Profilin'

I bought my 1979 Cutlass Salon from my cousin Rick when I was 16. It was a few inches from the ground, with 13 inch, silver spoke, rims; a brown metallic paint job, with pin stripping on the sides; the interior was a plush red; and, what gave my car its umph, T-tops! My cousin Rick sold it to me for a couple of thousand, but I think I only gave him a grand. He wanted to get rid of it because it was a magnet for car thieves. This was evident from the ignition switch: it was fully exposed, so that you had to turn it on with a screw driver.

I was the king of the parking lot when I first drove it to school. The girls loved it; the guys wanted it. It was a teenage dream come true, except for two things: the T-tops kept flying off when I drove on the freeway and I kept getting pulled over for “not wearing a seatbelt” or “not signaling” or “your music is too loud” or “is your headlight broken?” or “do you have hydrolics?” or “whose car is this? Can you prove it?” or, my favorite, “we got a tip that….”

I never got a ticket, but they searched and prodded every single time. The fact that the ignition switch was exposed didn’t help, either. Phone calls were made…I kept them busy. But, I kept on driving. After a year or so they stopped harassing me. My father hated it. He thought it was unsafe—it was too low to the ground, he’d say. He was pulled over once. The cop didn’t ask him for any proof of insurance or registration; in a broken Spanish he told him that my friends were criminals and I should watch my back. That was a weird reversal. I think he was the only honest cop in town.

Of course, my father was expecting something else when the lights went on behind him. He’d been there before. He fully expected to get arrested for being Mexican, so he was smiling from ear to ear when he came home and told me to pay more attention to my acquaintances and find out more about myself.

Once I went to college my father sold my car without telling me. Now that I have a garage, I wonder how good the Cutlass with T-tops would look in it.

This scary story from Arizona got me thinking about car—since by the looks of things, the last thing a cop in Arizona would give my father now is advice.