My love affair with driving began
early: my grandfather taught me to drive his tractor when I was eight. Now that I have my own nine year old
granddaughter, I question the wisdom of his decision, but I suppose that’s one
advantage of rural living: wide open fields make for a fairly safe learning
environment. It wasn’t a state of the
art tractor, anyway—he’d probably had it since my dad was young, and it topped
out at 15 mph.
Up in “The Country,” as our New
Orleans cousins called it, there were two brands of vehicles: Ford and
Chevy. Our cousins would come up on
weekends or special occasions driving such exotic brands as Pontiacs and
Toyotas. My cousin Rene’ had a Corvette
and cousin Nelson had a yellow Porshe that I was absolutely crazy about. I learned early on that city folks had much
cooler rides.
The first car I learned to drive
was my dad’s AMC Gremlin. Daddy lived
near LSU at the time, and we went to the stadium parking lot on a Saturday for
the lesson. It was a stick shift, and we
went round and round the parking lot as I learned the art of the manual
transmission. Back then, kids in
Louisiana could get their driver’s licenses at 15, and a week prior to my test,
he came up to The Country to teach me to parallel park. As it turned out, parallel parking wasn’t
part of the test, but Daddy was an exacting teacher—even today, I can parallel
park just like the folks from up North.
We didn’t have nearly as many
cousins on my mother’s side of the family, but our cousin Bryan had several
exotic cars of his own, including a convertible. Bryan was a true bon vivant, and lived just
outside Atlanta in a rambling, antebellum home. He was about 10 years older
than my mother, and way more easy-going. He loved a good time, and came to Louisiana
several times to sample the good times there.
Once, he had my uncle drive him over (Bryan couldn’t actually drive his
cars because he was legally blind) in the convertible. Oh, were we an excited bunch of country
mice!
I had just gotten my license a
few months prior, but Bryan fearlessly handed me the keys so that I could
chauffer him around town. My sisters and
neighbor, Lisa, piled into the back and we were off. We drove all over Mansura, being sure to wave
at everyone we saw. Bryan was a history
buff, so we had to stop at every historical marker so that he could jump out
and stand next to the signs and read what had happened on those spots. When we were going at any rate of speed, the
wind would whip our heads so strongly that we couldn’t carry a conversation until
we slowed. I think it took a full week
for me to get all the tangles and knots out of my hair.
After high school, I married an
Air Force guy stationed in Germany. The
first car we had was a BMW, the second a Mercedes. That’s not as impressive as it sounds: in
Germany, even the taxis were Mercedes.
Driving the German-engineered cars gave me a taste for performance cars,
though, and I enjoyed having cars that we couldn’t have afforded in the U.S.
My preference in cars was set by
then: I liked them small and fast. As a
newly-divorced mom back in Mansura, the first car I bought all on my very own
(with my mother co-signing and threatening me with death if I missed a payment)
was a red Mercury Capri. I named her
Baby. My family has the odd habit, which
I trace back to my maternal grandmother, of naming vehicles. Baby was followed by Jett, a black Ford
Escort with manual transmission.
We moved to Atlanta and Jett was
stolen within six months. If you’ve ever
had a car stolen, you know that it’s a pretty traumatic experience, especially
if it’s later found totally stripped.
Such a violation! After that
experience, I decided to pick the least-stolen car available to replace my fast
little ride: a maroon Toyota Corolla wagon.
I had sworn off Ford by that time, because both my prior cars had had
mysterious radiator problems. She wasn’t
too pretty to look at, but PDW (Precious Deaux Wagon) could maintain a good
speed (did I mention I like to go fast?) and was quite serviceable to shuttle
Joey and his friends around.
PDW never needed anything done to
her, other than routine maintenance. She
got me through college and law school, and had over 150,000 miles on her before
I decided to trade her in. I got a red
Honda Civic, the name of which escapes me at the moment. That’s the car I drove down to Florida when
we moved. That little car saw a lot of
miles before I finally traded her in.
At that point, I was making a
good salary. I could have gone up in
class of cars, but the frugal side of me prevailed. As I had explained to my son when he was
younger, there’s a big difference between wanting and needing, and I didn’t
need an expensive car. I found a fun
economy car, a Mazda 3. It was 2004, the
Mazda 3’s first production year. It only
had four cylinders, but had all the pick-up of six. Zoom-zoom indeed. Her name was Mikki. She was a dark blue color that people
sometimes called purple.
When it became too difficult for
Bunny to climb in and out of his truck (about two years ago), I convinced him to take Mikki and sell his
truck (Nicky Nissan) to Joey. He was
happy with this solution, as he (like everyone else who drove her) loved Mikki. Poor Mikki eventually met her demise just
before Christmas last year: Joey was driving her back to our house (he’d been
shuttling Bunny back and forth to doctors’ appointments) when some idiot made a
left turn directly into Mikki.
When Bunny got Mikki, that’s when
I got my second Mazda 3, Sylvia. When I
was trying to decide what to get, I toyed with the idea of an Audi TT—my dream
car. I’d loved the TT since I’d first
laid eyes on it. Bunny even gave me a
toy one for Christmas one year, until I got the real thing. It would be silver, just like the model he’d
given me. Once I started the actual
narrowing down process, though, I once again yielded to my frugal side. That much for a car? Holy cow!
I could buy TWO Mazda 3s for that price!
I didn’t need a luxury car—Mazda got me everywhere I wanted to go.
Then last year, my Aunt Kathy got a
black Mustang: Nazgul (it’s a Lord of the
Rings name). She was fresh from
divorcing Uncle David, and was on her own for the first time in more than 30
years. I was excited hearing about her
adventures with Nazgul, and happy that Aunt Kathy was blossoming in her new
life. During my mother’s wake, I had
gone out for some air and walked down the sidewalk when I saw it: Nazgul, in
all its glory; sleek, sporty, luxurious.
I looked it over all the way around.
“You know this thing SMOKES the road,” Margeaux whispered. I had driven Mustangs as rentals, so I knew
what they could do: go very, very fast.
And I do like to go very, very fast.
A few weeks ago, Corey took on
the task of making the arrangements for Bunny’s memorial service. Even though he died in January, Bunny wanted
his memorial on what would have been his 50th birthday, April 20th. It will be a Star Trek-themed event with
Catholic influence, also at his request.
Someone asked me if those were my ideas.
HA! Not in a million years! It’s pure Bunny, who always celebrated his
birthday like it was a national holiday.
His 40th birthday celebration lasted an entire week.
My own birthday is 10 days after
his. I’ve never been one to have huge
Bunny-type celebrations, but I decided that this year I would get myself a
really nice present. Taking a page from
Aunt Kathy’s book, I decided what it would be: an Audi TT. If I was going to be 50, I was going to be 50
in style. Naturally, I did my research
to make sure it was still a good car, and it is. The fact that one reviewer called it a
“Cougar Car” didn’t deter me.
There are only two Audi
dealerships in the area, and one night a few weeks ago I went to the closest
one. There was only one TT on the lot
(they’re a limited production model). I
didn’t want to test it at night, so I returned the next day and, with a nervous
salesperson riding shotgun, took it for a spin.
I felt like Speed Racer! There
were two drawbacks: no back seat at all, and a humongous blind spot. The first didn’t bother me as much as the
second: I’m a very fast driver, but I’m also a very safe one. My dream car had now become much less
desirable.
I turned my attention to the Audi
A5: still sporty, but without the Cougar stigma. The salesperson, Chris, showed me the
various styles, and mentioned a convertible on the lot. I told him I really wasn’t interested in
convertibles, because they were so noisy and bad for the hair. He assured me that convertibles had improved
quite a bit over the years, and we took out the A5 convertible. I didn’t feel so Speed Racerish driving it,
but wow! It had get-up and go to spare, and was as comfortable as a velvet glove.
At first, I wasn’t wild about the color—at
dusk, it looked very dark. It would take two months to order one in a lighter color. I don't have that kind of patience! I went back
in the daylight on Friday, and was happy to see that, with the sun shining
bright, it looked more blue-gray than charcoal.
That’s when I knew that Audrey would be coming home with me. Nelson called me yesterday to tease me a bit, then said, with all
seriousness, “You’re going to need a radar detector.” Yes I am!
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