Since book winner Bron Jameson already had some of the books among the giveaway stack, I had the hubby draw out another name to receive the final 5 books. And the winner is…Tawny Weber!
Well, I worked on a freelance copyediting project today and did other exciting things like getting the oil changed in my little nearly-220,000-miles-on-it car. One of these days, I’m going to have to blog about my little car. She’s been a good one, and I’m shooting for 300,000 miles! I think she’s my reward for having such crappy cars when I was younger. A Plymouth Fury II anyone? Try getting that boat parallel parked during your driver’s test. A gold 1970 Nova? Ugh. Can you say one of the two ugliest cars on campus? The other was what we called the green Batmobile that some guy drove.
So, what’s the crappiest car you’ve ever had?
August 22nd, 2005 at 10:22 pm
Dude, mine was a 1968 Chrysler Newport, aka The Green Bomb. I could fit five friends in the backseat - comfortably! It died on the freeway all the time. Finally died for good, and I got a Ford Fairmont. Oh baby.
When I was pregnant with my second daughter, the oil bust hit the oil industry. Mike lost his company car, took two pay cuts in two months, and we were sucking hind tit. His uncle took pity on us and gave us a 1974 Chevy Impala. It had no hubcaps, the white vinyl roof was peeled off, leaving bare metal, and someone drove it through an oil slick, so it had brown, nonremoveable splatters all over the faded yellow paint. Oh, and the front seat springs were busted, so when Mike sat in it, he had to peer through the steering wheel to see out to drive.
I went to a friend’s house for dinner one night and another friend asked, “Hey, Stef! When did you get a full time maid?”
I thought she was smoking crack. Huh? We were so gagging for money, we had to charge my two year old’s diapers. I asked what she meant.
“Well, every time I drive by your house, there’s an old pice of sh&t car out front, so I thought you’d hired full time help.”
Uh, no - that’s Mike’s car.
He had to crawl under and beat it with a wrench every once in a while, to get it started.
Yeah - I’ve had doo-doo cars!
Thanks for the memories, Trish!
Stef
August 22nd, 2005 at 10:41 pm
LOL! OMG, Stef, I’m about to die laughing. Hubby used to have this Aries K right when we got out of college and moved out of state. The thing eventually got a crack in the engine block. It wasn’t worth repairing, but we didn’t have the money to buy another car then. We lived two miles from his office, and he had to put oil in it before he went to work and before he came home. By the time he got home in the afternoons, the thing was smoking like a freight train! And to add insult to injury, that model was from a year where they had a stinky paint job and the paint would flick off as you drove down the road. What a crapper.
August 23rd, 2005 at 12:57 am
Yipppeee skipeee - I won? Wow
Too cool, thanks!!
Cars - I’ve had lemons- a Vega with no reverse is the highlight of my life though. It was gold (metal flake, even) and the carpet was that indoor/outdoor stuff. Very scrachy to say the least. Good thing I didn’t fool around in the back (it was a hatchback), huh? I wish I knew how to make an angel face smiley here
August 23rd, 2005 at 4:34 am
Ohhhh, cars…..
My first car was a 1973 LTD - a tank. Like Stef, I could fit all my friends in it, comfortably. It died of neglect (I was a teenager, what did I know?) and my folks bought me a Buick, I don’t remember the year, but the headliner was falling down. Had to hold it up to back out. After we got married in 1987, we bought a 1973 pick-up for $600. Ended up replacing the engine for $900. We bought an Eagle Premier for $1000 that smelled like mildew and one of the doors wouldn’t open. And you know, that wasn’t that long ago!
August 23rd, 2005 at 7:33 am
Mary, LOL on the falling headliner. I had one of those. I ended up sticking it back up with a packet of thumb tacks. Classy!
August 23rd, 2005 at 11:32 am
I had a ‘66 Studebaker in swamp green. And then my sister and I shared a mid 80’s (?) Datsun pick-up — tiniest pick-up ever made. We used to drive that thing over curbs, on trails…we giggled so much in that thing (probably because of the spring board seats) that we’d pee our pants. Ah, the good ole days…
August 23rd, 2005 at 8:10 pm
I haven’t had any really ugly cars (unless you count the tangerine-colored Ford Escort I drove for a short time in high school), but my dh, who drives cars until they die, had a 900S Saab that we bought for $1500 about seven years ago with 150,000 miles on it.
He puts a lot of miles on it for work, and we had the car for four or five years and he put another 100K or more on it. The interior ceiling fabric was falling down (it looked like that hanging moss in the bayou), and you could see the inside of the rusted roof.
My five-year-old daughter said it looked like a dog had chewed on it.
Colleen
August 23rd, 2005 at 10:28 pm
Crappy cars? Am I odd that I tend to try to forget the crappy ones? I remember my first car, it must have been a 70 something because this would have been in the late 70’s or very early 80’s. And wow, what a flashback, it couldn’t have been a 60’s car cuz that would just make me WAY too old. It was a lime-ish green pontiac sunbird - had a sunroof and everything. Not one of those fancy sunroofs like they have now - but one that liked popped out. I LOVED that car - but I didn’t know much about taking care of it and it only lasted about 5 years. Now more recently - a few years ago we had this piece of junk some model I had never heard of before half truck half car thing. The name sounded like a tractor name, only a tractor would have probably driven better. Ah - I just remembered. Funny how the mind does that to me - it was an International Scout. It was all glued together like with that stuff that you patch walls with? Only that was just on the outside. The floors had huge cracks in it. My oldest was about 5 or 6 at the time I think and he used to have a fit because all of his McDonald toys would fall out through the cracks while we were driving down the road. AH - the memories.
August 23rd, 2005 at 10:44 pm
These car stories are funny. Hubby just reminded me of his last car before he got his current truck (I was trying to block the POS from my memory!). It was an Olds Cutlass Ciera. The power steering was so bad that he had to do figure eights in the parking lot at work to warm it up before he got on the road. And the grill was crunched where he slid into the FedEx truck during a snowstorm a couple of winters ago. Was glad to see that one go.
If I can find a picture of my poopy old cars, we’ll have a crappy car shot contest.
August 24th, 2005 at 5:54 pm
Who knew this would be such a hot topic? My worst car was a Chevy Malibu in baby-poop beige. It weighed a TON and had rear-wheel drive, which made it just DIVINE on Colorado’s icy roads. I’m blocking this memory, but I think I once applied the (power) brakes on the downslope of a hill and tapped the bumper of, yes, a schoolbus. The day I sold that car, I literally danced down the street. Getting rid of that beast made me happier than divorcing my first husband.