Fast

I owned a sports car once, a 1987 Mazda RX-7. It was a sleek charcoal-colored beast that was hard to get in and out of (especially when the door locks froze, which was every day in winter). In the end, we called it "Zadar, the Car From Hell" because of all the really silly things that went wrong with it (points to you if you get the extremely obscure reference and its Iowa connection). I got several speeding tickets in it because it was a "Hey, Officer, look at me!" kind of car, but I never went particularly fast... just fast enough to get nailed on the way home from work, apparently. My mother, on the other hand, had a fast car. After she divorced her first husband, a cheating liar and all-around scoundrel, and moved 500 miles away to start over, she bought herself a 1955 Ford Thunderbird convertible. She was living in a trailer with a roommate to make ends meet at the time, but obviously considered this car to be Essential.

Dad, Mom and the 1955 Thunderbird Convertible.

Mom bought the Thunderbird on May 11, 1955. She and Dad drove to Georgia in it and were married on July 19. (Why Georgia, I asked once. Because that was as far as they could get in a day, Mom said). They moved into a cute little bungalow in Monroe, Michigan, and joined an archery league. She worked as a linotype operator and he taught Junior High Science. They got together with friends for cook-outs and beers. I rather expect the car helped my father understand just who my mother was. One of her favorite quotes (whose origin is much debated; it's possibly Persian) was "If I had two loaves of bread, I would sell one and buy a hyacinth."

Dad and the Thunderbird in a mountainous vacation somewhere. This is from a slide, hence the color.

Mom and Dad evidently had some fun with that car. Then, in July of 1959, some idjit slit the top, hotwired it and stole it.

A month later, on August 13, a posse of police and sheriff's deputies captured Fred Rogers, 23, after a high speed chase. Examination showed that the engine in Rogers' car was actually the one from Mom's stolen Thunderbird. When questioned, Rogers sang like a canary: He and three accomplices (later apprehended in Tennessee by the FBI) had broken into a dozen businesses, stealing a safe from one and taking it home to break open. They'd also stolen six cars. After removing the engine from the Thunderbird, they had cut the rest of the car into 'tiny pieces' and buried it along with the safe in the yard of Otis Williams, from whom they had rented a garage. Williams admitted he'd seen them burying the car bits, and said that they had given him leather automobile seats to use as porch furniture, but he didn't think anything of it. Seems legit.

I still have the Thunderbird emblem from the hood of the car, the only part Mom got back.

Although I know she always mourned the Thunderbird, Mom and Dad soon consoled themselves with a 1960 Corvette convertible.

The Corvette. Mom noted that it had four speeds forward and registered up to 160 mph on the speedometer

I came along a year or so after the Corvette and do remember riding in it. There was no car seat, of course, I was just on the passenger's lap. Sadly, the part I remember most was hating the beaded stretch hat I was given to wear to keep my hair under control -- the beads pressed into my scalp and gave me a headache! The 'vette was mostly Dad's car, though. He drove it to work every day; Mom drove a station wagon. The corvette was stolen once, too, by a 14-year-old joy-rider when we lived in California, but a woman called police to report that a "9- or 10-year-old boy" was trying unsuccessfully to start a white sports car in the parking lot of Penney's department store, and the young man was caught and the car returned without any lasting damage.

I have an absolutely hilarious (and incredibly precious) recording of Dad recounting the experience of towing the Corvette behind the rented U-Haul truck when we moved from California back to the Midwest, including hearing the tow bar break and watching the car bound off into the desert on its own. In the winter, rather than shoveling out the parking area along the road in front of the house, Dad would rev the Corvette and sort of ram and slide it through the space to pack the snow down and shove it aside. It wasn't very practical but it was a lot of fun to watch and kept the neighbors diverted, too.

Mom rented a garage for the Corvette for a year after Dad died, but finally sold it to a man from Perry. I saw it once after that. The exterior was beautifully preserved, but he'd changed the interior from black to a (Bicentennial?) red, white and blue, and it was garish. Even at ten, I knew the change wouldn't stand the test of time. Mom only ever owned sensible compact sedans after that and I don't think she particularly cared for my RX-7, but recognized that I was the same age she had been when she bought the Thunderbird, and acknowledged that it was just a phase I had to go through. We both appreciated the four-wheel drive in the Jeep Cherokee that came after Zadar, at least until the heater in it stopped working the winter Mom had her hip replaced, but that's another story.