My Parents Were Crazy!

If you don't know, I'm one of 7 children.  Seven!  That's enough right there to justify the headline, right?  One time I asked my Dad what he was thinking to have 7 kids.  He just looked at me and laughed.  I was laughing, too, so I guess he thought I was just joking, but I was serious, too.  I will say that being from a large family is pretty cool.  I have 6 siblings who are all accomplished and fun people.  Add in their spouses, kids, grandkids, etc, and the family reunions are crazy big.  And a lot of fun to boot.    

But the number of kids in my family is not really the point of this post.  One of the ramifications of having 7 kids is that my parents basically became a nonstop shuttle service for us.  After a while, the oldest of the kids got a driver's license and my parents thought "let's get them driving the younger kids around."  To do that, of course, they had to supply the car.  Voila!  The kid's car was born.

Now my two eldest siblings are both girls, and while girls can get into plenty of trouble, it's usually not the physically destructive type of trouble that boys generate daily.  There wasn't a lot of issues with my sisters driving the kid's car, but then came a new reality.  Three boys in a row got to drive the kid's car.  Uh oh.

When my oldest brother got preferential key status, the kid's car was a 1962 VW beetle.  Pretty basic and stripped down, especially by today's standards, it did have one really cool feature.  It wasn't a convertible top, but rather a manual sunroof that was canvas and extended to open up over the back seat, too.  When my Dad was driving that car, it was fun to tool around with the top open.  But when my brother got it, we amped up the passenger experience.

Here's a picture of a 1963 model VW bug with the "ragtop sunroof:"  It goes back pretty darn far, and remember these seats didn't have headrests nor were the backs of the seats locked in place - just push on them from the back seat and they move forward.

Have you ever ridden around standing up out of the sunroof?  Yes, it's dangerous, but for teenage boys?  Well, when you're a kid, it's tons of fun.  I mean, really really fun.  We used to drive all over creation with my brother, and we would fight to get into the backseat so that we could stand up while we motored.  It was great.  You see a pedestrian?  You yell something at them.  Or maybe throw something at them.  Whatever.  But it was thrilling to simply be going 35 or 40 mph and have the sun in your face, the wind blowing your hair back, and just having the time of your life. 

Ultimately, that car couldn't handle the third sibling, and it went the way of the dinosaurs.  Along came the new kid's car, which was a Ford Maverick Grabber with a 302 V8.  Mind you, this was a compact car at the time, but if you ever see one at a classic car show these days, you'll see that it's as long and wide as a modern minivan.  While we missed the standup days of the VW, we got something to compensate:  a very good sound system with a cassette tape deck.  This was killing it in the mid-70s!

I can still remember driving to high school with my two brothers in that Maverick.  Songs like Free Bird and More Than A Feeling were released, and I have vivid memories of both of those tunes blasting in my ears while I sat in the back seat of that car.  

Here's a picture of a Maverick Grabber - ours was blue:​

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That Maverick was a cool car.  I did many things in it that you simply could not get away with these days.  One thing me and a buddy who had a Dodge Dart got into was gently tapping each other's bumpers at stop signs, red lights, and the like.  Say he was following me to my house - he would just come up and nudge my car when the opportunity arose.  I did likewise with him.  It was funny.

And then mooning people.  Maybe I shouldn't go into all of that, but there was a time in my life when mooning a fellow motorist was about the funniest damn thing that a car full of teenage boys could come up with.  

At some point, my two older brothers left the house to go to college and I got the keys.  Yippee!  But then something interesting happened.  My mom sold real estate, and decided to up her client car, going from a Ford LTD Country Squire station wagon to a small Lincoln.  The interesting part is that the station wagon was only 2 years old, and we needed it for the cargo space.  So the Maverick left the fleet and I ended up with the station wagon. 

I was a senior in high school.  I was out of control.  My parents were ... CRAZY!

Here's a picture of a similar station wagon (you can click the link and get a full tour).  Love the faux wood paneling.  Mine was white, too.  Oh and the LTD?  In my case, that stood for Lunatic Transportation Device.

Things happened in that car.  You could (and I did) pack it full of people, beer, and other items and take the party to the streets.  You could put the tailgate down, you could put the back seats down, and you could turn up the tunes while having a party platform parked virtually anywhere.  What tunes?  How about Kansas or Van Halen?  Hell's yeah! 

Damn.  Those were good days.  Great music, but also a lot of schlock music.  And overplayed music!  My God, Fleetwood Mac's Rumors album was so grossly overplayed that I still have trouble listening to it. 

Nonetheless, it was party central in the LTD.  And if my parents ever realized what they had unleashed, I think that they, too, would have to admit that they were nuts to give me that vehicle.  

Alright, that was a fun.  Want to know what kind of car I bought for my first ever car?  You'll have to come back for that one.