Memory Lane Monday #2 - My first car

My first car was a 1981 Ford Escort. I loved that car! It was the summer after I turned 16 - I'd gotten my license the previous November, and was saving toward a car of my own. I ended up 'borrowing' the last $500 from my dad, who later on forgave the loan. I think I paid $1,200 total for the car and paid for my own gas. My parents paid the insurance while I still lived at home, since I agreed to drive my younger brother to and from school. I also drove a friend of mine who lived on the way as well.

My brother got spoiled after getting driven for his freshman year and hardly ever took the bus after that - my mom let him drive her car to and from school every day after he got his license... Lucky kid!

Part of the reason we hated the bus so much is that we lived literally 4 houses down from the elementary school, so had always walked. Our middle school was at the other end of our street - we either walked or our mom drove us. I'd never actually ridden a bus until my freshman year of high school. And that year there was a boys home on the route and I can vividly remember the bus being so crowded there was standing room only. I also remember the bus driver not being able to control the kids or even see to the back of the bus - at one point the kids were lighting paper wads on fire and throwing them around the bus.

Yes, they stopped busing those kids. And they switched the route so the bus wasn't so crowded. Our street and the ones on either side were stuck at the end of another route so I ended up riding the bus right past my street (they wouldn't drop us where we had to cross a busy street to get to our street), then around other neighborhoods for 40 minutes before being dropped at the corner to walk the half-mile home. Not my idea of fun! And the reason why I really, really wanted my own car.

Sorry, got off topic there for a minute.

So, my first car. My Ford Escort. It was tan with a black interior. And a radio.

Having a radio was incredible - my mom didn't have one in her car because she'd gotten tired of us kids fighting over it.

My Escort also happened to be the 'sporty' model with cruise control, and a sunroof. The sunroof leaked, but I wasn't complaining!

Oh yes, and I had fuzzy dice hanging from the rear-view mirror. Someone gave them to me and I thought they were 'cool'. Boy was I a geek...

I owned this car for only a couple of years - I'd driven it out to Minnesota when I lived there the summer after my first year of college with my half-brother and his family. I was packed and all set to drive home after 5 months when the car... died. A head gasket or something like that which would've cost a fortune - and that wasn't worth it when I was about to drive the car through four states to get home.

So I sold my first car to a junkyard for $60 and took the train home.

This was the best photo I could find online of what my Escort looked like - it was even this color. I'll have to dig a picture up at home later on and scan it so I can add it to this post too.

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