Thursday, March 26, 2015

... like the corners of my mind...

Somehow in the my trip around the interwebs today, I found this picture (it was in the "10 worst cars of all time" display).  And I thought- Wow, that is the car where I learned to drive.  For those of you familiar with the story of my father's ashes; yes, this is where he put the cigarette pack on the hump.
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This could been ours, if the back of the car had a Mickey Mouse decal to cover the f-word scratched into the panel (before we bought it).
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It is probably the best little car to learnt to drive in.  It has the pick up of wounded gazelle, the handling of a dyslexic hippo and you can't enough speed to hurt yourself too badly in an accident.  Of course, if you get lightly rear-ended, it goes up in flames - but that just teaches you the value of the rear view mirror.
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When I make fun of my Pinto youth, Ed brings his own story into the can-you-top-this story.  I forget what he learned to drive in (a civic circa 1970s I think).  But his family had one of these beasts.
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I have to admit, when it came out with it's acres of glass, I was both terrified and awed.  In retrospect, the AMC Pacer doesn't look that horrible. And probably not as impractical in Wisconsin as in LA, where all that glass conspired to melt the plastic dashboard when you parked it in the sun.
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I love the older woman's sensible hair and polyester pants suit with matching long sleeve blouse.  Her tense stance and forced smile scream, "Honey, your not marrying someone who is proud of this."