I was scarred for life, years ago, as a spoiled-rotten, car-crazy 15-year-old teenager allegedly growing up in North Carolina and eagerly anticipating my 16th birthday and my due licensure as a motor-vehicle operator. I was already a very skillful driver. I just needed the license.
One day in November of 1961 my father brought home from the Oldsmobile dealership he partially owned a Hot-As-Hell metallic PINK 1962 “Starfire” 2-door coupe, with a wide satin-aluminum streak running along each side from nose to tail, a HUGE, thirsty V-8 engine with 4-barrel carb, dual exhausts with throaty rumble, bucket seats, console with “stick” shifter, tachometer, etc. Those accouterments were the automotive rage in the early 1960’s, and that car had ALL of them! I almost could not believe my good fortune that I would soon be driving around in that machine, arrogantly dismissing all the girls who would SURELY be desperate to ride around with ME!
Little did I know.
Each day my 16th birthday grew closer, and my slavering appetite got only larger. I pored over that beautiful, garish car constantly, washing it, waxing it, touching it, rubbing it, loving it, almost LICKING IT! I was CONVINCED that my father was drunk when he ordered the car, as NO ONE I knew had EVER had a metallic PINK automobile! I had never even SEEN one nor even HEARD of one!
Then my life crashed and burned.
Sometime in the Spring of 1962, just a few short months before my birthday in August, my father drove home one day in an Oldsmobile “98” 4-door sedan of the same year, the one being then driven by his business partner (and his son, who was a close friend of mine). I was heartbroken and crushed to learn that those guys had blithely “swapped” cars with each other, and that now my “friend” was going to be riding around in MY car, having raw, unprotected SEX with his hot girlfriend in the back seat of MY CAR! GOD-DAMMIT!
I DEMANDED to know WHY my father had GIVEN AWAY MY CAR? How dare he do so? Just before I was old enough to truly enjoy my unexpected good fortune? His pathetic reply was that he INSISTED on wearing his goddamned HAT while driving, and he could not comfortably wear his goddamned hat in the “Starfire,” so he preferred the boring old plain-vanilla metallic-silver-with-gray-upholstery Olds sedan that would accommodate his goddamned HAT! Then he warned me, in no uncertain terms, that I was NOT to bring the matter up again! He was mean as a snake, especially when drunk, and he was still bigger than I, so I had to back down, fuming silently!
My life was so OVER!
Meanwhile, my worst fears materialized as my “friend” drove around in MY STARFIRE with his hot girlfriend, and I was still walking and riding a bike. Goddammit, I was pissed off! I could not BELIEVE how screwed I was! Then, it got even worse. Someone (my “friend” or his father) trashed the pink “Starfire” then swapped it for another black-and-white “Starfire,” and my pink car disappeared, forever. Meanwhile, I eventually got my driver’s license and proceeded to tear through a soybean field one night driving way too fast and overshooting a STOP sign in that “98”! It had really bad brakes! That was not discovered, however, until long after my parents had moved to another town and I had already been "imprisoned" in a boarding school for several months! They never figured it out for sure!
I guess the boarding school was my punishment for threatening to have just too much fun with that Starfire!
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