I loved Caitlin's post about her old truck and it inspired me to write about my own! While it never had a nickname, this old truck was a great 'first car'. A 1970 GMC long bed. Unreliable, a gas hog, could only fit 2 other people in the front at the most. It was perfect. While most of my friends were driving new Grand Ams or Pontiac Sunfires, this beast got me where I needed to go. Obviously, I wanted it to be 'cool' so I added as many 'cool' things as I could afford. (I was super cool, as evidenced by the photo above). A new stereo. A new steering wheel. A 'cool' seat cover. Fuzzy dice AND a flower lei from the rear view mirror. A dancing hula girl on the dash. That is all I could add. It was a fairly small cab. Most of the upgrades were made later, you don't see them in the picture above. Okay, who am I kidding. This truck did not need all of that. It was cool just because it was gold and white and it was loud. When I started this truck up with its 350 engine, and gave it some gas, it made the boys jealous. They wanted to race me at the stop light. But I never did that. There was no air conditioning, so if it was hot I had to sweat or roll the windows down and mess up my hair. The windows did not automatically roll down with the push of a button, you had to use a handle and do it manually. Something I miss about that old truck is the smell of gasoline and exhaust. The gas gauge never really worked right, so I had to be careful or else I would run out of gas and get stranded. The gauge would sometimes tell you if you were getting close to empty, but it bounced around so much that it was incredibly unreliable. This truck also helped my parents keep an eye on me. Since I lived in a small town and my dad was the manager of the local grocery store, I could not go anywhere without everyone keeping tabs on me. If was was somewhere I shouldn't be, or driving too fast, a neighbor who knew my dad could report back and tattle on me. I had a lot of great memories in that beast.
1 Comment
Caitlin
3/14/2017 08:09:17 am
Yesssss!!! I LOVE it!! Girls who drive trucks in high school are the coolest. ;) I think our trucks would have been best friends and they would have competed in who could be the loudest. Boys often challenged me to peel out of the parking lot at school. Mine also didn't have air conditioning! It wasn't until years later, my best friend informed me, the scene from The Help (when Emma Stone's character is going on a date and walks in with super frizzy hair, because of the lack of air in her truck) is often what I came to school looking like. I think it looks like you really were a super cool person in high school!
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Mrs. Mitchell
This is my 'slice of life' blog. Archives
March 2020
My Art Teacher Blog:
This Little Class of Mine CategoriesOther Slice Blogs:
For Good I Like Big Books Life is a Slice The Cardinal Way KochUnaSlice YouWannaPieceofMeBlog Dr. Zornes' Slice of Life Sunshine Rays Two Writing Teachers Favorite Everyday Writer: Reesie Writes |