kjpepper | A story about a car

It was a 1983 Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham Coupe. Leather seats, maroon exterior. The thing was the size of the titanic, had two doors that weighed practiacally a ton each, a sun roof, and a digital radio.

Mom hated it. Actually, I hated it too, because it stank. It was probably a combination of new car, plus new leather plus I don't know, gasoline? probably not, cause if you smelled gas that probably meant something was wrong, but I know I could not stand the way that car smelled and was rather vociferous about expressing this. Alas, I was six years old and there were limits to whatever power my pernicious form of brattiness held. Instead I sucked it up and learned to never breathe through my nose when in it. I am not kidding. For nearly the entire 13 years we had that car, I breathed through my mouth until I got out. Dry tongue and chapped lips be damned. It was so ingrained into me that I didn't even breathe through my nose when I fell asleep in it. I was a little surprised when one day, well into my teenage years I accidentally took a breath or two through my nose and was rather astounded that the smell wasn't nearly as bad as I remembered, nor did it kill me, like I was afraid it would when I was a kid.

Really the car was Dad's idea and, since he had the money, it was his decision. So over the course of a few days, we would go to the west side to one of the bigger dealerships in New York, Potamkin Cadillac (not to be confused with the Russian battleship) and see a nice man with a big moustache named Mr. Foster. And one day we went there and we brought home the stinky car, much to the displeasure of everyone except Dad, which was really unfair. Dad never had a license. He just bought that car because he wanted to be seen being driven around in it. Mom wanted a nice normal sized car, maybe an Oldsmobile like the car we had previously. But no, Dad had to get all high falootin with his bad self.

That car had problems from jump. First of all, top of the line Cadillac + neighborhood in Brooklyn only a couple of steps up from the ghetto at the time = hey look, broken window, stolen radio. Again. (It didn't help that this damn car had a digital radio, which was a big deal in 1983. Actually it had a digital temperature control that mechanics could use as a car diagnostic if you pressed some of the buttons in a certain order - it would spit out a number that corresponded to what was wrong with the car. But THAT never got stolen.) We had a burglar alarm, but it was really only good for scaring kids off of sitting on the bumpers. Mom used the use the alarm remote to set it off from the living room window, where she would stand and watch the car. You heard me. She'd watch the car. Actually, until the car was old enough for her not to give a shit, she made swinging by the front windows of the house on occasion to check on the car part of her daily routine. It made getting a parking space challenging. Not only did she have to find a space on our one way street big enough for the boat sized car, but it had to be in line of sight from the house. There were days when Mom would circle the block for an hour looking for a space. What made this even more of a pain in the ass was that New York has this charming little institution called Alternate Side of the Street Parking - Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, you have to make sure your car is parked on the correct side of the street so the street sweepers can go through. Not fun. On top of that, especially towards the end of its tenure with us, the car was beset with electrical problems a go-go. (All digital it may have been, but it was still new tech back then and quite with the buggy, especially when there were burglar alarms installed. When we got the Stinger - you know "wow wow wow wow, yooyooyooyoo, yaaaaaaaaaaaawweeeeeee yaaaaaaaaaweeeee, yooooooooooooooooooooooooooooop yooooooooooooooooooooooop, enghegheghegh" repeat ad nauseum - we had the Service Soon light on almost every other week. Man that car ran real sweet after Mom had that annoying thing taken out.) Still, it did have some cool little things... There was this pleasing little chime that sounded that reminded you to seat belt when you put in the key - I used to try to get my seatbelt on before the fourth and last chiime. Quite a feat when accomplished, especially when you have six year old coordination and a tendancy to pinch your fingers in the belt buckle.

Still, after a while we just sort of got used to the elephant parked in front of the house. I mean, Mom hated that thing until the day she traded it in for the Oldsmobile she'd wanted in the first place the year before I went to college, but eventually it did go from this crused thing to just being Mom's car. I even eventually gave it a name - Murgatroyd. No one else called it that, but Mom found it amusing.

Mom loved to drive. When I was little enough to not have anywhere to be during the day, she would get me up at four in the morning, bundle me up, strap me in (at first in my booster seat, later just in the back) and take off for the open road. One summer, apparently when my sister wasn't doing so hot in college, we drove all the way to Chicago to spend the summer with her and Anucha. We would drive to New Jersey a lot to visit my Aunt Stanlyn. If Anucha had an away game within a four hour drive, Mom would make the trip. And my favorite, we'd drive all the way to Cincinatti to visit Grandma Ruth every summer. By second grade I could tell you, quite accurately, how to drive from Brooklyn to Ohio, where to stop for food (I still have VERY fond memories of Bob Evans' chicken soup), and what was a good place to stop for the night if you'd been driving all day (Youngstown, OH). I was very acquainted with the dullness of I-80 through Pennsylvania, where there was nothing on but country music (which unfortunately my mother liked), or on the occasion when we made the trip sans radio (due to it being stolen yet again) Mom and I would sing stuff to pass the time. Mostly 40s standards ("Ac-ceeeeeeeeen-tuate the positive, eliiiiiiiiminate the negative, latch ooooooooooooooon to the affirmative, don't mess with Mr. In-Between") and the goofy "My Gal's a Corker" song. I would get excited when I started seeing Sohio gas stations and Krogers supermarkets because then I knew we were getting pretty close to Grandma's, plus there was one particular exit that was completely made of rumblestrip, which we just didn't have in NY. All that time I spent getting acquainted with the back seat of the car, the unexpected items found in the deep pockets behind the seats, road maps, old books that I would never again take into the house because they smelled like That Car, how the reading lights worked in the back (Mom never let me turn them on cause she was afraid I'd leave them on and then the battery would run down, so I would anyway and get yelled at), and eventually discovering the two red LEDs on the top of the rear window that indicated if the back directionals were working. I was fascinated with the bump in the middle of the floor and made up all sorts of wild stories about why it was there until I eventually figured out it was because the car had rear wheel drive. And I loved playing with the cigarette ashtrays, even though no one ever used them, they were just fun things to play with.

Later on, Mom would drive me to school in Manhattan almost every morning in that beast, and pick me up most days as well. The security guards at UNIS all knew her, cause she was the "Big woman with the big car." (You couldn't get that car mixed up with anyone elses, really.) One morning she teased me about lying down in the backseat on the way because she was convinced people were seeing her driving around in her car talking and laughing to apparently herself. God forbid she look crazy. :) I think soon after I convinced her I was old enough to sit up front anyway, so we never really had that problem. Of course sitting up front was a whole new world cause I had access to the radio, and thus subjected Mom to Z100 every morning. Mom became very acquainted with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alanis Morrisette (whom she detested. A lot) and Dave Matthews Band (she loved herself some "Ants Marching") in those years. Really I had a lot of defining musical moments in that car, because Mom ran the radio a lot. Much of the time it was WBLS (one of the "black" stations), sometimes it was Z100, the "beautiful music" station before it got converted to Latin radio (and even for a while afterwards) and occasionally when I didn't kick up a stink, the country station before it changed over to WKTU and started playing techno. Or as one station manager put it when Mom called to find out what the hell had happened to her daily fix of Judds, "The kind of music that makes you slit your wrists." (Techno makes you do that?). Also I don't know if anyone's ever noticed, but I tend to be very heavy on car doors... I slam 9 times out of ten unless told to be careful. I mentioned those freaking coupe doors weighed about a ton each... it used to take me all of my puny strength to either haul one shut or shove it closed, because really, a car that gigantic was never meant to have two doors. I'm seriously amazed they didn't fall off the hinges. So I still tend to default with using all of my strength to shut a car door.

Mom never had an accident in that car. Ever. Actually, I don't think Mom had ever been in an accident, period. Or gotten a speeding ticket. She prided herself on being a "defensive driver." Oh, there was the time we were on the way to Grandma's and we got pulled over just past the Delaware Water Gap because she'd forgotten about her inspection sticker (she was horrified by this and we drove back to NJ to fix it), and the time when we had a tire blowout getting onto Rt 85 going to my sister's house. Or the really scary time when the car actually skidded and spun in several pretty circles on Park Circle on the way to school one winter. And the time we were stuck in traffic waiting to get into the Holland Tunnel, and got rearended by Stan because no one in the car was paying attention to him honking right behind us (but EVERYONE was honking! it's how New Yorkers drive when they're feeling bitchy.) and it was a last ditch effort to get our attention. (it was just a tap on the bumper, but it made Mom scream.) She had rather colorful road rage - until I got older it was the only time I would ever hear her swear in front of me. Usually when getting cut off by someone that had forgotten to use a turn signal. Which happens more than you might like on the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.

My favorite memories though were just driving with Mom to the city or around Brooklyn... long ago, before they blacktopped them, both the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridge had that nubbly metal surface that made that low pitched "ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo" noise when you crossed them. I was outraged when they covered that with asphalt. Really, it was probably because that surface is slippery, but try talking sense to an eight year old about such things - as far as I was concerned they ruined the bridge that year. I used to try to make Mom go over the Manhattan bridge instead because it still had that surfacing, plus if you drove on the lower level you could see the subway stations. Mom, bless her, sometimes indulged me with that as a special treat on the way home. I say bless her because getting on that bridge from the FDR drive was a bitch of twisty streets in Chinatown, which I had no concept of at the time. But the absolute bestest was going to the car wash. I mentioned that car had a sun roof, which Mom never used or opened unless I nagged her about it. (I thought it was cool. Mom saw it as just another thing that she didn't need.) But she'd always slide back the cover (not the sun roof, that would be stupid) so I could watch all the sudsy goodness from all available windows, and then we'd come out with a nice sparkly car.

I mentioned Mom finally traded it in. The thing that surprised me when she did was that I was actually sorry about it. That car had grown on me as I had grown up, and later on, Mom had been known to grumble about there not being quite as much trunk or backseat space in her new still rather large but nowhere near as big Olds. Plus it was gone right after I learned to breathe in it like a normal person. Very very occasionally I'll still see an early eighties edition maroon Caddy and I'll turn around, but I've only seen two or three cars since that looked exactly like Moms. (Most of the ones I do see were the 4 door Fleetwood Sedans.) And that includes on eBay. I just saw an auction for one that closed at $8K, coming from somewhere in Long Island. Makes me wonder. It's probably not the same car - that's probably long melted for scrap, but still. Long Island is awful close to Brooklyn...