Monday, August 19, 2013

Family cars

I was born in a car.  It was our first family car, a Ford Consul sedan from 1957 or so.  I was a long time getting born, so Mother took castor oil and had a bath.  When it finally happened, it happened so fast that Father didn't have time to get her to the hospital. (And we weren't far from the hospital, with only small-town traffic to deal with.) There was a bit of gossip about it at the time.  My parents only revealed this to me when I was 37.  Oh well, who wants to have been born in a hospital?

Our next car was a 1969 Chevrolet Brookwood station wagon.  It was better-suited than the Consul to vacations, and to our family of seven.  It had a door at the back that you could swing open horizontally.  It also had a cigarette lighter but we removed it to make room for a radio hookup.

In 1978 we got a Chevrolet Malibu sedan.  It had new-style seat belts, combining a shoulder belt with a lap belt.  Then in 1987 we got a Dodge Colt subcompact.  We took it to Scotland for a year.  Its licence plate started with the letters ANZ and someone from down under thought we were from Australia or New Zealand!

Our most recent car is a 2001 Mazda Miata.  We bought in on September 11 that year.  We've had it for twelve years, and we're going to give it up next month and not get a replacement. (Father does most of the driving, and he's now over eighty.) When this happens, we'll truly be city people.

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