Today I saw a picture of a coffee cup someone posted on Facebook and it said "What would the name of your autobiography be? And this is where I do some of my best work. I thought ok. Quick Jeanne, Think of a name for your autobiography. And instantly Hard Road came to mind but I thought that is not all there is to it. And in less than a minute I came up with A Hard Road in a Good Car. Typed it out because I thought that isn't bad at all and if I write things down I have a better tenancy to remember them. So, after working in the garage for a few hours and it started lightning and thundering so I thought this would be a good time to figure out about my Hard Road in a Good Car.
I do my best creative thinking in the shower. Probably why I take such long showers. Am I getting clean or writing a book? Sometimes it is hard to say but most days those thoughts are out of my brain by the time I am dry and off to work but today I have the time to sit down and write and I thought The road is my life but the car is that my body? Not really but it has served me well so far. Little more than a regular oil change and adding anti-freeze and windshield washer fluid. I do change the tires I have a mechanic I have known all my life and he takes care of my car so I don't have to worry. Then I thought unlike most people of my age I have only owned 4 cars in 34 years.
1978 Mustang II
1987 Mustang
1993 Cavalier
2005 Sebring
Now I thought about the cars and I thought about me and well a Mustang II was a small Mustang.
What is a mustang but a wild stray. My Mustang II years were 1984-1987 end of high school and beginning of the rest of my life. All of which I lived in the same house and worked at the same job and went to school most of those years or tried.
My Mustang years 1987-1993 Still wild but mostly on my own working full time and in debt. These years did not end because I got another car but because my Mustang was flooded with salt water in front of my house on Clearwater Beach during the No Name Storm or Storm of the Century in 1993. Whichever you like to call it. I will never forget telling my roommate when we got home from a late night out that it had never in my life time flooded where we lived. Well he woke me up a few hours later to 3 inches of water in our garage. We looked out the front door and all we could see of the fire hydrant across the street was the top screw. I took pictures the rest of the night and the next morning. Once the sun came out and the storm had passed David and I ventured out past the porch and his car was fine but that Mustang sat a little lower and it had water inside. I washed the car had it detailed but it only ran one more time and then Totaled from water damage. So this girl that didn't have a lot now had less. So she borrowed her Grandmother's Ford Fairmont. I don't count it as being mine. It like my life was kinda a shambles but it got me from A to B as they say.
Then 1995-2005 the Cavalier years. Not really a supporter of King Charles through the English Civil War or a horseman even though I had two Mustangs see it kinda tells a story all it's own. I was more of the adjective definition rather offhand, indifferent. These are the years I met and married Brian we moved from a house I had lived in for 10 years to the house we are in now. We traveled and were spending the money we made and the future was far away. I finally left my first job not by choice but that same job that got me that first Mustang II now 20 years later I had to leave.
Now the Sebring years 2005-today. What is a Sebring? It is a town in the middle of Florida is that it well ironically no. It is a word derived from yes, say it with me Swedish. Brian is Swedish. One definition says it is a bright warrior's name. Today I think of myself as a warrior when it comes to the struggles I have had. These last 13 years we have had our struggles. Well I had never related the cars that I have owned with the periods in my life before today but it seems like I picked appropriately.
The story of my life didn't start in 1984 when I got my first car. Actually the first car I ever remember is my mom's 1963 Fiat. Three on the tree as they would say. I don't know if it is just funny now or really ironic but a Fiat is an authoritative determination. If that isn't my mother well it is. Now not that anyone would have said this apple fell far from the tree but mom did have that car until sometime in the 1980s. She took classes at PTEC back in the day to learn how to do body work and remove the rust and paint that car. My mom and dad had this car on their wedding day and someone used brown shoe polish to write just married on the trunk and it didn't matter how much she painted that car you could still see it.
As for my dad he has always been a mechanic. He can fix anything. When we were kids the shop he worked at would sometimes bring vehicles by the house yeah once a garbage truck pulled in the driveway at our house on the beach and a neighbor called and I remember my mom saying yes Linda it is a garbage truck in the driveway. I have heard stories of a 1950s corvette that he had that if he hadn't trashed would be worth a fortune today. As he found out when he went to the Corvette museum a few years back. Dad told us stories of working for a gas station as a kid and Mr Morrow I think was the man's name. He came and visited once. Dad told of him and his friend having to take two cars to the junk yard and that they played like demolition derby all the way to the junk yard never thinking the whole way how they were going to get back to the gas station after destroying both cars. But the vehicles I grew up with dad driving were our full size van first was tan with 2 rows of seats and the second was green with 3 rows of seats. Until 1980 or so dad got a blue El Camino. Just because it is interesting the definition "the Kings highway" or "Royal Road". Dad had that car well I would guess way into the Cavalier years if not the Sebring ones. I don't know if I want to see if my siblings cars fit into their lives like me in my wild days and now into my bright warrior days. I am just really glad that along this road that I have had some really good cars to ride in.
I think I could get a story out of this.
