{"id":45894,"date":"2012-08-23T20:00:44","date_gmt":"2012-08-24T04:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=45894"},"modified":"2012-08-23T20:30:30","modified_gmt":"2012-08-24T04:30:30","slug":"my-first-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=45894","title":{"rendered":"My First Car"},"content":{"rendered":"

I spent a year after high school<\/a> living in Tannum Sands, Australia, with my big brother Paul, working for a few months at K-Mart and then for seven months as the sole cleaner-gardener at the Boyne Island Shopping Center.<\/p>\n

I returned home with about $11,000 in the bank.<\/p>\n

I bought my first car in June 1985 through a friend of the family — a 1968 VW Bug. I was so excited to install an AM\/FM cassette player in it and crank the tunes.<\/p>\n

The first time I went to get gas, I did not know how to pump it myself. The attendant had to come out to show me.<\/p>\n

I was initially scared to drive on the freeway. I stuck to surface roads for my first few weeks.<\/p>\n

The seatbelt was stained with grease, so I either had to wear a protective towel or my shirts got grimed.<\/p>\n

I used to wash my car with great love. I loved the little thing.<\/p>\n

One morning in September 1985 while tuning the radio dial, I turned the corner and drove into the sun, colliding with a parked yellow school bus, dinging my head on the steering wheel (despite wearing a seatbelt), getting about 20 stitches, and inflicting about $900 damage on my Bug’s front end.<\/p>\n

Once I got my car back a couple of months later, I no longer loved it. It was just a utility. I stopped cleaning it with care. <\/p>\n

Still, I wanted a good stereo. I was working construction about 60 hours a week and had some money, so I got a better quality AM\/FM stereo installed with good speakers. I could really blast the music now. I hung a Playboy air cleaner on my rear view window. My muscles rippled in the sun. <\/p>\n

I did a lot of driving to construction jobs. I liked to listen to talk radio KGO out of San Francisco and to pop music like Kenny G’s Songbird. Whenever I hear the song, reminds me of driving lonely roads in Northern California, perhaps to San Francisco or Chico after ten hours putting in landscaping and slapping myself to stay awake.<\/p>\n