Birthday Answers
May. 6th, 2021 11:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
susandennisThis is the second to last question. I asked for questions for my birthday and was showered with wonderful ones that made me think and consider and remember in rich and new ways. It's been wonderful.
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spiritgirl Asked me about my car history!
My first car was a Ford Falcon - it was three years old when I got it in 1965. But it was cool. Bucket seats when bucket seats were only in play cars. And… a radio. It was white with turquoise seats. My parents got it for ‘the kids’ but I was the only one with a license and we got it on the day I got that license. So it was mine. My job was to chauffeur my brother and sister and run errands for my Mom. I did it all gleefully because I had a car! And a license to drive! I had made it, baby!
I left that car when I went to college. I bought a new used car after college but I cannot for the life of me remember a single thing about it. I can only remember that it was totally unmemorable. I had it for about four years. I got a job as a sales rep for IBM in South Carolina. I had four counties in the ohmygodsorural part of western South Carolina. The big city then was Greenwood which today only has a population of 20,000. They had unstaffed gas stations. Just pumps out in the middle of nowhere. You put your dollar bills in and pumped your gas. You could get about 3 gallons for one dollar bill.
I wanted a new car. A fancy car. My father’s best friend was the Buick dealer. Buick had just bought a little German car company called Opal. They had this adorable little sports car called an Opal GT. It cost $4000 and my father was horrified at the price but it was my money. It was tomato red and it was fabulous.
And all over western rural South Carolina, I got pulled over by the state police at least once or twice a month for Driving While Cute.
When I left that job, I sold the car and bought a cheap used something that I drove for several more years. Then I sold it and bought a moped. This was when I was married and living in Charlotte. I rode it to work and to the grocery store and everywhere.
Then I went back to work for IBM and had to get a real car so I bought another yawner. Cheap. Don’t remember it. After a couple of years, I was getting itchy to move on and IBM wasn’t moving me as fast as I wanted. I knew I needed to be patient but it was hard. So, one night, after work, I went to the Nisson dealer in Charlotte and told the sales guy I needed something small and nice but seriously upgraded. I wanted every gadget and gizmo they offered. The color was pewter. It did have gadgets. Well as many as 1985 knew about. The goal was to get a car payment big enough that there was no way I could quit my job. It worked.
I actually had that car for the next 10 years. It was a great car. Then I bought a green Volkswagen Passat that sucked (why in godsname would you make a car with no glove compartment????). I dumped it after a year and bought a red Ford Escort. I had it until August of 2011 when I bought my adorable little green Smart car. If something were to happen to it, I’d hunt the country for one just like it and pay extra to have it brought to me.
spiritgirl Asked me about my car history!My first car was a Ford Falcon - it was three years old when I got it in 1965. But it was cool. Bucket seats when bucket seats were only in play cars. And… a radio. It was white with turquoise seats. My parents got it for ‘the kids’ but I was the only one with a license and we got it on the day I got that license. So it was mine. My job was to chauffeur my brother and sister and run errands for my Mom. I did it all gleefully because I had a car! And a license to drive! I had made it, baby!
I left that car when I went to college. I bought a new used car after college but I cannot for the life of me remember a single thing about it. I can only remember that it was totally unmemorable. I had it for about four years. I got a job as a sales rep for IBM in South Carolina. I had four counties in the ohmygodsorural part of western South Carolina. The big city then was Greenwood which today only has a population of 20,000. They had unstaffed gas stations. Just pumps out in the middle of nowhere. You put your dollar bills in and pumped your gas. You could get about 3 gallons for one dollar bill.
I wanted a new car. A fancy car. My father’s best friend was the Buick dealer. Buick had just bought a little German car company called Opal. They had this adorable little sports car called an Opal GT. It cost $4000 and my father was horrified at the price but it was my money. It was tomato red and it was fabulous.
And all over western rural South Carolina, I got pulled over by the state police at least once or twice a month for Driving While Cute.
When I left that job, I sold the car and bought a cheap used something that I drove for several more years. Then I sold it and bought a moped. This was when I was married and living in Charlotte. I rode it to work and to the grocery store and everywhere.
Then I went back to work for IBM and had to get a real car so I bought another yawner. Cheap. Don’t remember it. After a couple of years, I was getting itchy to move on and IBM wasn’t moving me as fast as I wanted. I knew I needed to be patient but it was hard. So, one night, after work, I went to the Nisson dealer in Charlotte and told the sales guy I needed something small and nice but seriously upgraded. I wanted every gadget and gizmo they offered. The color was pewter. It did have gadgets. Well as many as 1985 knew about. The goal was to get a car payment big enough that there was no way I could quit my job. It worked.
I actually had that car for the next 10 years. It was a great car. Then I bought a green Volkswagen Passat that sucked (why in godsname would you make a car with no glove compartment????). I dumped it after a year and bought a red Ford Escort. I had it until August of 2011 when I bought my adorable little green Smart car. If something were to happen to it, I’d hunt the country for one just like it and pay extra to have it brought to me.
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Date: 2021-05-06 09:50 pm (UTC)You know the place on the beach is almost my "keep my ass in the job" purchase.
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Date: 2021-05-08 04:48 am (UTC)Red cars are a magnetic for the police as it appears to always going faster than the speed limit. And often actually are going faster than the speed limit.