Opelousas, Louisiana, August 1977
Some photos stay with you, not because of what is happening in them, but because of everything they quietly hold.
It seems everyone has at least one picture standing beside a car. I have several, taken over the years. Some are from when Mom photographed my siblings and me, perched on hoods or leaning against doors. Others came later, when I was grown, continuing the same unspoken tradition.
The photo above is one of those moments. It shows my oldest son, Chris, and me sitting on my mother’s 1976 Chevrolet Monte Carlo. I am wearing my huarache leather sandals, the pair I loved so much from The Leather Pouch in Lafayette.
Mom let me drive her Monte Carlo from time to time. I remember how long that hood felt from behind the wheel. It seemed to stretch out forever. What surprised me most was that she bought a two-door car. She had always driven larger, more practical vehicles.
According to Dad, she left the house one day, saying she was going to the pharmacy, and came back with that car. He would laugh when he told the story and say he did not know pharmacies sold automobiles.
The car I loved most growing up was her two-tone 1958 Chevrolet Bel Air. It felt enormous and comfortable, though that may have been because I was small. It is the first car I truly remember us having.
After the Bel Air came a series of others. A white 1962 Chevrolet station wagon. A 1967 Pontiac Bonneville. A yellowish 1972 Chevrolet station wagon. Then, eventually, the Monte Carlo.
When my parents bought the Bonneville, Dad had the radio removed. I never understood that decision. Even now, it feels like something important was taken away.
We spent a great deal of time in those cars. Dad was in the Army, and we moved often. Even when we were not relocating, we were traveling. While living in Germany, we drove to different places whenever we could.
One memory has stayed with me more than most. We were in Italy, in that big Bonneville, driving up a narrow mountain road. The road curved tightly, wrapping near the top before looping back around. Dad drove slowly, carefully. It took us an hour to go twelve miles. I remember how close the edges felt, how large the car seemed against that small road.
Years later, the day I got my learner’s permit, we had the 1972 station wagon. That same day, Dad took me driving on the shell road where my grandparents lived.
There was a cattle guard at the driveway. He told me to turn into it, which meant turning right. I told him I could not. He told me to do it anyway. I said again that I could not. He insisted.
So I turned.
And I crunched the back passenger door.
Dad took responsibility because he had told me to do it, but he also said he would not fix the door until I learned how to drive. That turned out to be a good decision. I hit that same door again later, this time on a telephone pole. Something else happened to it after that. Only then did he finally get it repaired.
That Monte Carlo, though, is the one that brings a different kind of memory.
It always reminds me of the song Long Cool Woman (In a Black Dress) by The Hollies.
Except in my mind, it is not about a woman.
It is about that car.
A long, cool car with a blue hood.
