Chronically Ironic

·Introducing…The Stealth Maverick

When I was 16, I kept wrecking cars.    

I couldn’t help it.  I was bad.  I mean really, unbelievably bad.  I should have known to maybe “put off” the driving when I only passed my driving test with a 70.  Exactly one week after my 16th birthday, my mother handed down her Datsun 200SX to me.  I promptly drove it into a phone pole.  Shortly thereafter, I got a Volkswagen Dasher.  For those of you unfamiliar with the Dasher, it looked like this:       

It was fucking UGLY.  Mine was Vomit Yellow.  So I had no other choice but to - you guessed it - run it into yet another phone pole.  I then was able to hold on to a Ford Mustang II (not just the regular mustang, but the fucking ridiculous one with the two-tone faux leather top) for a couple of years, until I turned on an unprotected left and turned right into ANOTHER CAR.  My dad decided to wait awhile before the next one.  But boy howdy, was it worth the wait.  My father, out to find the Cheapest Invincible Vehicle Available to Man, was able to seek out the Oldest Woman in the Universe who happened to have kept a car in her garage for 20 years without hardly driving it.  No, it was not a rare and awesome treasure of glory that I could parade around the neighborhood and school parking lot.   It was a 1970 Ford Maverick.  See below.   

  I do believe I have written a little bit about this amazing feat of auto industry imagination before.  When we purchased it for the outrageous price of $3000, it had a mere 30,000 original miles on it, working AC that someone was kind enough to put in, and those were about as many amenities that it had.  Interior ripped all to shit.  Exterior a lovely whitish-blue - as if blue had faded into a white.  No glossy finish.  But, no dents, and what looked to be a solid engine.  There was nothing else but to drive it.  And drive it I did.  I drove it directly into the ground.  But not quickly, mind you.  It took a good 3 or 4 years.  The improvements to my “ride” were few and far between - an old blue and white comforter thrown across the front seats (hey!  At least it matched the car!) as well as a giant boombox that went everywhere I did.  No one could really sit in the front seat with me due to my jammin’ tune player.  And when I lost the gas cap, I did manage to replace it…with the gas cap off of another Ford Maverick, stolen out of an apartment parking lot.  Damn.  That’s what I call improvement.  I dubbed it “The Stealth Maverick,” of course, in irony.  I was spottable 5 miles away.  And ladies, do not try to pretend you do not know what the car was used for the most - the all-important Pathetic Drive-By.  Every ex-boyfriend or even casual acquaintance knew who was stalking them, and when.   

Sadly, the bad outweighed the good, and mostly because of my lack of consideration for what an old car needed most - love.  I would drive from Nacogdoches to Dallas while in college, at least once a month, which is about a 5-hour round trip.  The first thing to go was the AC.  So, in the heat of an East Texas summer, I would drive with no air.  This was worse for me than the Maverick. The second thing to quit operating functionally was the radiator.  I would have to put water in at any given moment.  I recall one attempted trip to Dallas where, upon leaving from Nacogdoches, my poor Maverick started spitting and sputtering and SPEWING steam from it’s sad little hood only about 45 minutes out.  Unfortunately, “45 minutes out” was a town called Rusk.  For those of you that do not know what Rusk is famous for, I will tell you with glee.  It is famous for an HISTORIC MENTAL ASYLUM.  There are actual signs on the highway (very close, in fact, to where my car was breaking down) that say “do NOT pick up hitchhikers!”  Awesome.  It was dusk in Rusk.  I had no water.  There were no gas stations within 20 miles.  What there was, directly to my left, was a Power Company.  I saw a truck.  I walked my stupid college ass through the gate and found a night watchman.  He allowed me to use the phone and call my dad in Dallas.  My father, smart man that he is, said “what do you want me to do about it?  I am three hours away!”  No shit, thanks Dad.  Then, “Why are you there?  That guy could be a bad guy!  Get outta there!”  Lucky for me, this man was actually nice, and I was sort of cute, so he helped me and not in a scary, I-want-to-rape-you kind of way.  He put pepper in my radiator.  Ladies and gentlemen, this will at LEAST get you about 50 miles.  Don’t push it.   

The engine started having problems, and the brakes were going quickly.  Even though Nacogdoches is a small town, it’s not like it’s full of back roads and the like - pumping your brakes on city streets and trying to avoid slamming into other cars at stoplights - NOT exactly how you want to end your life in college.  Trash Can Punch Overdose much preferred.  The engine was losing oil consistently, and come to find out - cracked block.  There was no amount of golf tees or coke cans that my father could fix it with.  So…I was forced to sell what was left of Her.  I ran an ad in the paper.  I parked the Maverick on the grass on the side yard of my hovel.  Finally, a man answered the ad.  He showed up two days later, cash in hand, wife and three grubby little trailer kids in tow.  By “cash,” I mean $100.  I know.  I might have gotten more.  However, when the wife of the guy literally took a switch off the tree in my yard and started hitting her kids with it, that made up for the cheap sell price.   

I will always miss the Maverick.  There was something unmistakably classy about that piece of shit.  Maybe it was because it was mine.  Maybe it was because there was no car payment.  But I think it was mostly because it made for some damn fine memories.   

Glories of the 80's