My son is about to turn 19 and is chomping at the bit to get a car. And I'm growing tired of the three licensed drivers in the family playing musical cars on a daily basis. We've spent a lot of time searching Craig's List, trying to find someone desperate for instant cash, who's willing to let their car go on the cheap. No luck yet.

All this talk about cars has sent me on a trip down memory lane, remembering my first car and the ones that followed. Where I was in my life when I drove those cars and what they meant to me at the time. I haven't had many cars in my life. Six to be exact. Three were new. Each car marked a specific act in my life, for better or worse, and when I said goodbye to each one, I also closed the curtain on that part of my life, if only symbolically.

My first car was a 1967 Chevrolet Biscayne. A hand-me-down from my stepmother. I was in college. It was a freebie, so I wasn't complaining. It had a chalky, faded army green patina, a standard shift (3 speed on the column) and it drank oil like gasoline. I kept a case of oil in the trunk and fed it like a pet. I even named it. Norman, after Norman Greenbaum, singer of "Spirit in the Sky" (get it? Green Bomb? I guess you had to be there). The radio stopped working after a while and on trips home from college, driving back woods roads of Louisiana alone I would sing "99 bottle of beer on the wall" until I got to zero and then I would start all over again. It passed the time. It was the early 1970s. Cars didn't have CD players (or even cassette players yet) and a very young Steve Jobs was still tinkering with the concept of a home computer in his garage, so iPods weren't even the stuff of fantasies yet.  I'm not sure what I would have done if the car had broken down in Deliverance territory with no cell phone and no GPS. I had that car until I married my first husband.

My second car was a 1974 Ford Mustang. It was the first car of my first marriage. I had nothing to do with its purchase. I just came home one day and there it was. My husband had bought it. But it was new and I was commuting to graduate school, so I shrugged and said, "Cool." Ah, youth.  I actually have no memory of selling that car. It just exited silently, stage left.

The next car was a highlight of my car life. A 1978 Datsun 280Z. A real sporty statement at the time.  A 5-speed on the floor, no power steering, low to the ground, so you could feel the road, and it had custom speakers so I could blast the music as loud as I wanted. (I also had a motorcycle. It was a phase.) We shopped for it together, special ordered it and when it came in, he surprised me with the car wrapped in a red ribbon sitting in the garage. (I've said before, he was a nice guy. Just didn't ring my bells.) I drove that car until we split up and then sold it for the cash, which I didn't split.

After that, I had my car-free years in New York, where public transportation is the rule. Cars are the exception. My second (and current) husband always had a junky car, but I never felt comfortable driving in the city, even less comfortable parking. We lived there for 13 years. Not coincidentally, the same number of years I didn't get behind the wheel of a car. We did have some interesting car experiences though. We performed the alternative-side-of-the-street-parking dance, but not very well. We paid enough in New York City parking tickets to buy at least two more cars. Most of those 13 years were spent in Brooklyn, which at the time, was the car-theft capital of the country. We had one car stolen that we never found. But there was the time we had our 1978 Chevy Impala stolen and my husband found it perfectly parallel parked just a few blocks away. The ignition had been stripped, so he hotwired it and we stole it back. To prevent a retheft, we purchased a stainless steel claw that fit around the steering wheel shaft and locked into place.  We had that car until we left. We sold it for $300. 

I miss New York.

We moved to Austin right after my mother died and I inherited her 1986 Buick Century. It served us well for 7 years. That was a time of car seats and crying kids not allowed in the front seat; my daughter thought the rearview mirror was called the "wavy mirror." At one point the felt-like material that lined the roof hung down so far you had to hold it up with one hand so it didn't block your view. The kids thought it was fun. But we got that repaired and the car soldiered on. I felt like I was letting go of the last piece of my mother when I said goodbye to that car.

We traded it in for what was the highlight of my car career. A new 2003 525i BMW, metallic blue (officially marketed as the more appealing Orient Blue). What can I say? We had a one-time financial windfall and splurged, thinking we'd hang onto that car for 500,000 miles. I'm not one to get attached to material things. But I did love that car. When my kids were younger, they would ask, "Mom, is driving fun?" Driving that car was fun. But all good things must come to an end. And so did this, when my 18-year-old son totalled the BMW in December of last year. It was the subject of my first blog here on OS. It's been 6 months since I said a tearful goodbye to my BMW and I still miss that stupid hunk of metal.

I'm now driving a used 2008 Honda Accord. A respectable mid-size car. It's comfortable enough. And, I managed to hold out for leather seats. But it just ain't the same. It's missing a certain je ne sais quoi. Nothing that another maybe $40,000 or $50,000 couldn't remedy. 

But that hasn't stopped me from fantasizing. One of my daughter's favorite past times is to play the "what-would-you-do-if" game. So, what car would I buy if the sky were the limit where money, practicality and fuel conservation were concerned? A BMW M6 Convertible, which runs about $120,000, might do me just fine or a Porsche Cabriolet Convertible for a cool $145,000.  This would be the last act in the story of my life in cars. I'd drive off into the sunset with panache, the picture would fade to black and I'd live happily ever after.

THE END.