So I go to Jennifer’s site and she has posted this from Jay G, so now I have to follow the meme… it’s a rule, dang it!
So here’s the meme. Long answers or short.
1. What was your first car? Model, year, color, condition?
2. What adventures did you have in it, good or bad?
3. What happened to it, what’s the end of the story?
My very first car, like all good first cars, was a hand-me-down. I had just turned 17 and was ready to get my license my grandparents gave us their old 1972 Duster with a (to me) MONSTER 340 v-8 engine.. It was gold with a green interior and the on the column automatic transmission. We actually had to fly out to Dallas and pick it up so dad and I went out there and drove it back to New Mexico. For me it was some practice time with my learners permit, for dad it was 8 hours of pure terror as his youngest son tried to figure out what the hell he was supposed to do. Finally, in frustration and no small bit of anger towards me, he took over driving and got us home.
Once there, the car was essentially mine and I spent the summer under the hood and realized that my grandparents did not know what the meaning of “Scheduled maintenance” was. I ended up replacing all the belts and hoses, the distributor cap (which had a crack) and the rotor which was worn out, and the spark plug and battery cables. Along with that I learned about greasing and replacing the speedometer cable and all the gaskets that had rotted away because an oil change had never been done as far as I could tell. I also had to have a second fuel pump put on it because the damn thing liked to vapor lock every once in a while. Once all that was done it would move like a bat out of hell, but was the most ass happy car I have ever driven. You could just think about stepping on the gas and the back end would start skittering around on you. I ended up loading the trunk down with concrete bags to hold it to the road.
I always kept a 4’ wrecking bar in the trunk, not because I needed it for construction, but because some of the nastier gang bangers in school (remember, this was back in 1984) liked to bring knives to school and cause problems out in the parking lot. The wrecker gave me a much longer reach and wasn’t illegal to have. I wasn’t a dummy 
My car became the go to for me and my friends because the back seat could hold four people and the front bench easily held three. One night though, as we were coming back from movies and video games, I got pulled over. I wasn’t speeding and I knew all the lights worked because I had just done the annual walk around that morning so I was honestly confused about why I was being pulled over.
As we sat there with the engine idling and red lights in the rear view mirror, the officer walked up shining his flashlight over all of us and finally resting on me and then my license.
“So.” He says to me, “What time do you think it is?”
“Uh,” I actually didn’t know what time it was so I looked at my watch.”10:30?”
“Right. What time were you supposed to be home?”
Shit.
I was dead. My dad new every cop in the city and since I was supposed to be home by 10:00 he must have made a phone call. It was almost 11:30 by the time I had dropped my friends off and made it home. Dad didn’t say anything, he just held out his hand and I passed over my keys. The next morning I was out doing manual labor in the yard, that lasted for the next month, after that, I got my car back.
Sadly, when I joined the Navy my parents sold my car. They reasoned that I wasn’t going to need it since I would be overseas. I still haven’t forgiven them for that, but I plan on getting another one someday.
