L on Wheels

This morning's Silver Sneakers class was a blast, for some reason. Oh, there was the usual bitching and moaning, cheating and snoozing, and the like. But today, our resident Dennis the Menace, Mr. Robert, showed up and proceeded to fake his way through the entire hour by heckling Greta, our thirty-something instructor. You can tell it's a class for people older than 55 because anyone who isn't Greta gets an honorific in front of his or her first name, a la Miss Pat, Mr. James, Ms. Lezlie.


Somehow, while we were doing eleventy-seven senior style jumping jacks, we started talking about wheels. Hey, don't ask me. You had to be there. It seems that Greta, the young smartass, had never owned a tricycle. From there the banter morphed to Big Wheels, metal roller skates, homemade scooters made with metal roller skate wheels... You get the idea. It was a riot.


On the way home I was thinking how unusually fast today's class went when I had the idea to write my personal history on wheels. No, not write it while I was ON wheels, but about the wheels in my life.
I decided to dispense with wheels that had to be pushed by someone other than myself, so I started with Betsy, my big-girl trike. Why Betsy? That's what Grandpa called all his cars, so it was good enough for mine.

Betsy circa 1948

I started with gigantic blocks strapped to the pedals so I could reach them, but soon I grew enough to ditch those sissy blocks and go careening up and down the neighbor's rare-for-our-street's driveway. Loved that beauty.



After I learned to ride a two-wheeler on the cast-off small version that once belonged to the doctor's daughter who lived next door, I begged for my own 26" bike. Imagine how wide my little eyes became when I saw the girl's model of this in front of our 1953 Christmas tree.


The 1953 Monark Super Deluxe was a top of the line objet d'art. It had a spring-loaded seat and a spring buffered front wheel fork, and mine had streamers flowing from each handlebar grip. Get a load of those whitewalls!

I was 12 when my stepfather drove up one day after work in what I thought was somebody else's car. Our car at the time had been so nondescript; I don't even remember what it was. But, man, do I remember this one:



Well, almost. Ours was actually silver. As luck would have it, this now classic masterpiece was the first car I ever drove, albeit illegally. I drove to church on Sundays and put it in the garage every evening.



There were others after the '57 Chevy Bel Air "floptop," but none were as cool as it was. So let's move to the very first car that carried my name on the registration.

Grandpa bought a new Buick every three to five years. Those were the days of "built-in obsolescence", when Detroit automakers were perceived to have built their cars to last only three years. This 1960 Buick LeSabre (exact model) stayed in his garage long enough for him to drive it to Ripon College to watch me graduate in June 1966. After the exercises, Grandpa handed me the keys. "You want me to drive?" I was shocked! Then he said, "Well, it's your car! Happy Graduation!"

It wasn't until 1968 that I actually got a car I had to make payments on. My then-husband and I ordered a brand new chocolate brown '68 Buick Skylark. It had saddle-colored pleather trim on the roof. He called it a Baby Riviera.


Husband #1 was a very, ahem, busy guy, so he spent a lot of time being gone in the Baby Riv. That's why the following year I took my buying power back to the Buick dealer to purchase what I thought was my exotic foreign car.

The 1969 Opel Kadett became "my car." It was perfect for zipping around town and sliding into tight parking spaces. Please take note of the color. It was the second blue car in a row, but this one I chose and it was a few shades darker than the LeSabre was. I was headed for the blues -- in more ways than one!


Because that marriage failed and I became a single mother of a toddler, the Opel became part of our little family and served us well for the next five years.



After I moved back to Illinois from Milwaukee, I eventually landed a public relations job at the venerable University of Chicago. My salary took a major hike, I was living in a University-owned flat in Chicago's trendy Hyde Park, so I decided I deserved a newer, sexier car.

The 1974 Cutlass Salon I ordered had white vinyl seats and I thought it was the sexiest car on the road. No, I didn't notice that I had ordered yet another blue car. And no, it never occurred to me that white seats were incompatible with a three-year-old and a 125-lb. German Shepherd Dog named Demon.

My second husband is the most generous man I have ever known. We were married in 1978, divorced in 1985, but in between, he showered me with magnificent gifts (for us). When we moved to San Francisco from Chicago two months after our wedding, the trans-continental trip in the moving van proved catastrophic for our vehicles. The mover actually dropped his Ford Mustang onto the top of the Cutlass! The damage was fixed, but the car seemed to lose its appeal after that. So, in 1980 he bought me one of these:


The '79 Fiat Spider was so cute and so much fun, but it was also pretty impractical for a busy mom who travelled a lot on business. When on the highway, air would get under the convertible top and make a lot of noise. And driving rain would penetrate the top and sprinkle my business suit with rain. But at least it wasn't blue!

So, then he bought me this for our 5th anniversary:


This time he used his head and bought a "previously owned" 1978 Mercedes Benz 240 D. Movin' on up, yes we were. It took me years to stop feeling like a poseur when I was behind the wheel, but what a great car. Ahhhhh, note the color. Uh huh.


In 1993 AT&T transferred me from San Francisco to Atlanta. I was devastated to have to leave the San Francisco Bay Area, so I soothed my broken heart by buying myself a present:

This is the exact car. After seeing the 1993 Mazda 929 at the International Auto Show in Atlanta, I had to have it. So elegant! And it wasn't blue. Well, sometimes it was, because the Mediterranean Teal Metallic paint changed colors in different light.



Although I retired from AT&T in 2000, I kept the Mazda until 2005, when the economy was chugging along nicely and I was making money on my rolled-over 401K. A Lexus has been my dream car since it was introduced, and I vowed I would own one before I die. Sooooo...

Yep. Breakwater Blue, to be precise.