"Flynorcal: pilot, offshore sailor, car racer and panty thief" (flynorcal)
06/13/2018 at 00:53 • Filed to: None | 13 | 8 |
When I was 5 years old the family moved to a new house so I cannot tell you how old I was when this happened but I was big enough to sit behind the wheel and reach the shifter on the column.
Well, not shifter. Selector. You know what I mean. It was an automatic. It was also red, a Plymouth, and when you used the turn signals little lights out on the hood of the car blinked back at you, the driver, to indicate to you that your signals were on. Fancy shit.
It had hubcaps. I know this as going around a turn while standing in the rear seats looking out the back window (lol seatbelts) we went around a turn and the hub cap kept on going straight like it missed the memo. I hollered and my mom went back and found it.
We lived on a hill. Not a large one. Large enough, however, that when you’re sitting up front pretending you’re driving and moving the wheel around and moving the gear selector all over like a real driver, eventually you find neutral.
My mother worries about shit that makes no sense. She can’t imagine why I’d want to live in a hell hole like California where it’s all MS-13 and homeless people and immigrant tent cities. Going to Paris she warned me about they hate us. Fox News has done a number on her.
However, as a younger woman, she didn’t worry about shit. So she stood on the front stairs of our house watching me play car driver in the driveway.
I remember her face when the car began to roll backwards down the hill, and I remember fear as it got faster.
My memories fade here, as I was 5 at most but I think I remember my mother frantically trying to catch up to the car. What I know for fact is that I crossed the street, hopped the curb, and hit a structure made out of logs that the local Boy Scouts used. Some kind of cabin. I have no idea if there was any damage.
I think I can trace me being a car guy back to that day specifically and that Plymouth more generally.
You might not understand the reason your car comes with a parking brake when you already have a Park position for your shifter.
I am that reason.
Longtime Lurker
> Flynorcal: pilot, offshore sailor, car racer and panty thief
06/13/2018 at 01:33 | 3 |
Happy birthday. Here’s a Plymouth with signal repeaters.
Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> Flynorcal: pilot, offshore sailor, car racer and panty thief
06/13/2018 at 01:34 | 1 |
You write well.
Having fun at the new grind? School’s out on Friday. We should hook up again.
PS: Mom would approve of the video game. Of the gnarly Corvette on the real track, maybe not so much.
Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> Flynorcal: pilot, offshore sailor, car racer and panty thief
06/13/2018 at 01:44 | 0 |
My wife’s brother lives in the Sunset with the house on a rather steep slope backward, down and away from the house. They drove a manual Toyota and parked in the garage and it was a steep ride into the neighbor’s dining room below. They had four young boys and when I was young, the neighbor boy and I pulled their car out of gear and out into the street it rolled and when his parents came after us we pointed at each other. I worried to my in-laws repeatedly about one of their boys coasting down into a neighbor’s breakfast nook and fortunately, it never happened, but they kept telling me I worried about things too much. They think wrist guards are needless things with roller blades and they are pharmacists who avoid taking medicine and fortunately, my nephews never ghost rode the Toyota. One of those nephews — the one who launched a startup — baked the engine in a Honda Civic when he misinterpreted the
OIL
light as something he didn’t need to worry about.
Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> Longtime Lurker
06/13/2018 at 01:45 | 0 |
And a 340 and maybe a four-speed...
Distraxi's idea of perfection is a Jagroen
> Flynorcal: pilot, offshore sailor, car racer and panty thief
06/13/2018 at 02:54 | 1 |
My story’s very similar except it was a manual S Type Jag and I found the handbrake. I was 4.
Svend
> Flynorcal: pilot, offshore sailor, car racer and panty thief
06/13/2018 at 03:02 | 1 |
Happy birthday squire.
$kaycog
> Flynorcal: pilot, offshore sailor, car racer and panty thief
06/13/2018 at 09:01 | 2 |
Happy Birthday! Have some cake!
Flynorcal: pilot, offshore sailor, car racer and panty thief
> $kaycog
06/13/2018 at 12:00 | 1 |
You’re amazing. Thank you!