Keepin’ up with the Jenkinses
That cute little vee-hickle in the photoooo is my little gold-colored Ford Fiesta. It’s an old-school Fiesta, vintage 1979. It was a pretty good little car but I think they are selling a fancier version nowadays.
The Fiesta wasn’t the first automotive vee-hickle I ever owned. That rather dubious honor belongs to an old pea-green Ford Pinto wagon. If you are old enough, you remember the kind. I think it was a 1974 and I “bought” it from my parental units when I was a college student. Let me tell you, it was just lovvvvverly traversing the I75 SUV Speedway to Sault Ste. Siberia in that thing in a snow storm. Or ice storm. Like the time zeee veeeeendsheeeeld viiiiiperrrr disintegrated 10 miles south of Gaylord. On the driver’s side. On top of the whole fish-tailing ice-driving thing, I could not see jack doodly. That was the Jurassic Age though and, back in the Jurassic Age, a lot of gas stations actually carried automobile parts and had employees who knew how to deal with them. I stopped at the old Amoco station just off exit 282 in Gaylord. I bought gas in the full-service lane and, when I told the attendant about the viiiiperrrrr, he went inside, grabbed a new one, replaced it quick as a wink. Didn’t charge me for the labor.
Anyway. I had the cute little gold Fiesta when I met the GG and, not too long after I started hangggggingggg around with him, he ditched his rickety old purple Gremlin (remember those?) and bought himself a new blue Fiesta.
That photooo was taken May 13, 1984, on M18, southbound from Houghton Lake. I was, lemme see, October, September, August, July, June, May… Three months pregnant with Elizilla. Or thereabouts. We were one week away from closing on this looooovvvvverrrllyyyyy landfill and we headed up to Houghton Lake, wanting to get away from our apartment and chill out a bit. Well. Chill out? I guess so! The next week, after we had closed on the landfill (and I made the GG cover up his sleazy-looking Shaky Jake tanktop before we transferred something like $8000 in cash from one bank to another), we went back up to Houghton Lake. That time? Shorts and t-shirts were in order. What do they say about the Great Lake State? If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes? Yes.
I won’t list all of the vee-hickles we have owned, at least not today (I’ve actually done it before, I think). We don’t buy new vee-hickles very often. Actually sometimes I wish we would buy them just a leeeeetle bit more often but I’m pretty happy with what we have right now, knock on wood. (2001 top-dollah Honda Accord EX-V6, 150K and going strong, knock on wood, 2008 Honda Civic SI, 6-speed manual, and 2005 Honda Civic EX that is on more or less permanent loan to Mouse.)
Is a new vee-hickle on the horizon for us? That depends on how you define “horizon”. In our case, imagine that you are standing on the south shore of Lake Superior looking out at the horizon. Our new vee-hickle, at about this point in time, is probably up there somewhere around Hudson Bay. If you don’t know your North American geography well or are too bored with this bunch of blather to google, that means it could be a while.
What are we thinking about getting? Well. All bets are off at this point but there is at least a bit of compulsion to keep up with the Jenkinses. 🙂
November 23rd, 2010 at 7:37 pm
May?? Wow, it looks more like it is around here right now. So, the new vehicle is up by Hudson Bay? Hmmm…I’m not even sure what to google. 😉
November 23rd, 2010 at 9:11 pm
My first car was an ’87 Honda Civic. Gold. It was a crappy car, which is unusual for Honda, but that year’s models’ exhaust systems were borked.
Once we were driving in August (it was extremely hot!), with the windows down (no AC), and the muffler fell off. I mean, the whole thing. That was noisy 6 hours.
November 23rd, 2010 at 9:11 pm
I meant to write, “That was A noisy 6 hours.”