Beach(es) Beat

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What is there about that first car that creates such lasting memories in the hearts of the young men who owned them.

I might be in for a tough slog with this column because right off the bat there are two points in my opening sentence that need amplification.

First off, back in my day you never really owned that first car.

What happened was you acquired it from a used car lot with names like Easy Credit Eddie's that was usually operated by guys wearing snap brim fedoras that they pulled down so you couldn't see their eyes.

Those establishments had large signs proclaiming that Eddie or whoever sold Guaranteed Used Cars, and that was the only honest claim Eddie made because the cars he offered for sale were indeed used.

None of the odometers in his aging fleet showed less than 75,000 miles and remember in those days, odometers in his aging fleet could be rolled back so nobody knew how many times the vehicles circumnavigated the globe before winding up on his premises where they awaited an unsuspecting buyer.

But you bought one because that was all you could afford and if you were lucky you got it home before the rear end fell off. And if it wasn't the rear end that gave up the ghost, it was the differential or the tie rods or the radiator.

All of those blemishes had to be fixed, of course, and as soon as you did, something else needed repair so what happened was that two years later you had a wreck that you paid $400 for and you still owed $300 bucks on.

Then you traded it in and applied the unpaid balance to a sweet little steal of a deal owned by an elderly gent who only drove it on sunny days. So you never really owned your first car or the next three or four either. In fact, I know many men who were well into their 40s before they actually owned an automobile.

The other point I want to clarify concerns that opening sentence where I seemed to infer that only young men bought used cars and that is quite true.

Young women didn't because they knew with that wisdom that only women have that buying a used car is a loser's game. They saved their money and bought new ones, and in the meantime they rode about in those money pits that young guys drove.

And we always opened the passenger's door and watched with pride as our dates slid effortlessly into and out of the front seat. Graceful as swans they were, every young and lovely one of them.