First car swagga
Iwas sitting in traffic the other day when the windows of my car started rattling and strange loud noises seemed to surround me. At first I thought that the New Madrid fault had let loose again, and that I had just wasted the last hour of my life running errands before the Big One hit. Then I thought that maybe I was to be the victim of an alien abduction. Don’t roll your eyes; you know it happens all the time.
So, I sat there waiting to be abducted while silently thanking my sainted mother for her good advice concerning the wearing of clean underwear in case of accidents or encounters with UFOS.
Then I noticed the car next to me. All the noises and vibrations were coming from it. The driver was sharing music with the rest of us. His radio was turned all the way up, his windows were rolled all the way down, and we were all being treated to the dulcet tones of Lil Wayne. Lil Wayne is my favorite hip hop artist, by the way, but that is kind of like saying that influenza is my favorite virus.
But what I really want to talk about is the car I was next to and not what we were all listening to. The driver was young, but he was driving a great car. It was a late-model, expensive-looking vehicle in very good condition.
Back in my day, we didn’t drive nice cars. Heck, our parents didn’t even drive very nice cars, although occasionally, someone’s grandfather would own a Caddy or a New Yorker, and he and Granny would drive it to church on Wednesday nights and Sundays, provided it wasn’t raining.
But my first car was a 10-year-old 1958 MG Roadster. It cost $100, and since I didn’t have $100, I went in with two friends, and every third week I got to drive. At this point you may be thinking that a 1958 MG Roadster was a pretty upscale ride for three young hayseeds from Valley Head, Alabama, so let me put the car into perspective for you.
It had been discovered in Jimbo Mcmahan’s barn, where it had apparently been moldering under a tarp since sometime around 1962. Miraculously, it still ran, but over the years the rats and snakes had eaten the interior, so Jimbo threw in two wooden crates for the driver and passenger to sit on, and the third man got to ride shotgun up on the back.
The MG’S starter didn’t work, so our seating arrangement worked well when it came time to fire the little roadster up. The High Man, as we called whoever was sitting up on the back, would push the car to get us rolling, and then the driver would pop the clutch while the High Man hopped up onto his perch.
We didn’t know the original color, but it was a rusty brown the day we bought it. We sanded it down with 80-grit sandpaper, and we filled all the rust holes with Quik Crete mortar mix, which was much cheaper than Bondo, and the extra weight helped the handling in tight curves. Then we carefully and lovingly brush-painted the roadster with three coats of red barn paint.
I have been a pretty good painter my entire adult life, and I owe it all to the skills I acquired while cutting in around the headlights and rusty chrome of a 1958 MG Roadster. It takes a steady hand and a keen eye for fine work like that.
The car didn’t have a radio, but those were the glory days of the 8-track tape player, and we had not one, but two of them wired to a selection of secondhand speakers scattered throughout the car. Sometimes we would play the same two tapes at once, and the echo effect was something that had to be experienced to be believed.
We drove that car for nearly six months until the bleak day that an Alabama State Trooper stopped us for no reason at all and took our car away from us. Oh, he said it was because we had no license plates, no insurance, no driver’s licenses, no seats, and no sense, but as we were walking home, we all agreed that he had probably just wanted our little car for his very own.
Maybe if we had been playing some Lil Wayne on the 8 tracks he would have left us alone.
Raymond L. Atkins lives and works in Northwest Georgia, on the south banks of
the mighty Etowah River.