My First Car (By Laurie Faria Stolarz)

    I was nine years old when my grandmother died. Seven years later, when I turned sixteen-and-a-half and finally got my license, I inherited her car: a goldish-brownish 1978 Chevy Nova with cracked vinyl seats, a busted AM radio, and the faintest trace of cigarette smoke.

    Though considered a classic now, I didn’t love the car. Not at all. It was loud and creaky, made weird ticking sounds under the hood, and rarely started when I needed it to. If you’ve read my past posts, you know I worked a lot as a teen. And so many nights, after closing up the grocery store—long after the other employees had driven off—I’d find myself alone in the parking lot, keys in hand, praying the engine would turn over.

    More often than not, it didn’t.

    I’d flood the engine in my panic. Then sit there, stranded and jittery, waiting twenty, sometimes thirty minutes before trying again. I didn’t have a cell phone. The nearest phone was a pay phone on the far side of the building—next to the bus stop, where people sometimes camped out, trying to keep dry or warm. Others would hang around asking for rides. It never felt safe.

    I wrote a hundred horror stories inside my head waiting for that car to come back to life.

The Nova had quirks too. The driver’s window stuck halfway down, the heater groaned, and if I turned left too fast, the glovebox would pop open. To get it started, you had to pump the gas just right—too slow and nothing happened, too fast and you'd flood it. I was never good at guessing. 

    I didn’t love the car, but I loved was the Saint Christopher ornament that dangled from the rearview mirror (the saint for safe travel). It belonged to my grandmother, and I’ve kept it for every car I’ve owned. It currently dangles from the rearview mirror of my Jeep Grand Cherokee.

    Looking back now, I realize I learned so much behind the wheel of that car – how to stay calm in moments of real fear, how to read people in parking lots, trust my gut, and keep a key between my fingers if I needed to walk alone. I also learned how to talk myself down from full-blown panic, not to mention how to use a pair of jumper cables.

    

    It wasn’t the kind of freedom most teenagers dream of—windows down, music blasting, new car smell. It was the other kind. The kind you earn. The kind that teaches you how to survive when no one’s coming to rescue you.

    When I graduated high school, I traded the Nova in for a 1988 Ford Escort, which, for me, may as well have been a brand-new Porsche. I still remember the cost: $3,900, which I put on payments while I was in college.

    The Escort always started—no hesitation, no drama. Even in the dark. Even in the cold. It got me back and forth to school, an hour each way, every day. It was reliable in a way I hadn’t known I needed.

    But even now, years and cars later, it’s the Nova I think about sometimes. Not because it was beautiful, or fast, or special in any obvious way. But because it taught me how to be scared and still keep trying, advice one could also apply to being creative (among other things).