When I was a very little girl, my grandmother had an Oldsmobile convertible. (This was the same grandma who was a former flapper and tried to teach me to crochet three hundred times.) The convertible was a dark teal, with cream interior and rag top. See a resemblance? I dropped my knitting down in a big lump yesterday, and thought, holy cow, it's grandma's convertible.
After my grandmother drove it around for years (many years, beginning before I was born), she sold it to my dad, and my dad drove it until it eventually died a noble death in a car fire when I was maybe ten years old.
We took most of our early family trips in that car; Niagra Falls, Florida, all over the State of Ohio, to see family in Indiana. All of it was done, rocketing around in the convertible. In the summer, Dad would put the top down and we'd all pile in with our friends and cousins and go off to New Baltimore for home-made ice cream. In the back seat, on the floor, were small lights that I assume were to help people get in and out; when I was very small I remember laying on the floor in the dark, on a long trip, coloring with crayons by the light of the floor markers.
Ah, yeah, good stuff.
When I was a teenager, a friend of mine had another large, land-yacht type convertible, and we would do the same thing; drive around on summer Sundays with the top down, gathering up anyone who was home and going out for ice cream. My father said, years later, that he took great comfort in that - he figured if we were able to take such joy in the small things in life like ice cream on a Sunday afternoon, he worried a little less about us getting into big trouble.
Isn't it crazy how memory works?
4 comments:
It really is odd how some things just make a memory happen. And once you think of it, you can't seem to get it out of your head...but it sounds like this was a pleasant string of memories!
That jumper will always be about the memory of your grandmother's car now. It's like your sub conscious chose it for you for that reason.
I love the lights in the back. What a romantic notion.
What a lovely stroll down memory lane! Thanks for taking us along.
Okay--that's a lovely memory... (I actually read it yesterday, and had to think about it for a while...) My family has a history of putting us in crap cars as young-uns, so when those pesky gas-station poles jump up and got us (or gates over zoos, or big honkin' boulders or McDonald's trash cans etc.) there was no shame in driving a car that looked like a sock full of rocks. And because my dad picked cars that would run for freakin' ever, we would end up with the world's ugliest energizer bunny-mobile. (My sister had her first child right out of high school...she was driving him around in an old Rabbit that had no interior, no floor mats, and a passenger seat that was held in place with a milk carton. That thing would have run forever--it would have been chassis and an engine, but it would have been running.)
Anyway, I love your car memories...
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