The Car WIfe

I never cared about cars. When I was growing up, cars were sex symbols – the bigger the fins, the bigger, well you know. I had no use for that bourgeois silliness.

In suburbia, where I spent my formative years, the newer, shinier, longer, more expensive your car, the more you were admired by the neighbors. At least, that’s what I imagined with my adolescent hyper-awareness of image.

My family was not as well heeled as many of the other residents of Victory Blvd.; and, my father didn’t drive. We had one car – an unusual situation in the tony suburb we were living. That car, to my deep embarrassment, was a cheaper model than most. No Cadillacs or Buicks for us. My mother drove a white Nash Rambler, and later a bottom of the line maroon Chevy. Dr. Peckins, next door got a spanking new T-bird each year, and his self-effacing wife, Estelle, drove a stylish, two-tone, fin and leather enhanced Oldsmobile. Even Bonnie Weinstein’s trashy parents had a Cadillac. My disdain for middle class values battled with my need to fit in with the popular kids.

For the most part, I ignored cars. Oh, I could recognize the silhouettes; my brother and his friends visited dealerships on days off from school and brought home glossy four-colored brochures that lay around the house. I knew the difference between a 1960’s Corvair and a Corvette as well as any teenager. However, driving my own car was still a distant dream, and I was more interested in my books and collecting cat postcards than fantasizing about “wheels”.

I took Driver’s Ed., like all the kids in my High School, from Eddie Accocella, a washed up athlete who had tricked out his car with two sets of brakes. He would take us out on the highway and stomp on his set of brakes, screaming at us when our skills wavered. I failed the driver’s exam twice,

I didn’t get back behind the wheel until late in college, when I decided a commitment to public transportation. though politically correct, left something to be desired. I rescheduled and passed the road test. When I graduated, my mother surprised me with a check for half the cost of a new forest green Volvo – the first of their automatic transmissions. I was intoxicated with the freedom it gave me, and the image I presented. But, the high I got was short-lived.

My Volvo was a lemon – a new term in my lexicon. Everything that could, did go wrong. From that point in my life, I gave up on cars as status symbols or even fun toys. When I met and married my first husband, Elliot, he sold the Volvo out from under me and replaced it with a tiny, light blue VW. “Oh, you’ll be fine learning to shift’’ he assured me one Saturday after the car appeared in our driveway. On the following Monday, I drove myself from Brighton to Belmont, over the Pleasant Street hill, in the snow. Shaken, I arrived in my classroom, silently swearing at Elliot, as I smiled at my fifth graders.

I triumphantly conquered shifting, drove that little bug for years and learned to love it. After I divorced, I bought my real “first” car, a hot little chocolate brown VW Rabbit. When I met my present husband, Ernie, he was duly impressed. “Hmmm - a girl who has a cool car and can drive a shift.”

Ernie and I got married. He drove a sexy little black Scirroco and had a glamorous job as a consultant – very trendy in 1985. He traveled back and forth to Paris several times a year and I planned to go along. How was I to know that his job was running out of gas and he was searching for another career?

Through a series of complicated events, Ernie found that he had a particular proclivity for tinkering with cars and that he was a crackerjack salesman. Slowly, he grew a business of buying and selling used cars and enjoying the lifestyle that developed – working at home and being around his family.

As a result of his business, I was given whatever car he had around. I drove a VW Quantum, a couple of Tauruses, and Audi and then mostly Subarus as that became his specialty. “Just give me one that passes inspection. The rest – color, style, size, is all unimportant.” I intoned several times a year.

And Ernie was a good provider – I’ve always had nice car, perhaps for not as long as I’d like, if there was a customer in the wings, but he invariably had a backup for me. After all, I am married to the Subaru Guru – a name given to him by a customer years ago that stuck.

I’m still basically disinterested in cars, but they are part of my life. Automobiles have paid for our home, our daughters’ educations and all the material things I have ever wanted. Sex symbols, though, they are not. At this point, as long as it starts when the key is turned and I can crank up the heat in New England winters, I’m a happy driver.