

Until I was 21, when I got a grown-up job in a law firm, and it was time to upgrade my transportation. I fell in love with a used 1969 Camaro SS convertible. It was frost-green, with racing stripes and four-on-the-floor. (How I wish could have hung on to that classic and locked it away in a garage for 40 years.) The convertible top was manual, and -- New Orleans weather being what it is -- I got caught in more than a few sudden showers in which I had to pull over to the shoulder and get drenched putting the top up. As best as I remember, that top always leaked a little, and I had to replace the plastic rear window a few times. It had only an AM radio, and it had no air conditioner and -- New Orleans weather being what it is -- what was I thinking?

There have been other cars over the years, of course, but these are the two cars that I remember as my “firsts.” They played a role in the development of my sense of independence, my sense of adventure, even my sense of identity. I gained valuable insights about the people in this world ... how to get along with them, and how to get along without them. The years I spent driving these cars were the years I got real life lessons about disappointment and joy; about courtesy, responsibility, choices and consequences. And, all without a seatbelt. Who knew?