We called it the Bulldozer. It was a 1974 red Plymouth Duster, a hard-topped, two-door coupe with a black stripe running down the side. A 2000-pound gas-slurping, tar-squashing, gravel-flinging workhouse for 15 straight years. As long as no one stole the battery.
While my dad was attending Georgetown Law, he drove the Bulldozer to campus for night classes and always parked the car along the street. One night after class, my dad walked back to the car to find the hood popped open and the battery gone. He thought nothing of it and got a new battery. Until the battery was jacked another time. And then another time. My dad was pissed. It was probably the same bastards every time, he thought. So he wrapped a thick chain around the battery, locked it to the inside of the hood and had no more problems.
But when the car wasn’t having battery problems, it had a gas problem. The car devoured gas as it chugged along the roads at about 10 mpg. It ate even more when the air conditioning was on. Not only that, the car sounded like it had a gas problem. Whenever the car plodded down the road, the muffler belched out a long, slow, stuttering fart. Gas was a lot cheaper in the ‘80s, but after a while it just wasn’t worth the money.
My parents gave away the Bulldozer and started driving a 1983 blue Chevy Celebrity, another four-door sedan. But the Celeb had problems too. The roof jiggled whenever the car came to an abrupt stop and occasionally almost snapped apart and fell off. So my brother and I began to use it as an outdoor couch. It always slouched inward like a hammock and then popped back into place as soon as we flopped off.
Once the Celeb started to wear down, we took it to our mechanic Wayne, a fella’ with greased black hair and southern accent. He owned a large cement garage near the local dump and was always biting down on a cigarette. Once Wayne had finished looking at the car, he called up my dad to let him know it was ready. Everything checked out fine, he said, but he wondered if my dad was planning to drive it anytime soon.
“Well yeah, of course. Why’s that?” my dad asked.
Wayne explained that they had found a gas leak under the car and had tried everything to fix it, everything, but there was nothing they could do. He continued that we could still drive the car, but that it could explode at the flick of a cigarette.
“Really? Hmm…” With that, my parents gave away the Celeb.
Next came a blue 1994 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cierra, which had all kinds of little problems from the start. The gas gauge swayed back and forth whenever it felt like it, the breaks wore down, the antenna snapped in half, the dashboard was loose and kept shifting up and down, ready to fly off and crash into the seat and the car had countless knicks, dents, scrapes, bumps and scratches that weren’t worth the trouble anymore. We got rid of that hunk of junk in 2003.
Now we drive a used 1996 green Toyota Camry. The radio sucks, the rear-view mirror flips up and down and the seats collect all kinds of crumbs.
And the horn. The only time I use a horn is when I get really pissed off. And I need a horn that makes a good pissed-off sound. But the horn on the Toyota is pathetic. Whenever you push on it, it lets out a tooting noise that sounds like the roadrunner from Looney Tunes. I guess I just have to deal with it for now. Like we had to deal with the vanishing batteries of the bulldozer. And the floppy roof of the Celeb. And the bouncing dashboard on the Cierra. At least the muffler hasn’t started farting yet.
