“A thousand dollar car ain't gonna roll/'Til you throw at least another thousand in the hole/Sink your money in it, and there you are/The owner of a two thousand dollar thousand dollar car”
- Thousand Dollar Car/The Bottle Rockets
Growing up I never knew anyone that owned a new car. I'm not sure I was aware such a thing existed. Most everyone I knew drove some hand-me-down, high-mileage beater. They could break down at any moment and you sort of factored that in wherever you went. Good times.
Praise for the Ford LTD
James Kimbrell
When I walk out of the store with my cigar and BEE LUCKY
scratch-off card, I think I see our old LTD idling in its nest
of smoke, the car my father bought from one-armed Bernie Trotter
for three hundred bucks, the one with the muffler that swung like
and elephant trunk and failed to leave a trail of sparks only because
of the coat hanger my father rigged to hold it up. I want to ask
the man behind the wheel if maybe this isn't the exact LTD
that my sister turned from umber soot to golden tan with a water hose,
and dish soap, the same seats that I rubbed down with baby oil,
though the seats before me are covered in what looks like
the cured hide of an exceptionally large Dalmatian, which I
hate to see, because if this is the same two-tone, two-door, vinyl top
LTD, then it is the one in which my father backed over our dog
who that day wore a green dog sweater and got placed with her sweater
in the trunk and made an awful thudding rolling forward
then back when the car started and stopped until my father
pulled over at a dumpster and unloaded her, and was embarrassed
for us to see him crying. Not the story I'd tell a stranger
without buying him a beer first. And this guy would likely
get pissed off if he knew that his car had been wrecked,
that my father stomped out of the house one night and returned
in three days with the front bumper missing and the back
boasting a sticker that read “Tyson's Beer Garden.” That car
with its teeth knocked out. My father slept in the back seat
for a week after that, empty cans of potted meat and cracker
wrappers junking up the dash. Still, I want to say to this man
“Excuse me sir, we had this car when I was a kid.” but I don't
because he might take it wrong, like I was saying "damn
that car sure is old," and it had been more than twenty years
since my parents decided to stay together and drove
along the canopied roads outside of town until they had
to scream at each other. My mother traded that car
for one day's use of a moving truck, and I didn't miss
my father much at first, but I missed that car, and bolted
baskets to my ten-speed, which it must have seemed
I didn't know quite how to ride, wobbling home with the weight
of canned beans, Tab, toilet paper and milk. “Nice ride,”
I say to the man before he pulls off. “I'll sell it to you,”
he says, and revs the engine, lets off the gas, and the car
goes dead. But I don't care, for in this moment, I do
want to buy it, if for no other reason than to ride once again
with the radio stuck on A.M. W God is Lord in Mississippi!
To say amen to the viscous stench of scorched oil, to the slack
brakes and the stuck horn and the shot rod. Amen to the people
looking down at us from the windows of the city bus
while the upholstery above our heads flapped like a flag
in a hurricane of spilt beer, Little Debbies, and the combustable
fumes of hot tamales. “How Much?” I say to the man, but he's
not paying attention because the car won't crank. He gets out
and lets loose with “Son of a Bitch! Son of a Bitch!” and I
think of telling the man that the car's only flooded, that if
he waits a minute it will start, but he's too wound up,
“It's yours!” he says. “Try it again,” I say, and he does,
and it starts, and he backs out of the parking lot, and I stand there
waving like I just got the better end of the deal, which is how
Bernie Trotter must have felt with his cigar hanging out
of his mouth and him waving us off with his one good arm
after my father had kicked the tires and honked the horn,
and my mother sat in the middle close to him, and even my sister
seemed happy when she punched me in the leg and called me
a dumbass, and we both laughed our guts sore with our hair
blowing and our hands held out, cupping the new wind.