My first car,
a 1969 Toyota Corolla Station wagonnot cool.
My First
Car
by John
Graham
TO MOST
PEOPLE, my first car was as mundane as they come: a 1969 Toyota Corolla
station wagon. While it was the first Toyota made in America (with
30 million sold worldwide) and the most popular car line in history,
my friendswho all owned various incarnations of late Sixties
and early Seventies Camaros, Mustangs and pick-up truckswere
certain I was some sort of milquetoast old lady with my choice of
automobile.
But it was 1977. I wasnt even old enough to drive yet. Even
then I was looking at my lithe high water booty backside of a first
car as an economical choice. Oil prices were on the rise and I just
didnt want to look stupid paying a lot for gas. Also, suffice
to say, I was not a speed nor power freak. At the age of fifteen,
I was a cultural man and I had the nearly astute idea that my Corolla
was a kind of B-version of a European sports sedan.
I bought the car from Luigi Scanapierco, a curly blond haired Italian
waiter, both wiry and wily, whom I had met while working as a busboy
at the Italian restaurant in my familys neighborhood. I paid
about 900 dollars for the car and had to wait six months before I
was even old enough to drive it. During that time I sat in the drivers
seat and turned the blinkers on and off, preparing for the day I got
my license.
My first move to set the little station wagon apart from other cars
was to paint the hubcaps white. This gave it a kind of mod flair,
like the white leather shoes that Joe Jackson the singer was wearing
around that time. Then I turned my sights to the inside. Since my
mother had just recarpeted the family room in a sunset orange shag,
I covered the floors and back hatch area with the extra bits she stored
in the garage. Next came the stereo, which was quite modern for the
day. Instead of relying on 8-track tapes, I would be modernizing and
buying cassettes. The radio was AM/FM, tuned to 94.7 KMET, 95.5 KLOS
and a static-ridden KROQ which came out of Orange County.
Eventually, I got my license and set out driving. The car really moved,
kind of like an Alpha Romeo, kind of, sort of. But its brakes were
so bad that it was dangerous to drive on the very steep hills that
made up the coastal community where I lived. Traveling at sixty miles
an hour down Crenshaw Boulevard towards Torrance Beach, I had developed
the crafty but dangerous habit of rubbing the wheels against the center
divider to slow the car down. Occasionally I would lift the hand brake
in desperation if the friction of the curb wasnt enough. After
all, I was sixteen years old and fearless, kind of, sort of.
The gas tank slightly leaked. I discovered from an older car owner
that you could turn a screw in the hull to prevent too much fuel loss,
although the small patch of gas and accompanying stream it created
did not preclude the properly tossed cigarette from turning my entire
automotive fantasy into a sudden pyre.
I suppose I had a mostly good and enjoyable time in this, my first
car. I only crashed it twice. Once, in a in a hailstorm, I hit a patch
of ice (which as a native of the Los Angeles area I had never seen
in my life) and slid into a cement light post. After a multiple tries
at fixing it myself over a period of monthsand with the help
of some numb nut self-proclaimed mechanic I had metI finally
just made a claim on my insurance and got the car fixed, only to have
the axle disengage in the first week back from the shop as I made
a turn into the high school parking lot. As I remember, I flew into
a rage at the injustice of it all only slightly aware that I was learning
about the endless and seemingly karmic infractions car ownership could
inflict upon a person.
Im not sure how many months passed where I drove the car unimpeded
and smoothly. But eventually, one late Saturday night, rounding a
curve on the way home from a class party, I rolled that strangely
balanced shoebox of a vehicle end over end. Even the floor mats flew
out. The only items left in the car were meseatbelt-less, I
might addand the stereo, which was still blasting Jethro Tull,
Songs from the woo-OOOD!
I had really done a number. While I had missed every car parked on
the narrow residential streeta miracle worth notifying the Vatican
forthe roof and the front window were crushed. Ironically, the
little betty still drove. I went back to the party and retrieved my
friends to follow me as I drove home with the crumpled windshield
divided between the backseat and my front pocket. It wasnt a
day or two before I headed off to the junkyard to get a new windshield.
I brought it home, built a frame, like a jeeps windshield, which
fit snuggly up against the wipers.
Then I cut the front half of the flattened roof off using a hacksaw
and pliers. I had roll bars installed because the suspension was gone
after I cut the roof off. I then painted the whole apparatus flat
black.
Since my mom was having the house re-roofed, there was plenty of wooden
shingles lying about. They covered a two-by-four frame which I put
together to slip into the exposed channels left from the cut-off roof.
Fortunately, we were in the middle of a drought and it didnt
rain for about nine months, so it was some time before I got to formally
install my clumsy, pastoral shingle roof set-up. I do remember, though,
the roof worked pretty well by the time it finally rained.
As I was set to head off to college in the fall, I sold it to a guy
who later became a reverend and started his own church. One day when
I was home the first summer after my freshmen year, I got a notice
from the State saying they had found my car abandoned in Orange County,
along the side of a road. I let them know I hadnt seen it in
ten months and likely the guywho before getting religion was
a major stonerhadnt followed through and transferred the
pink slip. They accepted my explanation and that was the last I heard
of the 1969 Toyota Corolla station wagon I bought from an Italian
waiter named Luigi. It was kind of a legend in the neighborhood, and
I never gave up on it. It was my first car.
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