My Daily Driver



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by Bobby McCarthy
Copyright (c), 2003, My Daily Driver -- All Rights Reserved

I'm walking through the parking lot of the local Megalo-mart and something catches my eye. It's one of those high-tech pseudo-station wagon/SUV/everything to cure your suburban ills, but looks like it should be in the Amazon type vehicles, although the ground clearance couldn't clear a speed bump vehicle. Can anyone say run on sentence? Anyway, what catches my eye are the thousands of stickers adhered to inside of the "back compartment" of said vehicle. Every give-away sticker from Burger King's "Pokemon", MacDonald's "Little Mermaid" to Chiquita bananas slapped all over the inner safety glass of this once proud vehicle.

As I study this "refrigerator door on wheels", I have a Rear View. Normally this column looks back upon the time when these vintage cars were built. Well after witnessing this display, and how I have encountered countless other such displays of "rare and collectible Beanie Babies" stuffed upon the package tray and "Power Rangers" stickers adoring expensive means of transportation, I say, "Who the Hell is driving these cars?"

Each progressive American generation has had it far easier then the last. This I will admit. My father's parents as told to me, could not afford dirt and the children clawed out tons of bituminous coal prior to walking to school in the snow, uphill both ways. Stickers 2

My earliest recollection of the family car was nothing short of a shrine. You did not park you bicycle within a 10 foot proximity. You never leaned against the shiny fenders as you conversed with your hoodlum friends. To ask my farther for a ride somrwhere resulted in the standard, "Your legs ain't broke, are they boy?" If my old man wasn't pulling triple-overtime on Saturday at the steel mill, our family ritual was "washing the car."

Now I will say this about the old boy, he had style. The first car I was enlisted into the "Scrub Squad" was a 1965 Oldsmobile 442 Convertible. But the car I scrubbed more than any other was a 1969 Ford Torino GT. As a spry 9 year old, my mission was to climb up the back seat and clean the rear window. Upon completing that task, Pops would walk me though the "proper" method necessary to insure a clean car.

The methods Pops drilled into me still enable me to keep my own 30 year car looking presentable. Which brings us back to the initial point regarding the "Stickerd Cars" I have encountered. Who the Hell is driving these cars? Is a car more important than a child? Of course not. What irks me is that expensive vehicles are treated like a "Chucky Cheeses" on wheels. This is not the kids fault, perhaps the parents never learned to respect anything. As for myself, I am going to clean my 30 year old glass with vinegar and newspaper. That's how Pops used to do it.

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