Memories of Wheel Life

I don’t know what all the celebrating is about with regard to New Year’s. It usually begins with a headache and memory lapses for some and a new tax year for others. For me it’s a subtle reminder I’m one year older and there will be thousands of new cars on the road I will not be able to identify. Cars have become like birds and evergreen trees, they all look alike to me. Used to be you could I.D. a car from a mile away and most folks were known by what car or truck they drove.

You could also come pretty close to guessing their “well-off quotient.” Gone are the days when people were identified with what they drove, like Old George Roebuck down in Statesboro, who drove a green Ford pickup truck in the winter as a basketball coach and the same green truck in the summer as a house painter for 20 years. Coach Roebuck, a community icon, always recognizable by his green Ford truck.

Then there was Lew Cordell in Milledgeville, who always drove Cadillacs, even when his “driving” days were over. He had two and when he wrecked one he’d just pull the other one out and steer it until the first one was fixed. Of course, their vehicles were paid for.

Nowadays, a lot of us drive cars we either can’t afford or have no intention of paying off. Some still borrow a ride.

Early on, I always had to share a car with my brother because neither one of us wanted to work hard enough to have one for ourselves. We shared three different cars during our growing up period; one being a ’59 Chevy Biscayne, three on the column and light enough that if the battery went dead, (which it often did) you could start it up by getting it rolling, jumping in at the right time and popping the clutch. You’d have that thing started before you could say help. I took Anita fishing in that car, somewhere down in Kathleen, got stuck in a mud hole and never saw her again. I don’t think we even took any bait now that I think about it. I loved that ’59 Chevy, no seatbelts and big ol’ seats.

When my brother and I didn’t have “our” car, we would borrow one. Jim Dooley, a roommate at Georgia Southern, had a ’56 Buick Special, big ol’ “thang” with fins, a big ol’ steering wheel, and big ol’ seats. Gas was 32 cents a gallon, and if you filled it to the quarter mark you were considered full of gas. Did I mention the seats? I borrowed that car on a spring night and picked Barbara up for a trip to “the lake” where I shut the lights out prematurely, hammered a guy wire, started a fireworks display and sent the campus of Georgia Southern into the dark ages for the remainder of the evening. Barbara soon took up with somebody who had his own car.

The following fall I borrowed my Aunt’s green ’58 Studebaker in Knoxville, Tenn., after hitching a ride with Mike Channel from Warner Robins. Carol and I were going to the Maryville College football game. My aunt failed to tell me the Studebaker’s heater only worked on odd days and that Friday happened to be the 16th of November. Carol never wrote me back after that but I believe those seats were a green plastic vinyl and colder than a well digger’s derriere in the Klondike.

So as the New Year arrives I’m thankful for my family, the fact that I can still recognize most of them by their old cars, and for these nice heated seats I found in my “new” ’06 Solara.