Our Love of Automobiles

As far back as I can remember I have loved automobiles.  Unlike many of my girlfriends growing up, I could discuss cars with the boys and loved to argue styles, speed, features, and car companies, but my specialty was knowing the year, make, and model of cars. When my sons were teens I enjoyed labeling cars by their make and model as we traveled from place to place.  Once the younger son asked how I knew so much about cars.  Honestly the question took me by surprise and I had to reflect back on this interest to identify the source.  Of course, it was my family!  Isn’t that where most interests in all sorts of things begin?

Mama had nine brothers and sisters who were at our house all the time for dinner, visits, and vacations. Several of our relatives lived and worked in Indiana cities which were major General Motors manufactures. When these Indiana relatives visited, part of the conversation always drifted to their work and the latest models they were involved in producing.  We were a GM family because many family members, both male and female, helped build GM cars. Somehow being a GM family got ‘married’ to my family’s Republican political view , thus, GM cars became ‘Republican’ and Ford cars became ‘Democratic’.  When these family members married, of course, some of them married Democrats who were Ford owners. The constant thread of conversation and debate at our family visits was cars and politics.  Often the discussions were heated, but congenial, with neither side declaring victory. 

 

They argued motors and horse power, styles and models, prices, workmanship, and political influences. I was in the background picking up bits and pieces of this conversation and forming my own ideas. My focus was the styling of the car. It had to be ‘pretty’ to me. I think this ‘pretty’ translated to mean sleek, modern, expensive looking, and elegant.  I didn’t care if it was Democrat or Republican because I had no interest in that stuff. For at least 10-15 years I purposely learned each new Ford and GM model and how to distinguish them from each other. I frequently imagined which one I would choose as my car.  Later on I began to add other makes and models of cars including foreign ones  to my repertoire. I enjoyed learning this stuff.

By early adolescence I could carry on a half-way decent conversation about cars and dream about what I would one day drive.  When I turned 16 my Dad bought a new model car, the 1964 Chevrolet Chevelle.  It was the first car my Dad had owned; he was a truck guy.  He never said it was mine.  He just bought it and began to drive it. I was impressed because it was a new model, and we were the only people at the time to have this new model in Sneedville.  While I was not particularly a GM person like my father, I was thrilled to have this car in our family.  Within six months after we got the car my father died from heart disease and the car became mine. I became the family chauffer because Mama did not drive.

My love for cars has been life-long.  I still enjoy identifying makes, models and sleek, beautiful designs.  Somewhere along the way I managed to anger my family by marrying a Democrat who drove a Ford car. Then he and I moved from the battle and bought foreign cars such as Toyota’s, Honda’s, and Nissan’s which incensed both families.