Serenading the Redwoods

1978

Another night here from my post at work, and I have been pondering what memory I would share this evening, and nothing seems to be coming to the forefront of my mind. I will share a brief memory from when I was a child. My parents were funny when I was growing up, it always seemed like we were getting new cars. I remember a Mustang II at one point, also an avocado green Fiat, I remember a Plymouth Colt, but the car that sticks out the most was a bright yellow Triumph Spitfire. My father bought it for my mother. I also remember being at the dealership when they were test driving the car, and waiting in the afternoon sun. The afternoons in California seemed to stretch on forever. This might have had something to do with me being young as well, and the fact that I was bored at a dealership as well, but this afternoon I remember especially as being drawn out.

The parents each went for a spin in this wonderful little sports car. We were given soda pop and cookies while we waited. Before too long my parents were taking care of the paper work and were to take delivery of the car the following day. After the dealership my parents took us out for pizza to celebrate the purchase. This never made much sense to me, how do we celebrate spending money, by spending more money of course! I never knew what that was like until I became an adult and realized the sometimes you just need a reason to celebrate!

This little sports car was the talk of the town in our backwoods community; it was light, compact and could handle the corners of the winding mountain roads like it was on rails. My mother drove this car everywhere with pride. My father when present the opportunity to drive it on the weekends drove the piss out of it. My father and Uncle used to race and they would beat cars two classes above theirs, which I chalk up to the fact that they had a larger jockstrap size than helmet size, which is to say they had more balls than brains.

At the first of the month my mother would write the checks for paying the bills and we would drive from place to place paying our bills. This was back before the times of electronic bill paying, and paying by phone was just getting started. Hell my mother would send a few of the bills in the mail, but mostly she would pay in person. This is a practice I keep up to this day. People wonder how out of touch with the times I am when I tell them I go and pay the cable bill in person. I have believed for years that I am a man out of his element in this society and this is another form of proof.

This car made those trips of paying the bills more fun for us. On the nice days we would cruise with the top down and sing songs at the tops of our lungs. My mother loved her folk music and surf era music, and we would sing songs like Puff the Magic Dragon by Peter Paul and Mary, Fun Fun Fun by the Beach Boys, Tom Dooley by the Kingston Trio, and Tie a Yellow Ribbon by Tony Orlando and Dawn just to name a few of them. Even by remembering the songs I am taken back to those times where we would have our hair whipped by the wind singing our way through the majestic redwoods. How I miss those trips on Highway Nine, and Graham Hill Road.

Another story that goes along with the car I am mentioning is one that makes me laugh every time I think about it. As I have mentioned here time and time again my parents were partiers. They loved to drink, and some nights at fire house functions they would over imbibe, and lucky for us the fire fighters would care enough to make sure someone sober brought them home, but also would make sure the car would make it home as well. At one of these parties they had I am thinking it was a fire house dance they did for a fundraiser both my mother and father drank to excess and they brought my mother and father home, and the car as well. They waited until my parents had gone to bed and the lights were off and four of these fire fighters thought it would be funny to turn the car sideways in our driveway. Normally this would be only a minor obstacle however out driveway was lined with two rock walls on either side and to turn a car sideways in the drive way normally would not happen but this was a little sports car and it did fit sideways but with little room to maneuver it. Well when my Dad woke up and realized that the car was pinned in he thought he had somehow gotten it positioned that way in his drunken stupor, and he spent the next hour and a half trying to un pin the car, and then my Uncle (The one he race with) came over and they used a jack to lift the front end and move the car, then they moved the back end  until it finally was righted, it too them jacking the car up about four times before he could just drive out of the driveway. When he asked at the fire department all he got was that he and my mother left the department all messed up and he must have parked the car that way. It wasn’t until years later that they found out the people that played the prank. If I know my father well I am sure each and every one of them got paid back by him for being involved. My father was just that type of person, not good prank goes without retaliation.