I slung my body deftly into the Saab, let the door clang shut behind me, and took a deep breath. Ah, that old car smell. Reminds me of all the aging cars I’ve owned in my life.

My first car was a ’63 Chrysler Newport, much like the one pictured here. It was the only car my Dad ever bought new, when I was about four years old. It had been special ordered for someone else at the local Chrysler-Plymouth dealership that was owned and operated by a cousin of ours, but the customer didn’t want it because it came with a bench front seat instead of buckets. It had a massive 361 V-8 engine (that’s almost 6 liters). The high-geared differential was designed for an automatic transmission, but it had three in the floor instead. Since the vehicle weighed about two tons, starting off on a hill could cost you a new clutch. It had no power steering, no power brakes, and no air conditioning. But she’d do 65 in first gear, 110 in second, and once on Pigg River Hill the speedometer needle dropped well beyond the 120 mark located at 4 o’clock on the round dial. Yes, that’s how my Dad drove when he was in his twenties — and I was known to emulate him on occasion after I reached my teens.

Soon after my father bought the car, we all went for a drive to enjoy it. I got sick and threw up in the back seat. So much for that new car smell.

On my 16th birthday, Dad handed me the keys and told me it was mine — all 108,000 miles of being ridden hard and put away wet, covered in dents and patches of missing paint. And the AM radio didn’t work.

But it was, in my Dad’s words, “basic transportation” — which meant dating.

I resuscitated a relationship with Wanda that had died of atrophy the previous year. Back in the ninth grade, our idea of dating had been to walk together through the halls of the school so that everyone could see who we were walking with. There wasn’t any need to talk or hold hands or anything else more intimate, and you needn’t have anywhere in particular to go. You just walked around until the bell rang and you said goodbye and parted for your classes. That kind of relationship doesn’t go far.

But with a car, your possibilities multiply. You can drive from town to town so people can see who you’re driving with. We’d go back and forth between Gretna and Altavista, not really talking or holding hands or anything else more intimate. We didn’t have anywhere in particular to go. We’d just drive around until it was time to take her back to her aunt’s house where she lived. Then, being older now, we’d make out in her livingroom until we ran out of things that we could safely do in that setting, and then I’d say goodnight and drive home — blissfully happy to have spent my entire week’s wages on gasoline at fifty cents a gallon.

Wanda named my car George, and laughed. She pointed to the old sticker on the front bumper that said “Ft. George G. Meade” — it was a parking permit from my Dad’s days at NSA that had never been removed. She didn’t tell me that “George” had always been her nickname for something else entirely. About once a month, “George” was “in town”. Thinking back on it, she was probably waiting night after night for me to stop that car on a backroad somewhere and make good use of George’s big back seat that hadn’t seen any action since my sisters and I used to jump on it as children. I was oblivious.

But Wanda really laughed when I had George’s dents taken out and the body repainted. The original color had been white, but I wanted something more exciting — so I mixed the color myself at the auto parts store where I worked. It was a bright red-orange. Wanda couldn’t stop laughing, nor would she explain what was so funny.

Time passed, our relationship died of boredom again, and I had many other adventures with that car until I graduated from High School. I wanted to take it with me to college, but the University discouraged cars for freshmen — and besides, George was on his last legs. Over 120,000 miles, piston rings shot, no compression (it even rolled down a hill I parked on one time while it was in gear and the parking brake was on). It used about a quart of oil a week and almost as much brake fluid. And the University was 1200 miles from home. So I left it with my parents.

A couple of years later, after it had been sitting in my parent’s driveway all that time, my Dad sold it to a Demolition Derby. This car was so big and heavy, it survived six “races” before finally giving up the ghost.

What gives an old car that smell, I wonder? Then I look up and notice the mold growing in the Saab’s headliner.

I’ve been meaning to participate in one of Robert Hruzek’s “What I Learned From…” series of group writing projects for some time, but usually I run out of time before the deadline. This time I may actually make it. As soon as Robert announced the theme for this round, I thought of a story I could tell you that’s equally flattering and embarrassing to yours truly — but does include a lesson.

My Dad and I were famous football fans. American football, that is — Washington Redskins, specifically. So when the newspaper announced a joint tryout practice at the local high school for prospective Varsity and Junior Varsity athletes in the summer before I entered 8th grade, my father encouraged me to go. I was a pretty good runner, so I had big dreams about becoming a star running back. I imagined myself the next Larry Brown.

Eighth grade was a big transition in our school system. Students from smaller elementary schools all over the county were lumped together in what was then called “Junior High”. Thus, when I got to the practice, there were maybe a hundred people there I didn’t know. In fact, I don’t think I knew anyone. In all the confusion, I accidentally got grouped with the defensive tryouts — but I had a good time working out with the group (the older guys were going easy on us younger ones, I later realized). At the end of the day, the coach told the Varsity team to show up again for practice the next day. Somehow in my teenage confusion, I thought he meant the Junior Varsity, which would naturally include me.

And nobody corrected my misconception. For weeks, I came to the Varsity practice every day and got kicked around like a rag doll. “Heck,” I thought, “those other elementary schools sure did produce a lot of big guys.” I only weighed 120 pounds, and some of these monsters were at least twice that. I couldn’t run as fast as anyone else, even the fat ones. I couldn’t hit as hard as anyone else. I worked hard just to stay at the back of the pack. But I knew I had to keep on trying. If they could do it, by gosh I could too.

I remember a tackling-practice machine that literally launched a stuffed opponent-surrogate at you. We’d stand in line and wait to try to tackle the dummy as it sped along its suspended track. It would knock me to the ground, feet flying in the air, while all the other defenders laughed. Every time. But I’d get up, and get back in line, and get knocked down again, and get laughed at again. Every time. Day after day.

But in the locker room after practice, several players would pat me on the back and tell me I was doing a good job, and to “keep on hustling”.

And the day I finally stopped that %*&&@#^ tackling dummy, they all cheered.

Then one day as I was returning punts and getting repeatedly planted in the ground, someone I had never seen before but who was dressed like a coach called out, “Hey Chip! Come over here!”

He led me to where the Junior Varsity team had finally started practice. That’s when I understood that everyone I had been practicing with for weeks was at least two years ahead of me — many of them four years my senior. Somehow that had never come up in locker-room conversation. Imagine how embarrassed I was at my ignorance. Imagine my wonder when I realized exactly what I had survived. Imagine my subsequent confidence when going head to head against mere 8th and 9th graders. What could I fear from mere mortals, when I had battled gods?

What did I learn from this experience? When you feel overwhelmed and defeated, don’t give up. Get up, dust yourself off, and try again. Failure doesn’t necessarily reflect badly on your character or your abilities — you might simply be in over your head. But keep hustling — because if it doesn’t kill you, it will make you stronger.

EDIT: Obfuscated the G-word to go for a G-rating.