When I was sixteen years old and still going to high school, like any other new driver, my first priority was getting a car. My parents made it quite clear that I was more than welcome to own a car provided I earn and put forth the purchase price. Even back in 1985 the average new economy car was well out of monetary range of a high school girl with a job as a caretaker of horses. After a short search of used vehicles I turned up a true boon. It was quite literally a car owned by a little old lady, the mother of my parent’s mechanic, who drove it to the grocery store and back on occasion.
Thelma, as I named her, was a 1973 Chevy Caprice Classic with a huge 7.4L 454 V8 engine and only forty-thousand original miles on the odometer. Though she was originally blue in color, by the time I purchased her she was a bit of a “calico” with areas of crumbling rust on her body. Her front and back bench seats were covered in aging gray vinyl, yet each could comfortably fit four teenagers. Her trunk interior was an amazing 5 feet in width by 5 feet in depth. I happen to know those dimensions because, yes, I once got in the open trunk and found I could comfortably lay flat in both directions. She had more power than I ever needed, more space than I ever wanted and above all, she gave my parents a sense of confidence in allowing their precious daughter out on the roads alone.
I loved Thelma dearly and had her back window and seats decorated in all my childhood stuffed animals. With the front seat in its forward-most setting, I still was able to further accessorize with two pillows behind me to allow me to reach the pedals and one pillow under me so I could safely navigate my vessel. Thelma was constructed of seemingly indestructible iron that was apparently wrapped around the same kind of girders used to build sky-scrapers. She proudly wore a “Don’t Laugh, It’s Paid For” bumper sticker on her iron-clad rear fender and a faux-fur steering wheel cover. She was the perfect rolling, impenetrable teenage “hangout” with plenty of seating for chatting and a good radio to play all the most popular tunes. In short, she was an estrogen filled tank.
While in high school my family and I lived in a hilly portion of
As the light turned green I threw my normal over-bearing caution to the wind and pushed down harder on the gas pedal than I had ever done before. Pulling about 2 G’s up that hill I left my stomach behind me and almost swallowed my tongue. Though a gravitationally disrupted stuffed dog had suddenly obstructed the view from my rear windshield, I knew from my side-view mirror that the cute, expensive, compensating-for-something car was trailing far behind me. I gained a sense of satisfaction and power from the experience. Though I was generally too nervous to try a stunt like that more than the one time, it was simply nice knowing I could blow my dust in someone’s face if I ever chose to.
On another occasion I was side-swiped by a full size pick up truck while on my way to work one summer morning. The sound was awful, but Thelma barely moved. The pick up truck and I pulled into a side street to assess the damage. The owner of the truck was dismayed to find that the brand new truck had sustained severe damage to the front and side panels and the frame had been bent from the impact. My dear Thelma had a bit of a scratch in some of the remaining paint on her front quarter panel.
Thelma ran on leaded gasoline and I used to joke that she got Gallons Per Mile instead of MPG. She never broke down and I made sure she received regular maintenance from the son of the lady who sold it to me. There were a few minor things that went wrong in my time with her. Her horn stopped working at one point and it cost me $15 to have it fixed. Another time I was told that she was not running well because her “vibrator” was broken. Evidentially this was one of those parts not found in today’s cars, but my Thelma had to have one to be happy. It raised my parents’ brows when they came across my receipt for a $48 vibrator. I explained that it was so expensive because it had to be industrial strength. I’m sure they were relieved to later learn it was for my car.
Unfortunately, as I mentioned in the last chapter, the staff and students at my well-to-do private high school were not nearly as enamored with Thelma as I was. The girls that had cars generally had very nice, shiny, expensive ones. There were Broncos, Thunderbirds and even a few Corvettes. Poor Thelma stuck out in sheer size as well as aesthetic value. As her unpopularity grew amongst my teachers and peers, the hour at which I would arrive to school diminished in proportion. Instead of giving in to the blatant lack of consideration of the fact that I was the only student at my school that purchased her own car, I chose to park her in the choicest of parking spots. In my own silent rebuttal, I made sure that Thelma was given the place of honor each day.
One day in the winter of my senior year, Thelma earned her place, even among her most vocal of adversaries. That particular morning was rainy and cold. By the time school started a cold-front had moved into the area turning the rain to snow and the already wet roads into ice. By noon there was already a foot of snow on the ground and classes had been canceled for the rest of the day. Cars lined the ditches of most of the area roads and a travel advisory had been issued. Calls from stranded parents flooded the school office along with calls from the parents of girls with shiny, new cars. The general theme of the calls was the same. “Send my daughter home with that girl with the giant, blue car thing!”
Fourteen book bags were tossed in the trunk, and fourteen girls climbed into my giant car. Murmurs of “I can’t believe I’m getting in this thing!” emanated out from under embarrassed rolling eyes. Though the roads were treacherous, Thelma’s immense weight, wide base and low center of gravity served her well. My rout home that day was much longer than normal, and another foot of snow had fallen by the time all fourteen girls and I made it safely to our homes. Thelma did not once slip or slide, even down the steepest of grades. A few of my passengers were coldly polite, thanking me for the ride home while others seemed to take an interest in the huge boat and her excessive power.
The word must have spread because Thelma was never again on the receiving end of snide remarks made directly to me. In fact on one spring day the principal came to my class room to ask that I be excused for a few minutes. Thelma was needed to pull a car whose emergency brake had given way, out of a deep ditch behind the school. Thelma even received a standing ovation from the teachers and students who witnessed the excitement from classroom windows.
When it was time for me to leave for college, I learned that underclassmen were not allowed to have cars on the college campus. It broke my heart, but Thelma had to be sold. An advertisement was placed in the local paper touting all of Thelma’s wondrous attributes and she was sold within days. Where do giant, blue vehicular monstrosities go to live out their days? Thelma, for one, received a body transplant at an auto racing track. I am quite certain she had quite a wonderful time with her engine encased in a shiny, new body, blowing dust in the windshields of any cars that tried to compete with her.
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