Heart strings
During the first half of my Junior year of High School I was holding down three jobs while attending High School full time. At the time the law stipulated that a minor was not allowed to work more than 25 hours a week while still in school, but since the different jobs never talked to each other they could all maintain plausible deniability. I started my day around 5am with a paper route, @110 papers on weekdays, 135 on Sunday, probably 35 blocks or so. This was finished up by 7am, so I could go to work at the kitchen in the Middle School, initially doing their stockroom chores, then basic food prep once I got things in the stockroom running smoothly. After school I would put in another 30-45 minutes at the High School kitchen cleaning and mopping, basic dishes and such. By 5pm I would be over at one of the local supermarkets working in their bakery/deli/cafe until it closed up at 9pm.
Why is all this important, and how does it relate to cars? At the start of the school year I was driving a 1972 VW Super Beetle, but as the weather turned it got replaced with a fully loaded 1981 Ford Granada on loan from my Dad. Later the Granada made way for a 1974 AMC Matador, one of my favorite cars to drive to this day but terrible on fuel, then eventually to the pinnacle of that year, a 1973 Opel Manta.
This Opel was significant because I was only the second owner of the car. It belonged to a local guy who had taken it apart to restore it and had somehow never finished up the work. During the years post dis assembly the poor guy divorced his wife and when she kicked him out he didn't have room to take the car with him. The wife worked with me at the High School and after a couple months it somehow got brought up in conversation and the car was given to me, as in free. Thinking back, it was my very first free car.
This particular woman had a daughter a couple years behind me in school, and truth be told I liked the mother so much I always sort of hoped the daughter and I would hit it off, but we never really managed to revolve into the same circle. I would work with this woman again a few years later at another job, and she would work with my Mother for a while after that, and there was certainly the potential for a close knit couple of families, but it never really blossomed. For the time being, though, we were friends, the mother and I, and she gave me a free car at the ripe old age of 16.
Now the car had been partially disassembled, but it was in remarkably good shape. Hardly a speck of rust to be found, paint still shiny and glossy, just no interior and non-running because, well, it had been partially disassembled. I managed to wire it up enough to get it running again, and my parent's gave me a new muffler installed by the local muffler shop for my birthday that year. (It was a $28 muffler, and another $25 to install with some pipe, total was $53 I didn't have for whatever reason.) I installed a pair of bucket seats from a car that happened to be sitting around the farm, and not much else, and started driving it into the second semester of the school year.
That semester I dropped the paper route and went down to part time at school so I could attend college part time as well. While taking four classes at the High school I was also taking two at the local University because at the time my school didn't offer AP classes. I remember getting and paying my first college tuition bill, $45 a credit hour plus another $48 or so an hour in fees and misc. Over $900 out of pocket, cash money, for a 16-year old, back when minimum wage was barely $3 an hour. In reflection, those #s work out as a bit frightening: Figure I was taking home after taxes and SS about $1.85 an hour, that's almost 500 hours of work spent on college classes by a teenager. I'm so much lazier now.
Now parking at the University was then and continues to be now a terrible chore. One class was in the middle of the day, so I had to get to the college, park, get to class, attend the hour of class, get back to the car, then get back to the high school all in under 140 minutes. As college students are wont to do, sometimes this meant I had to get creative with where I parked, and one fine spring day it bit me squarely in the bottom.
I had parked behind the main business building on campus, which had a single lane driveway out to the street. To the left of the driveway were two "motorcycle only" parking spaces then one "compact car only" space to ensure that there would be visibility for cars leaving the driveway. On this particular day there was a pickup and a full-sized van parked in the motorcycle spots, and I couldn't see around them. I waited, impatiently, for an opening, then goosed the little Rallye out into traffic. Unfortunately the gap I was shooting into was already occupied, by my insurance agent's secretary.
The Opel crumbled like a trooper, water pump skewering the radiator, lower valance piercing the oil filter, fender collapsing in on the tire. The poor little guy bled all his fluids out right there on the asphalt. We had been together for less than four months, this car and I, and it was all over. It would stay parked out at the farm for the next 6 years, until at my ex-wife's insistence it was sent to the scrap yard. It still had the new muffler on it when it was crushed, not really new anymore, but still very new to me.
Now I have another Manta, new to me just a month ago, that's the same color, and about the same year. This one's a bit fancier, with a factory sunroof and cloth interior, but when I look at it it looks the same to me. I hope it fares better than it's heart-sake.
Why is all this important, and how does it relate to cars? At the start of the school year I was driving a 1972 VW Super Beetle, but as the weather turned it got replaced with a fully loaded 1981 Ford Granada on loan from my Dad. Later the Granada made way for a 1974 AMC Matador, one of my favorite cars to drive to this day but terrible on fuel, then eventually to the pinnacle of that year, a 1973 Opel Manta.
This Opel was significant because I was only the second owner of the car. It belonged to a local guy who had taken it apart to restore it and had somehow never finished up the work. During the years post dis assembly the poor guy divorced his wife and when she kicked him out he didn't have room to take the car with him. The wife worked with me at the High School and after a couple months it somehow got brought up in conversation and the car was given to me, as in free. Thinking back, it was my very first free car.
This particular woman had a daughter a couple years behind me in school, and truth be told I liked the mother so much I always sort of hoped the daughter and I would hit it off, but we never really managed to revolve into the same circle. I would work with this woman again a few years later at another job, and she would work with my Mother for a while after that, and there was certainly the potential for a close knit couple of families, but it never really blossomed. For the time being, though, we were friends, the mother and I, and she gave me a free car at the ripe old age of 16.
Now the car had been partially disassembled, but it was in remarkably good shape. Hardly a speck of rust to be found, paint still shiny and glossy, just no interior and non-running because, well, it had been partially disassembled. I managed to wire it up enough to get it running again, and my parent's gave me a new muffler installed by the local muffler shop for my birthday that year. (It was a $28 muffler, and another $25 to install with some pipe, total was $53 I didn't have for whatever reason.) I installed a pair of bucket seats from a car that happened to be sitting around the farm, and not much else, and started driving it into the second semester of the school year.
That semester I dropped the paper route and went down to part time at school so I could attend college part time as well. While taking four classes at the High school I was also taking two at the local University because at the time my school didn't offer AP classes. I remember getting and paying my first college tuition bill, $45 a credit hour plus another $48 or so an hour in fees and misc. Over $900 out of pocket, cash money, for a 16-year old, back when minimum wage was barely $3 an hour. In reflection, those #s work out as a bit frightening: Figure I was taking home after taxes and SS about $1.85 an hour, that's almost 500 hours of work spent on college classes by a teenager. I'm so much lazier now.
Now parking at the University was then and continues to be now a terrible chore. One class was in the middle of the day, so I had to get to the college, park, get to class, attend the hour of class, get back to the car, then get back to the high school all in under 140 minutes. As college students are wont to do, sometimes this meant I had to get creative with where I parked, and one fine spring day it bit me squarely in the bottom.
I had parked behind the main business building on campus, which had a single lane driveway out to the street. To the left of the driveway were two "motorcycle only" parking spaces then one "compact car only" space to ensure that there would be visibility for cars leaving the driveway. On this particular day there was a pickup and a full-sized van parked in the motorcycle spots, and I couldn't see around them. I waited, impatiently, for an opening, then goosed the little Rallye out into traffic. Unfortunately the gap I was shooting into was already occupied, by my insurance agent's secretary.
The Opel crumbled like a trooper, water pump skewering the radiator, lower valance piercing the oil filter, fender collapsing in on the tire. The poor little guy bled all his fluids out right there on the asphalt. We had been together for less than four months, this car and I, and it was all over. It would stay parked out at the farm for the next 6 years, until at my ex-wife's insistence it was sent to the scrap yard. It still had the new muffler on it when it was crushed, not really new anymore, but still very new to me.
Now I have another Manta, new to me just a month ago, that's the same color, and about the same year. This one's a bit fancier, with a factory sunroof and cloth interior, but when I look at it it looks the same to me. I hope it fares better than it's heart-sake.
posted by Stephen at 8:21 PM
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