Auto Love
by Suzy Banks
I
dispassionately
bought a car today: a six-year old, black Mazda pickup truck, 88,000 miles,
mechanically perfect, with multiple contusions on its glossy body. I can easily
remain aloof, I thought, as I drove the work truck home. As I inched towards
MoPac, I made up exciting histories to explain the numerous dents and
scratches. When I shifted effortlessly into fifth gear, dispassion flew out the
passenger window. By the time I got to Oak Hill, I named him Crunch.
I was once again in love with a machine.
I inherited this anthropomorphic view
of machines from my father. The first car I remember was his big white station
wagon, named Fang after the big white paw that would come down in Soupy Sales’
show. This was followed by a series of light green station wagons named Slime,
Moss, and the like which faithfully took our family on countless road trips, to
innumerable high school football games, and dance recitals. They carried my
father on his relentless commutes to and from work in Houston — first, from
our home near Galveston Bay, then later from the country outside Brenham. This
gave him ample time to become attached to his station wagons. (And to his
120-mile round-trip commute, which he still navigates five days a week. When
people ask him how he can stand all that driving, his stock answer is, “That’s
when I do my best thinking. I’ve got trouble waiting for me at both ends.”)
After the odometer hit 300,000 miles on his faithful beasts, they would be
retired to the company fleet at his business.
Not too long ago, I was stuck in rush hour traffic on the Katy Freeway in
Houston when what should come inching along beside me but one of the light
green station wagons, now faded to gun-metal gray. Behind the wheel was my
father’s partner, Quinn, talking to himself, headed home to River Oaks. His
image-conscious neighbors had offered to buy him a new car to get his
whale-sized eyesore off their pristine cul-de-sac. He had graciously declined
their offer and continued to despoil their idyll with his smoking, rusting
tank.
Our family’s automotive style, if you can call it that, was crimped a bit
when the oil crisis hit the country. Fear of immobility brought a small flood
of atypical vehicles, foreign and efficient, into our household, which had
until now been a strictly GMC kind of stable. (A red Pinto briefly joined the
herd, but it represents a phase of auto-ownership — hell, an entire
trailerhouse lifestyle — our family skillfully chooses to repress.) My father
bought a bright yellow Datsun pickup truck and a bright orange, two-cylinder
Honda. He also bought and filled a 1,000-gallon gasoline storage tank. My dad
made a few commutes in these highly efficient aluminum pouches, then
immediately bought a 5,000-gallon diesel tank and a Chevy pickup to drink from
it. Yeah, we hoarded.
As suddenly as it seemed to befall us, however, the oil embargo lifted. In
celebration of our restored vehicular freedom, my sister got a Buick Skylark,
and, because there was no longer a market for fuel efficient cars in Houston, I
was the thrilled owner of both the Datsun truck and the Honda. Despite the
now-brimming gas pumps once again scattered across the country, my dad
continued to drive the diesel pickup — also presently unmarketable — until it
had chugged the required 300,000 miles.
The Datsun pickup didn’t live that long. One day, I was racing to school down
the sandy backroads, explicitly ignoring my parents demands that I stay on the
paved road, drive slowly, and get up earlier so I wouldn’t have to rush.
Actually, I had gotten up earlier that day because I had to wear a dress for
picture day, rather than my standard filthy jeans and T-shirt (this is
important later), but the margin of time I’d allowed for dress-up had been
eaten away looking for a pair of decent pantyhose. No worry, I could make it up
on the short cut.
Along my harried and dusty path, I met Mr. Preismeyer and his son, out to
perform their countrified duties of hauling hay. (Hauling hay and painting
football cheers on store windows with white shoe polish were the main
preoccupations of the citizens of my hometown.) Mr. Preismeyer drove his truck.
His son followed on the family tractor. I pulled over just a touch to let them
pass, raised my hand to wave, and ughnn! before you could say “twist and
shout” the steering wheel was yanked out of my hand and my truck was flipping
around like a beached trout in the sand. I landed on my back against the
passenger side window with my skirted butt sticking up in the air to greet the
Preismeyer men as they peered down on me from the driver’s window. I wasn’t
hurt, but the Datsun was. Every single inch of it.
The son righted the twisted heap with his tractor and I drove it back home.
If I’d thought that Datsun would have made it to the Houston InterContinental
Airport, I would’ve been on a one-way flight to Saigon rather than face the
wrath that awaited me at home. But the crunched wheel wells were shredding big
slivers of rubber off my tires and there was steam pouring from what was left
of the radiator and the engine sounded like a clothes dryer tumbling a load of
limestone and wet cats. I was lucky to make it home. No, wait. Not lucky.
My dad drove me wordlessly to school, the disappointment so thick in the car
that it burned my nose. No mention was made of how I would get home in the
afternoon. The Datsun was hauled away like an illicit lover, and after a month
of being grounded, I tried to forget the entire episode.
I soon continued my frantic dashes to school in the Honda, my favorite. My
friends and I would drive to Houston and, as we sped down the freeway at
47-miles-to-the-gallon, we would marvel at how easily we could have driven
beneath one of the 16-wheelers flying by. “Ichi Bon,” as she came to be known,
was so lightweight that groups of testosterone-crazed teenage boys often picked
her up and carried her off to hiding places when I wasn’t looking. I would come
out of a dance or a party or school and I would have to look all around for my
car. I eventually started securing it to trees and fences with a bicycle chain
and combination lock.
Ichi Bon had personality. In my little orange tin box, I would “drag race”
Terrie Nehrkorn in her four-cylinder Toyota and win on the sheer spirit of my
engine rather than its horsepower. When we all “road the hills” by the junior
high football field, my lightweight beauty would always sail the farthest. With
the back seats folded down, she was just big enough to hold my trombone case.
The junior class officers gathered around it for the yearbook photo. I didn’t
mind that my car was more popular than I was; she was so humble about it.
When I came to college I moved my possessions to Austin in eight or nine
trips with the Honda. The auto-pranks increased here and I often came out of my
dorm to find my car wedged sideways between two cars in its parking space. I
would then have to round up four passersby to help me turn the car around to a
maneuverable position.
I’m not sure why my parents suddenly decided the Honda was a death trap, but
one day they replaced it with a brand new Chevy. A Caprice Classic the color of
cheap dog food, the kind with feathers embedded in the kibble. A two-door narc
car. I became a different person. I bought brown corduroy pants, plaid no-iron
shirts, and sensible shoes. I took a class on the theory of economics and
understood it. I stopped drinking. I organized study groups on Saturday night.
I dumped my musician boyfriend and started dating a Jewish architect. I became
what I’d never been before — a person who would love a 1979 Chevy Caprice.
Three years later, I met Richard and
with the vision that only true love can provide, he saw through my crusty Chevy
shell to the faint glow of a Honda Coupe I still held deep inside. He fanned
the dimming embers until finally, passionately, feverishly… I bought a 1959
Morris Minor for $500. We drove it infrequently, worked on it often, and then
sold it before it completely disintegrated beside our garage. But five hundred
bucks is a small price to pay for the return of spirit.
I completely shed my Chevy sedan persona, when, in 1984, at the height of our
consumer frenzy and our careers as home remodelers, we bought a Toyota
Cressida. This was not a flashy car or a cute car or a car that would turn
heads. This was a car for the long haul. Eleven years and 138,000 miles later,
I’m still in love, a love made all the more poignant because my dear Toyota was
once taken away from me by ruthless carnappers.
One Sunday, as Richard and I were enjoying our morning hot tub, Richard
looked over the fence to the side street where we parked our cars and said ”
Where’ s the Cressida?” I looked over the fence and said, “Uh, where is the
Cressida? And where is the Chevy pickup?” (We had inherited my Dad’s diesel.)
We laughed and started calling our friends to see who had pulled this hilarious
prank on us. It wasn’t until the police called us a few hours later that we
realized it wasn’t a joke. They had found my Cressida parked in Barton Creek.
They knew nothing about the AWOL pickup, but the Toyota, my pampered friend,
was currently being towed — let’s make that ” trailered” — to Southside
Wrecking.
My friend Celia came and picked us up and as we drove down Manchaca, we passed
my car en route. It had been massacred. Every inch was scratched and dented. I
started wailing like a banshee with a smashed thumb. We forced our way into the
wrecking yard (the bullies that ran that place were ready to fight Richard to
keep us out, but they took one look at me — I think I said something sinister
with my eyes — and slowly started backing off), where closer inspection and
seeing the inside of my poor car sent me into ear-splitting caterwauling. (This
is one reason I don’t cry often; I don’t do it well.)
The odious vermin who had stolen my car had carved the dashboard with a pocket
knife, they’d puked on the floor, they’d torn a hole through the backseat to
get to the trunk because they were too stupid to simply pull the trunk latch.
Even if they had gotten into the trunk they would’ve only found four gallons of
paint, freed from the constraints for their containers sometime during the joy
ride, possibly when they drove over the cliff to the creekbed or when they
slammed into mailboxes. The color this paint created in its mingling — a minty
green — still makes me sweat when I see it.
The insurance company declared the Toyota totaled. We bought the car from
them, had the worst of the body damage repaired, and still drive the little
trooper today, eight years and 125,000 miles later. The rascals who stole both
our cars were caught (a neighbor kid had stolen a set of our keys weeks before
and we’d never noticed), but their punishment was as unsatisfying to me as the
O.J. verdict. I wanted the right to go into their bedrooms at home, pick an
object they loved the best, and make them watch as I demolished it with a
hammer. The juvenile court judge, however, was more concerned with the trauma
endured by the parents who had raised these delinquents than our violated
property. I kept squawking in the courtroom until he finally asked me, “What
are you complaining about? Insurance will cover everything.”
The judge was obviously not a man who had ever loved a machine. n
This article appears in December 1 • 1995 and December 1 • 1995 (Cover).