PIGGING OUT

I am a spoiled child and lucky to have a dad who humors my need to ceremoniously mark the demises of faithful, family cars. Last year I wrote about stringing Christmas tree lights in his 79 Volkswagen rabbit. This year, our old Chevy Malibu is up for honors and decorations. This car replaced the Rabbit when I was in the 6th grade. I used to not like it for this fact alone. It was a Rabbit Killer. 

Then it became my teenage freedom, and I became Malibu Barbie. (Just to my mom.)  The Bu, my co-pilot B, and my cassette tapes rode all over Memphis. And in the Bu I could do things that my parents didn't do, like singing along to loud music and having my windows down. When I come home for holidays I like to borrow it and do just that. There are parts of being a teenager that I would go back and do and driving my old car is one of them.

I've made a pig stencil from some old BBQ ads my dad posted on his blog. The roof needed to be repainted and I offered to do it up right (not boring). My ultimate goal is to get the Google Earth satellites to take a picture of it when the car is parked on the street. So while I'm painting the pig, I'm going to pep talk the Bu into lasting that long.

That's really my only holiday plan aside from stuffing my face. I'd like to propose a toast, and I'm raising my glass (of the special sauce that keeps the Bu emission free for inspection.) Here's to good food, family, and the faithful cars that drive them.

LONSDALE HOT ROD

THE RABBIT'S LAST HURRAH

Before we got our cat, we had a real Christmas tree. When I was little, we always drove the Rabbit to pick out tree. The car was old and orange and my dad didn't care if the tree scratched any of the paint on the roof. After we picked out the fullest, best smelling tree, it got tied to the roof, and we drove on home. The car had a manual transmition so my dad needed both hands for driving. It fell to my mom to prevent the tree from flying off the car. She would put an old leather work glove on her left hand, stick her arm out of the sun roof and hold onto to the tree trunk for dear life. This was almost as ridiculous as the ordeal of getting the tree inside the house. Dad would attach the stand in the garage and cut it free from its plastic net. Then he would bear-hug the tree and carry it through the house, performing a loping waltz from room to room as mom ran before him moving end tables and breakable things out of the way.

I was really sad when we had to get rid of the Rabbit.  I had always imagined that it would be the car that I would learn to drive with. I might have even asked my dad if we could just leave it in the backyard and grow grass on it. That wasn't happening either. Its passing didn't go unnoticed. Dad compromised, and in its final winter we rimmed all of the Rabbit's windows with battery powered Christmas lights.