My First New Car

My first car was a 1958 MGA coupe, very cool.  The year was 1963 so the car was a used car that was really my dad’s car but, he was at sea with the Navy most of the time so I just took over the car.  I’m not going to talk about that car here or the fact that I sold it for $300 and they are worth a junk load of money today.  No, I want to talk about the first “new” car.  The first time I walked into a dealers show room and said I want that one.  What a great feeling that was.  The year was 1972.  I had dropped out of College and was working in a school bus garage during the day and playing guitar in the bars at night.  I was making enough money to buy a new car.  It wouldn’t be the Lotus Super 7 that I wanted but, it would be new and that was a big deal to me.  The car I settled on was a Honda AZ 600.  I knew nothing about the car other than it was $1,800 and that’s what I had.  I waltzed into Anderson Honda and said I’ll take one in Forest Green.  What a feeling of power and command to just order these people to hand over the keys to the car I desired.  But first, they wanted to feel the same way, so I had to hand over the money.  Everybody was happy.  The air was filled with new car smell!  I was in love.  I had a new car and I was on top of the world.  I had spent every dime I had.  I didn’t have enough to buy insurance but, I would next Friday when I got paid again.  Between now and then I would have to eat new car smell.  Four days later my birthday arrived and friends were over at my place looking to have a good time as usual and I quickly ran out of wine so off I went in my new car.  I took my buddy Dave Kay with me so I could show off my new ride.  Before I tell you about the ride I want to take a minute to talk about physics and geometry.  The Honda AZ 600 is fifty inches tall and fifty inches wide.  My buddy Dave is 6  something tall and weighs in around 250.  Did I mention that I was taking my girlfriends dog, Duke the full size Collie,  in the back seat?  When Dave got in the car it wasn’t like he got in but more like he put it on,  Like a dancer pulling on their tights.  I think the Honda folks used a Collie to determine the space for the back seat or at least that’s how it looked when the dog was wedged in there.  When I got in it was like we were all spring loaded.  If someone opened a door or rolled down a window we were gunna blow.  I know we couldn’t all breath in at once, we had to do it in rotation.  Enough of the physics and geometry.  We made it to the wine shop that also sold gas, beef jerky and chips and picked out a bottle of their finest Spinyada.  Actually we bought two gallon bottles and loaded back in the new car to head back to the party.  I didn’t think there would be room for the wine but there was.  There I was zipping along at 70 mph in the left hand lane impressing my friend Dave when I see head lights coming up fast behind me.  The car pulled out from behind and then back into my lane, cutting me off and leaving me nowhere to go but into the center strip of grass.  I kept my foot off the brakes and started to ease the car back on to the pavement.  Leaving the pavement onto the grass was a smooth transition but, at 70 mph we cover a bunch of ground in the ten to 20 seconds I spent in the grass, and it wasn’t a smooth transition were I tried to get back on the road.  There was about a 5 inch step from the grass back to the road surface and the tiny tires just couldn’t handle the bump.  We got airborne and that in itself wasn’t real bad, it was the 70 mph going sideways part that I knew was trouble.  Everything really does go into slow motion.  Scientist have shown that our brains process information faster at times like this so it seems to us that the world has slowed down.  When we landed sideways we, of course, began to skid.  Since we were in slow motion, I had time to turn to Dave and tell him, “Hang on we’re gunna roll”, and right on cue, we did.  The car rolled on to my side and, in slow motion, I began to do repair estimates in my head.  “Replace drivers side mirror, replace rear quarter panel and door skin, paint whole car……..”, then we rolled on to the roof, “Bump and paint the roof, replace radio antenna…..”.  At this point things kind of went off the rails in a big way and I just concentrated on keeping my hands on the wheel, feet on the floor and staying as limp as I could.  We rolled five times and finally went end over end once and came to a stop on the other side of the highway.  As my world began to stop spinning I was spitting the glass out of my mouth and trying to open my door which was jammed.  I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing out the drivers side window as I really began to put my shoulder into getting it open.  Finally I figured out that what I was seeing out my window was grass, the car was on its side and the chances of me getting the door open were slim.  I turned to check on Dave and he was gone, just a seat that was flattened like someone had taken a nap there.  I looked out the back window and there sat Dave.  Both he and Duke had been catapulted out through the tiny back window when we did the end over end.  Remember I described us as spring loaded.  The two of them went out the back window like  pumpkins from a pumpkin chunkin cannon.  “Dave, you OK?”, I said.  “Hell yes”, he said, “That was the best fucking accident I ever had!”  This was something coming from him, he’d been a chopper pilot in Vietnam and had been through some good ones.  His nose was broken in three places and starting to bleed but he didn’t care.  He had not been wearing his seat belt and while I was doing repair estimates he was visiting every nook and corner of the cars interior.  He had done a high speed facial inspection of every dash knob, door handle and emergency brake handle in the car.  I suppose he had thought that he didn’t need a seat belt in a car that fit so tight anyway.  He was thinking along the lines of the airbag was always deployed.  My only injury was a cut on my knee where one of the wine bottles had broken.  In retrospect we should have belted them in.  Both of us were soaking in two gallons of wine.  Duke the Collie was nowhere to be seen.  I was scared to find what was under the car.  As Dave was getting to his feet the Oakland County Sheriffs came buzzing in like wasps.  Turns out they were in a high speed pursuit with the guy that ran me off the road.  One of them ran over to Dave and took him by the shoulders and asked, “Are you all right?”.  To that Dave came back with one of the all time great answers, “Hell yes, we’re stunt drivers and we have to keep doing this till we get it right” .  This coming from a guy with blood and wine dripping from the tip of his nose,  I just put out my arms to be handcuffed.  The cops didn’t go there,  never even asked if we had been drinking, the fact is I hadn’t had the first drink that night.  I sat on the tan front seat of his car, while he took the accident report,  I was making a butt shaped wine stain and he never asked if I had been drinking.  The cops left, Dave and I pushed the car back onto it’s tires, started it up and drove back to the party.  That was the last time I drove the car.  The engine was cracked and of course the body was trashed.  The car was totaled and I had no insurance.  My first new car lasted four days.  We found Duke the Collie on the front porch of a farm house down the road quietly waiting for us to come take him home.  He got right in the car.  Love is blind.