PHOTO: GENERAL MOTORS


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he story of my first car is the tale of a father willing to suc- cumb to his


daughter’s conniving. I should be ashamed of this, but convincing my father to give me a car was the closest I ever got to feeling like Won- der Woman. Without the star-spangled bikini bottom and plunging neckline. Think Lynda Carter in L.L. Bean. In the spring of ’77,


I was a college sophomore and desperate to find a summer job that did not involve serving meals to customers whose idea of a tip was to scribble “Great job!!” on little notes tucked un- der their plates. My roommate Bev came to the rescue, after she found out that Ohio was hiring college kids to staff tourism booths at various highway rest stops. We stood behind the counters and promoted the bounty of the Buckeye State. We also were supposed to whip out maps and give directions. “You,” Dad said, the day I was


hired. I nodded.“Telling people how to get anywhere.” Again, I nodded. He shook his head. “Just remember,” he said. “The lake is north.” I was assigned to mislead countless tourists at a booth 10 miles from our house. “How will you get there?” my father asked. This was the best part:


14 | OCTOBER 26, 2014 © PARADE Publications 2014. All rights reserved


ents to tire of either driving me to and from work or worrying about the condition of their car and, presum- ably, their daughter whenever I borrowed one of theirs. A few weeks later,


A CLASSIC RIDE


The 1973 Pontiac LeMans Colonnade Coupe


My Dream Car


The radio didn’t work. The engine screeched. And it was perfect. By Connie Schultz


My new job was only accessible by car. I placed my hands on my mother’s shoulders and peered from behind her beehive. “I have to drive?” When I was a teenager, Dad


had forbidden me from getting a license after I plowed the driver’s ed car into a snow bank on Route 20. At age 20, I was still unable to commandeer thousands of pounds of steel on the highways of America, which is how my mother always put it. “I’m not teaching you,” Dad said, answering my prayer. Instead, my boyfriend drove


me to the circular drive at the nearest cemetery and, in three hours, taught me how to parallel


park and how not to run into a tree when someone yelled, “I said turn left, not right!” Despite my father’s prediction, I passed my driver’s test the next day. That evening, before Dad


could set down his lunch pail, Mom handed him a beer and chirped, “We’ve got a new driver in the house.” I waved my license and raised my eyebrows. Dad furrowed his and gulped down his Stroh’s in the time it took me to say, “Soooo, whose car am I taking to work?” The next morning, I put


Mom’s car in reverse and pro- ceeded to back into Dad’s. An accident, but a fortuitous one. It didn’t take long for my par-


my boyfriend bought a brand-new Pinto and offered to give me his very used Pontiac Le- Mans. Dad insisted on paying for it, to keep the title in his name and to prevent me from feeling beholden to anyone but him.


I can still picture that car as if


it were sitting in my driveway right this minute. It was tan, with a motor that purred like a mother screaming at her kids. I want to say I listened to Etta James belt out “At Last” on the radio the first time I slid behind the wheel, but I was probably the one singing, as I’m pretty sure the radio didn’t work. No matter. For the first time


in my life, I was that girl. I was the babe with the French- sounding car tearing through the streets and laughing with the windows all the way down. At every stop sign, I paused just long enough to peel away the strands of hair sticking to my lip gloss. Vroom-vroom.


Today Connie drives a made- in-Ohio Chevy Cruze, the first red car of her life. And she still blasts Etta James.


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