My very first car out of high school was a Renault Le Car. It was an oxidized orange color, but basically looked like the picture below. It died at every stop sign for a while until my dad turned up the idling, which kept it from passing smog. Let's see, it was hot-wired, so when all my college buddies jumped in to go with me I had to reach for the wires under the dash to start it, and later the wires were connected to a button to push. Often times it also had to be push-started. Now imagine trying to impress your friends while trying to start a clutch car that had to be hot-wired and push-started at the same time. Let's just say that my friends were true friends and not fair-weather friends.
My brother David called it the "orange tomato" and was just a bit embarrassed of it. I think he just liked to tease me.
Another car I had was a little white car (a Dodge Omni). Thankfully, this car did not die at every stop, nor was it hot-wired or needed to be push started. No, this car just didn't want the driver's side door to work. For the longest time I had to roll down my window to open the door to get out of the car. When it was on its last leg, or wheel, it finally didn't let me open the door at all. I had to use the passenger's door to get in and out of my car.
Somehow I still managed to make it through college! Although I am not sure how it happened. Never did it fail that my car would break down on finals week. Never. So, almost every semester during finals week I had to drive my dad to work in Clovis (30 miles), then drive to Reedley College (20 miles), drive either home (30 miles) or back to Clovis and wait several hours for my dad to get off work, and then drive back home (30 miles) while still studying for finals.
My friend Sherrie summed it up quite well. She told me, "What do you expect when you drive a Phillips Car?
2 comments:
Your dad has told me with some pride about you and another girl getting out of the car to fix it on the way to Bakersfield while two guys sat helpless in the backseat.
My dad has the story warped a bit. My LeCar had a carborator problem. Every now and then the screws that held it would work loose and needed to be tightened. There were actually three guys in the back of that car, lol, and I just told them that I knew what it was and could fix it real quick. Well, while me and my friend Milli were tightening the screws a truck-load of cowboys that knew us pulled up in their super-sized truck and let's just say they gave those guys a super hard time. As it was, they were squished into the car and here we were working on the carborator! We were all at the Tulare Farm Show showing animals for the college. If I remember right we stopped at a Taco Bell for lunch and that's where it happened.
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