Let's start at the very begining... Or at least very near there

Every car owner has to have had a first car. Some came with cool stories, passed down through the family or what not, others were lame-o graduation presents given to children of parents with a lot more $ than mine. Mine was, of course, an Opel.

To truely appreciate the story you need a little more background information. First off, I grew up in SD, where until some time in the early 90's a child with a rural address could get a restricted (to daytime hours only) drivers license at the ripe old age of 14. You also need to know that my Father was at one point a high school shop teacher and at other points ran his own foreign auto repair business, so there were always cars around as well as the tools to work on them. Even at age 5 when I discovered that a borrowed crescent wrench could successfully disassemble a tricycle in a single afternoon, it was obvious that the tools fell easily into my hands. (Dad did the right thing there, by the way, insisting I put the tricycle back together, by myself, and make everything work before he would get me a real bicycle.) So, at age 14 I was waiting in line for the magic picture to be taken that allowed me to become a dangerous weapon of automobile carnage.

Shortly thereafter, my Father and I went to the first farm auction of the spring season. If you're from rural America you've surely been to one of these events: men clad in overalls milling about, shaking, prodding, and abusing everything they can touch to decide if they really want to bid on anything. Some days the bidding is furious, and the prices reach obscene levels, other times you get just what you needed at pennies on the dollar. This was a pretty middle of the road auction, and there were a couple of farm trucks dad was interested in and a silly '74 Opel Manta all by itself off in the corner. I thought the Opel was sort of neat, and my Dad made some comment off-hand about how he had had one and thought it was a pretty decent car overall.

When they got to the little Opel, the bidding started at $200. With no bites the auctioneer dropped the first bid to $150, then $100, then $75, then $50, then $25, and at that point I couldn't take it any more and I forced my Father to bid on my behalf. "Twenty-five, going once, going twice, any other bidders?" and an old codger stepped up with a $30 bid. Drat! Well, how about $35? "Thirty-five, going once, twice, sold!"

And just like that I was a 14 year old driver who owned my own car. Sure it "needed a clutch" and the "starter didn't always work" but it was mine! We waited until the end of the auction to pay for our things, loaded up all the little stuff in the back of Dad's pickup, and freed the tow strap from it's usual hiding place behind the seat in the cab. Dad and I were expert tow strap operators, having successfully covered several hundred miles in several cars over the years, and the 11 miles home was going to be no big chore, as long as the brakes worked in the Opel. We waited for the crowd to disperse a bit, the proceded to start the trip home with my new treasure in tow. Everything went pretty well until Dad stopped about 3/4 of a mile from the house and climbed out of the pickup.

"How's it feel, sloppy steering, brakes OK?"
"No, good brakes, seems to be fine."
"You know I'm not going to let you tow your first car home, don't you? Besides the principle of the thing your Mother would kill me for dragging it home. We need to see if we can get it to start and you can drive it on in or we might as well keep going to the junk yard."
"Uh, OK I guess."
"Let's pour some gas in the tank and down the carb, then you drop the clutch and well see if we can't pull start it."

And we did. And it did start. And I drove it on into the farm and up on a set of ramps. We then found out that the "bad clutch" was really a case of all 4 bolts that hold the tranny to the bell-housing being MIA. Four bolts were promptly scrounged, with 3 different sized heads but the right threads, and the problem fixed. Then the car was re-started, backed down the ramps and taken for it's proper "maiden voyage" that evening as darkness fell, just me and my Father. Sure the tranny had bad syncros between third and fourth and would need to be replaced with a junk yard one for $50. Sure the starter eventually did give up the ghost and require a $15 junk yard replacement. Sure I spent countless hours waxing and polishing to try and get the car back to it's former glory. But it also got me to and from work that whole summer with 28mpg and a ride that was the envy of everyone who drove it.

That $100 car was my introduction to all the things that endear old cars to the hearts of gearheads everywhere. It ran good, handled better, needed more love than it should have, kept my fingers mostly dirty, and introduced me to the feeling of freedom that has characterized the personal automobile from the very begining. I became mobile that summer, the world shrank, and 2000 miles later I was a changed man.