Beech Tree News Network

Today, I saw a little girl of eleven or maybe twelve get into a beat up old van and struggle to shut the door.  I remember being her when I was eleven or maybe twelve, but it wasn’t a beat up old van door I struggled with, it was an ancient car door. 
I don’t know how my dad came to own the car.  It was probably part of a lumber from his sawmill trade out.  The car looked like a model you’d see in a gangster movie, complete with suicide doors—the doors that open in opposite directions, front door to the right/passenger door to the left.  It was black with red plush upholstery.  I know very little about vintage cars, but from pictures on the internet, our car looked like a cross between the 1941 Chrysler Town and Country and the 1947 Nash Ambassador.  Looking back, I’m pretty sure people ducked for cover when they saw the doors swing open and all of us kids piling out.  They were probably expecting Tommy guns to start firing rounds.
I was so embarrassed to be seen in that car, especially if we over-slept and had to be dropped off at school in it.  We kept it for a few years, and I remember just dreading to go to the local grocery store on Saturdays, because one of the carry-out guys was a boy I had a crush on.  The other thing I remember about riding in that car was the funky smell.  It was reminiscent of dusty drapes in a room that has been closed off for years.  I guess I should have been thankful that it didn’t smell like a dead body.
It seems like for most of the years we lived on Ashes Creek, we were always going from one embarrassing vehicle to another.  My first year of high school, my dad got a wild hair and decided he could fit the entire family into a pickup—not a king cab model, mind you, just a standard white Ford pickup.  Most of the time, we kids rode in the bed of the truck, but if it rained, we all piled—and I do mean piled—into the cab.  I remember my Algebra teacher, a man I adored, teasing me about riding around in the bed of a pickup.  He didn’t mean anything by it, but I was so embarrassed. 
By the time I was a sophomore, I had resigned myself to the fact that I would spend the entirety of my adolescence in a succession of ever more embarrassing vehicles.  That’s when Dad surprised us all by rolling up our driveway in a brand new, bright yellow Plymouth Road Runner.  It was absolutely gorgeous!  Dad told us he had wanted a sports car since he was a little boy, and he decided to get one before he was too old to enjoy driving it.  I had no idea where he had come up with the money to buy a new sports car, and frankly, I didn’t care. 
I recently wrote about my 2002 Chevy Impala with all of its crazy quirks.   I was finally able to replace it with a 2013 Chevy Captiva.  I feel like I’m riding in the lap of luxury.  But as good as that feels, nothing will ever measure up to the way it felt to watch all of my classmates run to the windows to see who was being dropped off in the yellow Road Runner.  I got to be the cool kid in the cool ride for the next couple of years.
The crazy thing is in today’s market, the gangster car would fetch more than the Road Runner, and it would probably even be viewed as a cooler car to be seen in.  I’m still glad my dad got rid of it when he did or, more than likely, I’d still be driving it.