THIS IS US
Did You Love Your First Car as Much as I Did?
An ode to my very first bucket of bolts
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.
