THIS IS US
Did You Love Your First Car as Much as I Did?
An ode to my very first bucket of bolts
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In 1992, my dad went down to the garage where my grandfather was the shop manager and bought me a used vehicle that would eventually be known as “Loretta.” The photo above is not my truck, of course. Mine was black, not navy, and my tires were chunky off-roaders, not the half-bald minivan-esque shoes you see up there. But, most of it was the same, in all of its 1987 glory.
I know, I know. Your privilege alarm just went off, so let me address a few things before we get started. Though I grew up in a state that precisely no one would associate with the word “rural” (or even “green” for that matter), the town that I lived in when I was a teenager was of the one-horse, no-stop-light variety. There were so few human residents despite the booming population of pygmy goats that we did not have a school system. Therefore I had to travel 30 minutes to the closest high school. My parents both worked full-time jobs and there was no one to carpool with unless, like I said, there was a particularly intelligent piece of livestock in the neighborhood who had a penchant for trigonometry. In order to not break their own stones, my parents bought me a car that proudly parked itself on the line between harmless and hoopty.
Oh, how I loved Loretta.
Although my 16-year-old self had to get up at the crack of dawn to be able to get to school on time, I barely complained. And who would? When I drove down the long, dirt driveway at 6:45 a.m. every day, my fingers were already fumbling along the buttons of the tape deck to crank up whatever grunge band du jour was going to be my morning anthem. By the time I took the left turn onto Route 3, I was already pulling a Marlboro Light out of the pack that I stashed in the armrest compartment and unearthing one of at least seven lighters I had floating around in the car. I would hit the highway buzzing from nicotine, singing along with Eddie or Layne, and feeling free as a goddamned falcon.
And this is really as good as it gets, isn’t it? I didn’t know it then because I thought everything good in life was going to start on the other side of 18. I never would have believed that right there on a Tuesday morning in November…
