VROOM, Baby! (Mary Strand)

This month at YA Outside the Lines, we're reminiscing about first cars.

SWEET! I'm a car chick.

I'm also kidlet # 7 out of 8 in my family, and put myself through college, and rarely had a spare dime until I became a lawyer ... so I didn't get my first car until law school.

I bought it from my brother Brian for a dollar. He also let me live with him free for the three years of law school, so Brian and I collectively put me through law school.

But back to cars.

My first car, courtesy of Brian, was a gold 1974 VW Sunbug. (So it had a sunroof, not a convertible top.) Also, courtesy of Brian, it came with a musical horn. Also, unbeknownst to Brian, it came with a rusted-out undercarriage, including the muffler, the tie rod, and eventually the brakes. The musical horn was fabulous, the other items not so much.

It also came with a stick shift, so I had to learn to drive one.

We lived in Bethesda, Maryland, because Brian and our other housemate, Rich, were doing their surgery residency at Bethesda Naval Hospital, so I had a 30- to 45-minute drive each way every day to Georgetown law school, which is on Capitol Hill. When I was learning to drive the stick, it meant navigating bumper-to-bumper traffic on Massachusetts Avenue. If you've ever learned to drive a stick (and use the clutch), you know how herky-jerky it can be. At one point, I was stuck in traffic, and a guy driving a huge rig leaned out of the cab of his truck and yelled, "Hey, lady! It's a BUG, not a RABBIT!"

Note: my second car was indeed a VW Rabbit. And I've never owned an automatic.

(Later in law school, the brakes went out while I was driving DOWNHILL on Mass Ave, but a wild right-hand turn onto a side street that went UPHILL saved me and all the cars around me on Mass Ave. Good times.)

In law school, you learn all about torts, which in simple terms are bad things that happen. My law school classmates nicknamed my VW Sunbug the Tortfeasor.

But, like I said, it had a musical horn. The songs included "Anchors Aweigh," which I played when I drove up to the entrance of Bethesda Naval Hospital to pick up Brian, and "Hail to the Chief," which I played when I drove past the White House. (I wouldn't play that in 2025.) MAN, I loved that horn!

But, like I also said, the car had a LOT of rust on its undercarriage. Losing the brakes on Mass Ave was the final straw, but the second-to-final straw was when the tie rod broke while I was driving back to Bethesda on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. My biceps got the workout of my life on the rest of that drive, which I think was ... two or three hours? But I had no money, so stopping in Pennsylvania wasn't an option.

Poor people don't have many options in a crisis. And really, that's one of the greatest things I learned in my days of owning and driving the Tortfeasor. And it has nothing to do with first cars, but I've felt that truth in all the years since.

But that musical horn! I wish I still had one!

Mary Strand is the author of Pride, Prejudice, and Push-Up Bras and three other novels in the Bennet Sisters YA series. You can find out more about her books and music at marystrand.com.