When I was in fourth or fifth grade, my big sister, Linda, sent my father 500 hard-earned dollars she’d saved for a car. She wanted something cute and little, but instead, he virtually devastated her by purchasing a vehicle that looked very similar to the one above. I’m not certain of the model, but it was a Mercury. It had a rear window that rolled down, which was called a “breezeway.”
This wasn’t the kind of car a beautiful young coed particularly wanted to drive back to college, but she did. I remember her telling me her friends would climb in the back and hang out that rear window and laugh and carry on down Peniel Street in Bethany, Oklahoma, where we both attended college.
I have very few pictures of myself from childhood. If I could turn back the hands of time, I’d go back to Linda at 19 or 20, driving that weird old car. Becky would be 17 or 18, which would make Billy 14, and me nine. I’d be hanging out the breezeway with the dry wind of the Permian Basin beating my hair into 10,000 tangles. We’d all be laughing the way we did when our parents weren’t around.
Jen…
Ok…I just stumbled on this post of yours.
I was HOME the day Daddy and Lin brought that car home. It was SUPPOSE to be a little red Volkswagen and instead they drove up in the enormous blue bomb. I laughed until I cried. Linda was half laughing and half crying. Daddy wanted that car. She didn’t. He ended up with it, too. She left it behind and bought a Toyota Corolla a couple of years later.
Poor Lin. We all laughed at her expense. In those days she hadn’t yet learned to stand up to dad…especially when it involved HER MONEY.
She did though…finally. And so did I. And Bill. And you.
xoB
I never read this story. (I don’t know how I missed it). I hate to say it, but I don’t miss that car. When I took it to college, I had to put two quarts of oil in it every 150 miles! (This was a ‘classic’ DAD CAR)…I didn’t like it and I didn’t want it. I am, however, happy to know the memory of it makes my siblings smile (or rather, laugh hysterically)!
Love, Lin
I love this story. I remember the car well; it was weird, but at the same time, cool. I am astounded that you found a photo of a car like the old ’64 Mercury Montclair~ with a girl standing next to it that looks so much like you did then..I especially love the last line:
“we would laugh like we did when our parents were’nt around…”
Classic. I love that.