Thursday, February 24, 2011

Eight cylinders all mine, All right hold on tight, I'm a highway star

Two days in a row!  I'm blogging two days in a row!!  Don't get used to it, totally a fluke. 

Last week the weather warmed up, the snow melted, it was nice and sunny and the air smelled good.  Granted, it's still February so I knew it wouldn't last, but for a day or two, it was glorious!  I wanted so badly to pull the cover off of my little Porsche roadster and take 'er for a spin.  There's something so amazingly fantastic about driving a fast car, top down, wind in my face, scenery whizzing by at embarrassingly fast speeds.  I can't get enough of it!

I can her your eyes rolling!  I know what you're thinking...  "but Cindy, you're a g-i-r-l!".  Yea, I know.  I'm not supposed to love cars.  I'm not supposed to worship the loud roaring engines of those 1960's and 1970's muscle cars with their big block engines.  I'm not supposed to freeze in my tracks when I see an amazingly engineered piece of German metal woosh past.  I'm not supposed to be able to tell, by sight, the make, model, and sometimes, the year, of a car.  But I do.  I'm an enigma, don't try to figure me out.

I was born in the 1960's so I saw first hand the evolution of the American muscle car.  The transformation from the boxy "grocery getters" with their small, unimpressive engines, to the stealthy, growling, kick-ass big block engines with the posi-traction rearends, squealing down the road.  Not to mention, the hunka hunka men driving those cars!  For a teenage girl with raging hormones, nothing was sexier than a guy (ugly, cute, it didn't matter!) driving one of those pieces of amazing machinery!  I was inspired, to say the least.

Ironically, though, it wasn't the guys that caught my eye.  It was the cars!  I wanted to be driving those cars!  I wanted to feel the force of the engine as I stepped on the gas.  Oh, the power!!  So, I bought myself my first car... a Ford Mustang.  Now, before you get all impressed with a girl buying a Mustang for her first car, I have a confession to make.  It was a 1974 Mustang.  That's a Mustang II.  With a four, yes I said f-o-u-r, cylinder engine.  I know, it sooo doesn't count.  But it was red.  And it had shag carpeting.  And it was MINE!  I had my Mustang!  I know I should be hanging my head in shame, who the hell brags about owning a 1974 Ford Mustang II?  Especially one like mine.  I purchased my 1974 'Stang in 1984, it had over 100k miles on it.  It burned oil, it leaked oil....anything that could be done with oil, this car did it.  Damn car.  But it was MY damn car!  And did I mention it was RED?!

This car, MY car, was my link to all things adult.  It was my freedom.  It got me to school and back, it got me to my job.  It got me to parties, and it got me in trouble on more than one occasion.  Mostly, though, it gave me that little piece of my heart, the little piece that, to this day, still loves the shit out of cars! 

God bless those hunks of nuts and bolts!  Can I get an A-Men?!  

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