ChemicalBeauty
Bluelighter
Originally posted by Web:
Get yer damned mind out of the gutter, I'm not talking about that kind of oral!
[ 31 December 2001: Message edited by: Web ]
Oh. Then this thread is waaaaay to long for me to read.
Bringing back the Oral Traditions
- Thread starter Web
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beanergrl
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2000
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- 3,991
i dont know what story to tell. i dont want anyone crying like i have been through the thread..
My whole life my father told me when i turned 16 he would let me pick out any car i wanted provided i pay for the insurance. I think i was around 6 then and i never let him forget it.
Mork & Mindy was a big show then , and i really wanted two things when i grew up. One was to move to Boulder (where they lived) and the other was to drive a jeep just like Mindy. Oh, i coveted her black jeep. I often would describe it to my dad.
What i didnt know was how my father was hoping by the time i turned 16 my love for jeeps would be replaced with something a little more to his liking.
Three months before the big sweet sixteen i started to look for some jeeps. It was 1987 and the renegade was just introduced. I saw some brand new ones for about $16,000 maybe, i dont remember. But i came home and told my dad that he could purchase me one right down the road. I was totally unaware that $16,000 was alot of money. I probably equated it to about $2000. I was 16 and never really had a concept of value of things intill i got older. My dad just laughed when he told me i was not getting a new jeep. He told me we'd look for a CJ-7 , maybe even a 5. Okay, whatever i want my jeep.
I took it upon myself to buy some autotraders and finally my dad and i set out to look at some. At every one we looked at there was something wrong with it according to him. This continued for weeks. Finally, after one day of taking me to look at a mailtruck, a carmaghia, and a volkswagon thing, which he said were all better then a jeep i called an end to our day and made him take me home where i went crying up to my room. My mom came in and i asked her what was his problem. She said "Oh, Staci, i cant believe you cant figure it out. He does not want you to have a jeep. He thinks they are too dangerous. In order to get a nice car out of him youre going to have to pick something he likes".
So what does dad like? What did dad have to sell off his prized collection of to please my mom? Antique British (european classic ) sports cars. Austin Healey, Fiats, Triumph Spitfires, Alphas,& MGs. I decided i was going for the MG because of its cuteness and it was designed in part by Ferdinand Porsche for Morris Garage. When i told my dad that i decided on an MG he was overjoyed. We spent the next 2 months going to collectors shows and private dealers to find that perfect car for me. Which alas we did.
I believe it was a 1979 the last year they made the MGB. Mint condition, leather seats.I wanted to paint her cherry red but dad said it had to stay butterscotch, or british racing gold as he called it- or i could paint it british racing green, but not red. She was a snappy little thing. Before i could get my license my father made me drive him around in it for about 500 miles. Needless to say i made sure we took a few hour long trips down A1A to boost my miles up quickly. Oh, it was also a stick. My mother refused to learn to drive a stick and thus my dad was determined i learn on one before an automatic. He would often groan when i would grind the gears while shifting. If you ask me that right there should of been a sign of things to come. Wherever we went we rode with the top down and i had a pageboy hat that i deemed my driving hat. When we drove downtown i would get catcalls and they would say things like "hey,baby, whose the old man", much to my dads disliking.
Finally the day had come where i passed my test and was allowed to go out on my own. 16 and free , what a feeling. The car and i , we had some good times. There was the time i thought a curb was a ramp and tried to jump it. Lucky for me dad didnt notice the damage (dings and scratches) as it was up under the car. Then there was the time i tried to drive it on the beach and got it stuck and my friend and i had to walk 3 miles in the dark to call my boyfriend who had a truck to come pull us out. Dad didnt know about that either. He did know though when he passed me on the road once and i had my bestfriend in the passenger seat and three other people in the back. (there really is no backseat in an MG and they were actually sitting across the back part of the car with their legs in the back seat.) Why i thought this was safe i dont know. I just really wanted all my friends to go to the beach and i had the only car. He pulled me over and promptly told me to go home and park my car while he drove my friends back to their houses. Then there was a bad time when i was going to work at my hostess job at Po Folks and we had to dress up as it was Halloween. I was a bunny. Its pouring down rain and i'm on my way to work. I pull up at a light and i'm waiting for it to change when i see the car behind me is not stopping. He slides right into me and takes off. Now somehow my seat had broke from this and i couldnt drive because i couldnt shift the clutch without leaning back. I had to get out and walk down the highway in my bunnysuit to use the phone leaving my sweet car stranded.. It was long before cell phones. I also had to drive my brother to school since we went to the same highschool. I thought he was sent by my parents to na rc and spy on me though and to make sure i made it to school so i would drive really bad to scare him so he wouldnt want to ride with me. One day i was bad driving on him and i almost lost control and part of my little car didnt stop in time and we flew partially under a school bus. That prompted him to tell my parents about this bad driving incident right away and i lost my driving privledges for two weeks. He never did want to ride with me again.
All these memories of my car and how long do you think i had it? Well, my birthday is in april and i believe the morning of that fateful day fell in November. So, 7 months maybe. One morning i went out to start my car up for school and the noise was so load that it woke my father up. Clank,clank,clank! "Turn it off, turn it off", yelled my seminaked father as he ran out of the house. "What is it dad!?", i was almost crying. "well",he huffed, "from the sound of it it sounds as if you didnt put oil or water in your car". "what!" i cried for real,"you didnt tell me i had to put oil and water in my car". He was crushed.
To wrap it up, rebuilding a motor for a discontinued, limited edition, imported car is not quick, easy, nor cheap. After the car was finished i was never allowed to drive it again in fact my dad sold it.
They bought me an old green toyota or something with an a.m. radio. I thought i was too good for that so i refused to drive it. (*stop, right here a minute, i realize i was a really horrible,horrible, brat and im embarrassed at how i was ) Then they gave me my fathers old truck which was only a few years old but it was a little isuzu which i loathed so i refused it too. So they offered me no more cars again and i spent the rest of my years at home borrowing my mothers car and getting a ride to school,( by this time from my brother who was driving the isuzu now), and walking.
It took my dad and i many years before we could calmly discuss the car. He takes full credit for its death. He says he never did teach me about oil and stuff ,he just assumed i knew. (Hello, dad, its me clueless. You know the one who thought sixteen grand was pocket change?) He did say however that if he would of just listened to me and bought me that jeep it would probably still be running today.
I know its not a very meaningful sounding story on screen, but i hold the memories of finding the car with my dad, and buying stuff for it with him, and most importantly, my drives with my father in it that were very precious to me. Days long gone and never coming back. But i hold those memories and they are all good. Very good.
P.S. when the kiddies are all grown, i will buy my own jeep, dammit.
[ 02 February 2003: Message edited by: beanergrl ]
My whole life my father told me when i turned 16 he would let me pick out any car i wanted provided i pay for the insurance. I think i was around 6 then and i never let him forget it.
Mork & Mindy was a big show then , and i really wanted two things when i grew up. One was to move to Boulder (where they lived) and the other was to drive a jeep just like Mindy. Oh, i coveted her black jeep. I often would describe it to my dad.
What i didnt know was how my father was hoping by the time i turned 16 my love for jeeps would be replaced with something a little more to his liking.
Three months before the big sweet sixteen i started to look for some jeeps. It was 1987 and the renegade was just introduced. I saw some brand new ones for about $16,000 maybe, i dont remember. But i came home and told my dad that he could purchase me one right down the road. I was totally unaware that $16,000 was alot of money. I probably equated it to about $2000. I was 16 and never really had a concept of value of things intill i got older. My dad just laughed when he told me i was not getting a new jeep. He told me we'd look for a CJ-7 , maybe even a 5. Okay, whatever i want my jeep.
I took it upon myself to buy some autotraders and finally my dad and i set out to look at some. At every one we looked at there was something wrong with it according to him. This continued for weeks. Finally, after one day of taking me to look at a mailtruck, a carmaghia, and a volkswagon thing, which he said were all better then a jeep i called an end to our day and made him take me home where i went crying up to my room. My mom came in and i asked her what was his problem. She said "Oh, Staci, i cant believe you cant figure it out. He does not want you to have a jeep. He thinks they are too dangerous. In order to get a nice car out of him youre going to have to pick something he likes".
So what does dad like? What did dad have to sell off his prized collection of to please my mom? Antique British (european classic ) sports cars. Austin Healey, Fiats, Triumph Spitfires, Alphas,& MGs. I decided i was going for the MG because of its cuteness and it was designed in part by Ferdinand Porsche for Morris Garage. When i told my dad that i decided on an MG he was overjoyed. We spent the next 2 months going to collectors shows and private dealers to find that perfect car for me. Which alas we did.
I believe it was a 1979 the last year they made the MGB. Mint condition, leather seats.I wanted to paint her cherry red but dad said it had to stay butterscotch, or british racing gold as he called it- or i could paint it british racing green, but not red. She was a snappy little thing. Before i could get my license my father made me drive him around in it for about 500 miles. Needless to say i made sure we took a few hour long trips down A1A to boost my miles up quickly. Oh, it was also a stick. My mother refused to learn to drive a stick and thus my dad was determined i learn on one before an automatic. He would often groan when i would grind the gears while shifting. If you ask me that right there should of been a sign of things to come. Wherever we went we rode with the top down and i had a pageboy hat that i deemed my driving hat. When we drove downtown i would get catcalls and they would say things like "hey,baby, whose the old man", much to my dads disliking.
Finally the day had come where i passed my test and was allowed to go out on my own. 16 and free , what a feeling. The car and i , we had some good times. There was the time i thought a curb was a ramp and tried to jump it. Lucky for me dad didnt notice the damage (dings and scratches) as it was up under the car. Then there was the time i tried to drive it on the beach and got it stuck and my friend and i had to walk 3 miles in the dark to call my boyfriend who had a truck to come pull us out. Dad didnt know about that either. He did know though when he passed me on the road once and i had my bestfriend in the passenger seat and three other people in the back. (there really is no backseat in an MG and they were actually sitting across the back part of the car with their legs in the back seat.) Why i thought this was safe i dont know. I just really wanted all my friends to go to the beach and i had the only car. He pulled me over and promptly told me to go home and park my car while he drove my friends back to their houses. Then there was a bad time when i was going to work at my hostess job at Po Folks and we had to dress up as it was Halloween. I was a bunny. Its pouring down rain and i'm on my way to work. I pull up at a light and i'm waiting for it to change when i see the car behind me is not stopping. He slides right into me and takes off. Now somehow my seat had broke from this and i couldnt drive because i couldnt shift the clutch without leaning back. I had to get out and walk down the highway in my bunnysuit to use the phone leaving my sweet car stranded.. It was long before cell phones. I also had to drive my brother to school since we went to the same highschool. I thought he was sent by my parents to na rc and spy on me though and to make sure i made it to school so i would drive really bad to scare him so he wouldnt want to ride with me. One day i was bad driving on him and i almost lost control and part of my little car didnt stop in time and we flew partially under a school bus. That prompted him to tell my parents about this bad driving incident right away and i lost my driving privledges for two weeks. He never did want to ride with me again.
All these memories of my car and how long do you think i had it? Well, my birthday is in april and i believe the morning of that fateful day fell in November. So, 7 months maybe. One morning i went out to start my car up for school and the noise was so load that it woke my father up. Clank,clank,clank! "Turn it off, turn it off", yelled my seminaked father as he ran out of the house. "What is it dad!?", i was almost crying. "well",he huffed, "from the sound of it it sounds as if you didnt put oil or water in your car". "what!" i cried for real,"you didnt tell me i had to put oil and water in my car". He was crushed.
To wrap it up, rebuilding a motor for a discontinued, limited edition, imported car is not quick, easy, nor cheap. After the car was finished i was never allowed to drive it again in fact my dad sold it.
They bought me an old green toyota or something with an a.m. radio. I thought i was too good for that so i refused to drive it. (*stop, right here a minute, i realize i was a really horrible,horrible, brat and im embarrassed at how i was ) Then they gave me my fathers old truck which was only a few years old but it was a little isuzu which i loathed so i refused it too. So they offered me no more cars again and i spent the rest of my years at home borrowing my mothers car and getting a ride to school,( by this time from my brother who was driving the isuzu now), and walking.
It took my dad and i many years before we could calmly discuss the car. He takes full credit for its death. He says he never did teach me about oil and stuff ,he just assumed i knew. (Hello, dad, its me clueless. You know the one who thought sixteen grand was pocket change?) He did say however that if he would of just listened to me and bought me that jeep it would probably still be running today.
I know its not a very meaningful sounding story on screen, but i hold the memories of finding the car with my dad, and buying stuff for it with him, and most importantly, my drives with my father in it that were very precious to me. Days long gone and never coming back. But i hold those memories and they are all good. Very good.
P.S. when the kiddies are all grown, i will buy my own jeep, dammit.
[ 02 February 2003: Message edited by: beanergrl ]
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