OP-ED: Four wheels and my first taste of adulthood
Growing up in a town of fewer than 500 people with no sidewalks, no streetlights, and only one store meant freedom arrived at age 16 with a red junior driver’s license.
We called it a pumpkin license because you had to be home by midnight or risk turning into a pumpkin, getting fined, and being grounded. It was remarkably similar to Cinderella’s arrangement with her fairy godmother, except Cinderella never had to explain herself to a state trooper.
My brother didn’t get his own car until he was student teaching at age 22. As soon as he was hired as a Spanish teacher, he bought a Volkswagen Beetle. Since I was six years younger, I inherited his student-teaching car.
That car originally belonged to my Uncle Ed, my mother’s oldest brother, an engineer on the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad. Uncle Ed occasionally kept a wad of raisins tucked in his cheek to simulate chewing tobacco. He wanted to fit in without ever becoming addicted to the real thing. Looking back, that may have been one of the more innovative wellness and prevention programs of the 1950s.
Ed kept his cars for at least 10 years. His 1952 flathead, V-8 Ford showed signs of aging when he sold it to my dad for $50 in 1962.
It had several rust spots across its two-tone blue body, and a hole was developing in the passenger-side floorboard. Most people would consider that a defect. When it’s your first car, you think of it as ventilation.
As that hole grew, I occasionally had to pull over and let some fresh air circulate through the interior. I should have kept a canary in the car, but carbon monoxide wasn’t that big a deal back then. My motto was “Try not to pass out.”
The Ford had scratchy cloth seats, windows that cranked open by hand, and a cigarette lighter and ashtray. In those days, smoking came with its own equipment.
Uncle Ed had also taught us to keep an old suitcase in the trunk filled with tools, extra clothing, a raincoat, a flashlight, railroad flares, and anything else that might prove useful if the car broke down. That suitcase was our roadside assistance plan. AAA R US.
We bought “bulk oil” from an oil drum that came from cars that had already had oil changes.
Dad knew a guy who rebuilt old car batteries. He lived near the junkyard by the drive-in theater. He could have handled radioactive materials with the gloves he wore. He’d dump in fresh acid and sell the batteries for a buck apiece. There were definitely some quality-control issues, but we managed our expectations appropriately.
Gasoline cost about 25 cents a gallon, roughly the same price as a half-gallon of Pepsi. Add potato chips and you had a date night for 75 cents.
As the car aged, I became an auto body repairman. I’d stuff steel wool into the rust holes, cover everything with Black Magic, sand it by hand, and spray-paint the area blue. The only problem was the blue paint never matched either shade of blue on the car.
As more patches appeared, my car looked less like a vehicle and more like a rolling science fair project.
I used to stay at my girlfriend’s house until 11:45 p.m. and then drive the four miles home on winding country roads at about 60 miles an hour. I broke the law, endangered myself, and risked everyone else’s safety to avoid breaking the law. It was perfect logic for a 16-year-old.
That rear-wheel-drive Ford, built like a Sherman tank, never pretended to be comfortable or stylish, but it did its job.
I learned a lot of things in that car: responsibility, independence, and self-reliance. It gave me my first taste of adulthood, and it gave me wings. Priceless.
Nick Jacobs lives in Windber.