My First Car, A true tale by Gary Murray
The first car I owned was not the first car I drove. The first car I owned was a 1967 turquoise Carmen Gaia. I was twelve and bought it with my paper route money for $150. I drove it up and down the driveway, having grand designs of making it into a dune buggy. Eventually I traded it for a Kawasaki dirt-bike, something ready for the Galveston sand.
Gary teaches defensive driving
classes in Mesquite, Texas. |
The first car I ever drove on a regular basis was a 1973 AMC Gremlin. I bought it from my Uncle Kenny for $400. He had bought it from someone and it was wrecked with a smashed in passenger’s side door. He had it fixed and drove it for about a year. Someone had hit him and destroyed the passengers’ side door again. Instead of repairing the car again, he sold it to me ‘As Is’.
My older brother was in auto body classes at Robert E. Lee High School in Baytown, a refinery town next to the coast near Houston. We put on another door and painted it again. The color was a caramel brown which my friends called sh*t brown. My time behind the wheel of this little brown beast lasted for about a year.
About a month into driving (the week before Christmas), I was in line at the Jack in the Box when a Chevy truck backed into the passengers’ side, crushing the door and blowing out the safety glass. From that day until the day it was gone, I found shards in the carpets.
Since the car only cost $400, their insurance company totaled the Gremlin, giving me $400. I bought it back from them for $50. I went back to the junkyard and bought another door. We fixed it and on my way again.
In February, I was backing out of the driveway. The windows were all fogged over and I couldn’t see out the back or the sides. I had the driver’s side door open trying to get out of the very narrow lane. I wasn’t paying much attention and my door caught against the bumper of my dad’s truck. Accidentally I hit the gas instead of the brake and the driver’s door bent forward into the left front quarter panel.
Again–totaled. Again—bought back for $50. Another driver’s door and a front quarter panel then another coat of sh*t brown paint and I was off to the races.
Q: How many band students can you fit in a 1973 Gremlin?
A: Nine. (No joke here, just a fact) Me driving, two in the passenger seat, four in the back seat and two sitting in the hatchback.
I worked at a department store called Woolco as a stock-boy and general helper. We were coded over the loudspeakers as “98s” because we did 98% of the dirty work. Woolco—we want to be your favorite store.
One day I got a page over the intercom system to come to the front. I figured it was to load something into someone’s trunk. Wrong. An older man was trying to leave the parking lot and decided that the best way through the lot was through my Gremlin.
Somehow he slammed into the front of my car, bending the hood and both front quarter panels. I also needed a new grill but for some reason the damage didn’t pop the radiator. The lead salesman in the Electronics department told me that I had a cursed car and it would kill me if I didn’t get rid of it.
Another insurance check for $400 then I was back to the junk yard and the body shop.
The car was showing signs of the aftermath of the wrecks. Even the best body guys cannot hide the damage done to a car hit that many times. Things just don’t match up–no matter how hard one tries. It was almost a Frankenstein project, with parts from so many destroyed Gremlins. There were also parts from different AMC vehicles mixed into this little sh*tty brown car but I was still bound and determined to keep this little monster going.
Since Baytown is on the coast, very intense storms can just pop up. These usually happen in the afternoon summer when the humidity of being near the ocean hits the land mass. I was driving home from band practice and a hard storm flooded out Bayway Road, which runs along the coastline of Burnett Bay.
As I was beginning to go through the high flooded water, the car behind me was going too fast for the weather conditions. He slammed into the back of my little Gremlin, bending the uni-frame body. In order to fix the car, one would either have to cut the back half of the auto off and weld another rear end or take the entire chassis apart. For all intentions, this car was gone. It was still drivable; it just wobbled past 50 MPH. Luckily there were few places in places in Baytown that had that speed limit.
The driver who hit me didn’t have any insurance and didn’t speak a word of English so my insurance company was notified. Two days later, about a mile from the last collision, Billy (a guy I’d known since 3rd grade) slammed into the back of the car, hitting the rear end in the exact same place. He destroyed the back windshield and pushed the rear bumper just a bit more forward. He began freaking out about all the damage and was relieved when I told him it was already that way and he made it just a bit worse. Since his car was fine, I saw no need to get the police involved. The insurance company offered me $100 for the car. I passed. Instead, I sold the car for $400. I then bought my next car—a 1975 AMC Matador again from my Uncle Kenny.
Every once in a while, I would see my car in Baytown, being gassed up or at Woolco getting an oil change but I didn’t think much about it. Decades later, after graduating high school, college and moving to Dallas; I was driving my mother to the grocery store to buy the feast for Christmas. In the parking lot of the local Randall’s was my little Gremlin. I was STILL RUNNING!
I said to my mother, “That’s my first car!”
She replied, ‘That is impossible. It is black.”
“Look,” I said back to her, “There is sh*tty brown paint underneath the black. Besides, the back end is still crushed in.”
She paused for a moment and then said, “I think you are right. That just may be your car.”
I got excited. “Let’s go back home and get my keys so I can steal the Gremlin.” I kept the original keys and gave a copy to the guy I sold the car to.
“Why do you want to steal that old car?” my mom asked me.
“Because I want to read in the Baytown Sun newspaper—stolen 1973 Gremlin, value $25.”
I took it as a quest, wanting to know where the little 1973 Gremlin was located. I found my first car in one of the older parts of Baytown. Every time I went home, I drove by to see if the car was still running. Three years ago, it had gone from being driven to being scraped. It is now on blocks and looks as if it is being parted out. There was another Gremlin in the yard. So my Frankenstein car is still being used in another car, still living.
In Cars 2 they made the Gremlin the bad guy, lemon car. I was both offended and incised. How dare they make the little brown car that never gave up a part of the villains! The Pixar guys never saw the moxie my little car showed.
Your first car. The one that gave you your first taste of the freedom of the open road, tooling down the road, going where you wanted and listening to what you wanted on the radio for a change.
Most drivers have memories — fond or otherwise — of their first cars. Maybe it was the one you learned to drive in. Maybe it was one you inherited from a parent or an older sibling. Maybe it was one you got as a birthday present or one your worked long hours to pay for.
