My first “real” car was a 1978 Fairmont Wagon in green metallic. It had spoked wheelcovers and whitewalls. Shortly after I bought it I got the windows tinted and installed a new stereo. To my father’s chagrin my sister and I dubbed it the “deathwagon” because it looked like a coroner’s hearse. I was 19, I think.

Though I enjoyed driving a “real car” with air-conditioning and seats that didn’t flop backwards while driving on the freeway (long story), soon started driving a company van and the Fairmont passed to my sister who was a high-school junior at the time. Oh, the stories from that era! Cops jumping over it while she and friends tried to buy booze at a drive-thru liquor store, attempts to drag-race girls from rival Catholic schools, and chips out of fenders that were blamed on bitchy girls in Preludes but suspiciously lined up with a fire hydrant in our front yard.

Well after she graduated highschoool I took the car back, loaded it up to the gunwales with stuff for college, and drove it from Arizona to New Hampshire. It survived at least 4 more years of cargo carrying, sub-zero beer runs, high-speed strafing through Canada, overloading with passengers (up to 9 at one point), and several transcontinental non-stop runs.

In those 140,000 or so miles, it never left me stranded, as poor and neglectful as I was. After I got my first “real” job I bought a 1995 Ranger in a similar shade of green. I couldn’t bear selling that old Fairmont, so I donated it to St. Vincent de Paul in hopes that it would bring someone else a few more happy memories.