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Description
In before someone says "This is dA, not Photobucket": I put these in my scraps because I didn't take the photos myself. The scrapbook look was done on purpose.

Long description is long: While home for the holidays I found myself awake before 6 a.m., the curse of the newspaper carrier with a day off, and passed the time looking at the family photo albums. I found these pictures of my "Car Mom." *Half-dude originated that term with his most excellent series of art depicting the cars from the Brave Little Toaster's "Worthless" song before they arrived at the junkyard. That scene sticks in the mind of anyone who's seen BLT and most people I know who have seen it remember feeling very sorry for the cars who are crushed one by one while singing about their lives before they were scrapped. My sentimental favorites among Half-dude's art are those involving Pinky the convertible and the family he envisioned owning her, including a girl named Violet who Pinky thought of as her own daughter since she first laid eyes on her arriving home from the hospital.

If you haven't seen these, this is one of them: [link]

In the Pinky/Violet series, it's shown that the car and her owner have a long, happy relationship and the child even talks to her and knows she's alive, though her parents are too old for such stuff and find her attachment to the family car amusing and cute at best.

So while I clearly remember being a kid with a big imagination and talking to the family cars, all of whom had names, I found these photos that completely support the bond I had with them, which might have not been too far from what Pinky and Violet might have had.

In the first photo, I'm headed off to my first day of kindergarten on August 30, 1983. Don't ask how my mom talked me into wearing a dress, as I was very much a jeans-and-t-shirt kid. I think the name tag was something I got at the open house, and I posed with my Car Mom, our 1980 Chevy Caprice Classic. What gets me is despite my smirk, I'm holding her door handle like a kid afraid to let go of Mom's hand and walk into that classroom. My Car Mama was comforting me, d'aww.

The back of the next one is labeled with the information that "Dixie" was bought in October 1980. I'm surprised my parents bothered with two sets of hubcaps for her but both looked beautiful. She was a very regal car in her early days, and she was Chevrolet's premium model. If I recall correctly my dad said her odometer flipped twice by the time we sold her in the early 1990s. Our later photos aren't in albums yet so I don't have any available of her in her later days, but she was worse for the wear by then.

Her replacement was my grandparents' 1987 Caprice, also silver, and that car in turn we gave to a mechanic who helped us out in 1997 when I was in college. He and his wife loved Caprices and already had one so maybe it wasn't a coincidence that Dixie II made her final breakdown near their property. I'd love to imagine they still have her, as they had a ton of Caprice parts in their shop that I got to look through while my mom and I waited for another ride home.

Finally, my first day of preschool, a year earlier in 1982. I hope my sister doesn't mind that I posted a blurry photo with her in it. You'd think there was a more scenic backdrop for this photo somewhere in our yard, but did I ever love "General Lee," our Nova. My dad had lost his job at the steel mill along with everyone else, so he tried hard to make my mom's early-Seventies Nova last. Note the primer, the steel patch riveted to the rear wheel well and the blue replacement door, complete with its own primer that the donor car's owner had applied in a different shade! The driver's side door was bronze, and I recall being very worried that my dad bringing home a door from the junkyard meant that another Nova somewhere now had no door.

My dad let me watch one day as he painted stripes on General Lee, using masking tape to mark the spots. We honked the horn and my mom, who was on bedrest with one of my brothers, looked out the bedroom window that overlooked the driveway and expressed her shock at how we'd transformed her car into a "Super Sport." I will never forget her reaction -- sorry Mom!

My dad also installed a novelty horn, pretty much fulfilling a young Dukes of Hazzard fan's wildest fantasy aside from owning an actual Dodge Charger. It died from overuse thanks to my siblings and me. When we moved from the area in 1985, my grandpa took charge of selling General Lee, but he settled the deal with a handshake and the new owner racked up some parking tickets before the title officially changed hands.

General Lee was the greatest clunker ever and although I always thought him to be a guy car, I think if I had a carsona (i.e. what you'd look like as a car, Pixar-style or otherwise) he'd be it. Thanks for reading this, and now you know why I love writing about clunkers and so-called lemons. :3

Description
In before someone says "This is dA, not Photobucket": I put these in my scraps because I didn't take the photos myself. The scrapbook look was done on purpose.

Long description is long: While home for the holidays I found myself awake before 6 a.m., the curse of the newspaper carrier with a day off, and passed the time looking at the family photo albums. I found these pictures of my "Car Mom." *Half-dude originated that term with his most excellent series of art depicting the cars from the Brave Little Toaster's "Worthless" song before they arrived at the junkyard. That scene sticks in the mind of anyone who's seen BLT and most people I know who have seen it remember feeling very sorry for the cars who are crushed one by one while singing about their lives before they were scrapped. My sentimental favorites among Half-dude's art are those involving Pinky the convertible and the family he envisioned owning her, including a girl named Violet who Pinky thought of as her own daughter since she first laid eyes on her arriving home from the hospital.

If you haven't seen these, this is one of them: [link]

In the Pinky/Violet series, it's shown that the car and her owner have a long, happy relationship and the child even talks to her and knows she's alive, though her parents are too old for such stuff and find her attachment to the family car amusing and cute at best.

So while I clearly remember being a kid with a big imagination and talking to the family cars, all of whom had names, I found these photos that completely support the bond I had with them, which might have not been too far from what Pinky and Violet might have had.

In the first photo, I'm headed off to my first day of kindergarten on August 30, 1983. Don't ask how my mom talked me into wearing a dress, as I was very much a jeans-and-t-shirt kid. I think the name tag was something I got at the open house, and I posed with my Car Mom, our 1980 Chevy Caprice Classic. What gets me is despite my smirk, I'm holding her door handle like a kid afraid to let go of Mom's hand and walk into that classroom. My Car Mama was comforting me, d'aww.

The back of the next one is labeled with the information that "Dixie" was bought in October 1980. I'm surprised my parents bothered with two sets of hubcaps for her but both looked beautiful. She was a very regal car in her early days, and she was Chevrolet's premium model. If I recall correctly my dad said her odometer flipped twice by the time we sold her in the early 1990s. Our later photos aren't in albums yet so I don't have any available of her in her later days, but she was worse for the wear by then.

Her replacement was my grandparents' 1987 Caprice, also silver, and that car in turn we gave to a mechanic who helped us out in 1997 when I was in college. He and his wife loved Caprices and already had one so maybe it wasn't a coincidence that Dixie II made her final breakdown near their property. I'd love to imagine they still have her, as they had a ton of Caprice parts in their shop that I got to look through while my mom and I waited for another ride home.

Finally, my first day of preschool, a year earlier in 1982. I hope my sister doesn't mind that I posted a blurry photo with her in it. You'd think there was a more scenic backdrop for this photo somewhere in our yard, but did I ever love "General Lee," our Nova. My dad had lost his job at the steel mill along with everyone else, so he tried hard to make my mom's early-Seventies Nova last. Note the primer, the steel patch riveted to the rear wheel well and the blue replacement door, complete with its own primer that the donor car's owner had applied in a different shade! The driver's side door was bronze, and I recall being very worried that my dad bringing home a door from the junkyard meant that another Nova somewhere now had no door.

My dad let me watch one day as he painted stripes on General Lee, using masking tape to mark the spots. We honked the horn and my mom, who was on bedrest with one of my brothers, looked out the bedroom window that overlooked the driveway and expressed her shock at how we'd transformed her car into a "Super Sport." I will never forget her reaction -- sorry Mom!

My dad also installed a novelty horn, pretty much fulfilling a young Dukes of Hazzard fan's wildest fantasy aside from owning an actual Dodge Charger. It died from overuse thanks to my siblings and me. When we moved from the area in 1985, my grandpa took charge of selling General Lee, but he settled the deal with a handshake and the new owner racked up some parking tickets before the title officially changed hands.

General Lee was the greatest clunker ever and although I always thought him to be a guy car, I think if I had a carsona (i.e. what you'd look like as a car, Pixar-style or otherwise) he'd be it. Thanks for reading this, and now you know why I love writing about clunkers and so-called lemons. :3