| Biographical Non-Fiction posted December 9, 2020 | Chapters: |
...82 83 -84- 85... 
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Our son buys his first car with our money.
A chapter in the book Remembering Yesterday
The Firebird
by BethShelby
| Background The year is 1982. Our three oldest children are in college in Tennessee. This chapter is about the holidays and what happens as the children return to college. |
For new readers, who may not have read my author notes, this is written in a conversational way as I talk to my deceased husband. When I refer to someone just as "you" this means I am addressing my husband, Evan.
Just before Christmas in 1981, we went to Tennessee to pick up our older three from College. We stayed overnight in order to see the student gymnastic show, which was just before the kids were to leave for the holiday break. We got a motel, in nearby Cleveland, Tennessee. It was a smaller city than Chattanooga, and we liked the country feel. There weren't any motels near the college.
The gymnastic show at the college was excellent. We were amazed at how skilled the students were. One of the main exercises that Don preformed was on a piece of equipment called a pummel horse. It is the second event in the Olympics floor exercises for men. It requires balance, strength and endurance. The Pummel Horse is an upholstered bench with two rings, and the exercise is done with the person standing on their hands while gripping the rings and swinging the body and legs in circles and splits in the air. They also have to rotate from the left to the right bar. Don was in the best physical condition that he’s ever been in, and his performance was impressive.
The next morning we all went back home to Metairie. As usual, we drove to Mississippi for Christmas, in order to spend time with our parents. We left the kids in Newton to visit with my parents and came back to pick them up the following weekend when we got off work a few days for New Year. You and I went to our house in the country and spent some time there.
On the second day of 1982, we planned to leave Newton and to go back to New Orleans. The weather was warm for that time of year, and the sky was almost black in the Southwestern sky. A terrible storm came through that looked very much like a tornado. We left as soon as it had passed over, not knowing if there had been storm damage in the town. We hadn't gotten over a mile from my parents home when the highway traffic came to a standstill. Up ahead, we could see police cars and ambulances.
When we were finally able to inch forward a bit, we saw a partly covered body being loaded into an ambulance. Don said the man was headless. Thankfully I didn’t see that, and I hoped that Connie hadn’t seen it either. We later learned there was extensive damage in Newton, but that was the only fatality. Newton is a town in central Mississippi that has seen a lot of tornadoes. Along with the one that totally destroyed our home when I was ten, another one damaged their home after you and I were married. That time only part of the house was damaged. This damage we had witnessed on this day took place only a mile away.
After the storm came through, the temperature dropped rapidly. It was even cold in New Orleans. The following morning, our students left to go back to college. Once again, we let them take the van back with them. They ran out of gas just as they got into the Chattanooga area and had to walk to a service station in a freezing wind.
*********
Carol was starting her second semester in the nursing program. She was a good student, but she was much like I had been in college. She crammed for exams and did well, but that isn’t the best way to retain the information. I really don’t think she found the nursing subjects that interesting. I wondered if nursing was really her calling. Christi and Don were still taking core subjects, which they had to have in order to graduate, whatever their major. Both of them had made a lot of friends. Carol was the type of person who kept her friends to only one or two who were close enough to share her feelings with. She was a more private person.
********
The kids hadn’t been back in school long before we got a call from Don. “Mom, get Dad on the other line. I need to talk to both of you about something important.” With a bit of anxiety, I called you, and you picked up the other line.
“What's up, Don?” you asked.
“Y`all won’t believe this deal, I’ve found.It’s a classic car. It’s a Fire Bird. I’ve always wanted a Fire Bird. The girl who had it last, hardly drove it. And I can get it for practically nothing. I just need to borrow a little money. It is a really great deal. I can’t pass this up. It needs a little work, but I’m planning to take a course in Auto Mechanics next semester, and I’m gonna have to have a car to work on. I can do all the work on it myself."
“How much, Don?”
“Not much at all-- Just $500. Can you believe it? It’s a really good looking car. I just need to borrow the money. I’ll pay it back when I get a job this Summer.”
After much more discussion, with emphasis on the urgency of needing the money fast before someone else scooped up this wonderful bargain, he finally managed to get us to agree to send him the money. Maybe our son had a future as a used car salesman.
Believe me, there were a lot of things left out of our negotiation with Don. These things were slowly gathered over the next few months, in spite of the fact that further information had to be dragged from our son. First of all, the fantastic car that he found was located in the junk yard. The reason the girl that owned it last hadn’t driven it much was because it didn’t run. The motor was toast. All the other mechanical parts were, as well. Our son and his friends almost got arrested trying to tow it down the highway. Once he got it to the school, he wasn’t allowed to leave it on the campus. He finally managed to get a married student, who had an off campus apartment, to agree to let him leave it in their drive. I have a feeling that this agreement was arranged without the guy’s wife getting to express her opinion.
No more was said about the car for many, many months. If Don was having buyer’s remorse, he didn’t dare mention it. I’m thinking the anxiety over the deal, along with Don's hyperactive nature, and also the fact that he’d never really learned how to study, caused his grades to drop to the 'C' level. He was very intelligent, but due, partly to bad decisions things weren’t going so well for him. I felt maybe we deserved some of the blame for allowing him to go so far away to school when he obviously wasn’t ready to be on his own.
The car would bring about more problems during the following semester.
Just before Christmas in 1981, we went to Tennessee to pick up our older three from College. We stayed overnight in order to see the student gymnastic show, which was just before the kids were to leave for the holiday break. We got a motel, in nearby Cleveland, Tennessee. It was a smaller city than Chattanooga, and we liked the country feel. There weren't any motels near the college.
The gymnastic show at the college was excellent. We were amazed at how skilled the students were. One of the main exercises that Don preformed was on a piece of equipment called a pummel horse. It is the second event in the Olympics floor exercises for men. It requires balance, strength and endurance. The Pummel Horse is an upholstered bench with two rings, and the exercise is done with the person standing on their hands while gripping the rings and swinging the body and legs in circles and splits in the air. They also have to rotate from the left to the right bar. Don was in the best physical condition that he’s ever been in, and his performance was impressive.
The next morning we all went back home to Metairie. As usual, we drove to Mississippi for Christmas, in order to spend time with our parents. We left the kids in Newton to visit with my parents and came back to pick them up the following weekend when we got off work a few days for New Year. You and I went to our house in the country and spent some time there.
On the second day of 1982, we planned to leave Newton and to go back to New Orleans. The weather was warm for that time of year, and the sky was almost black in the Southwestern sky. A terrible storm came through that looked very much like a tornado. We left as soon as it had passed over, not knowing if there had been storm damage in the town. We hadn't gotten over a mile from my parents home when the highway traffic came to a standstill. Up ahead, we could see police cars and ambulances.
When we were finally able to inch forward a bit, we saw a partly covered body being loaded into an ambulance. Don said the man was headless. Thankfully I didn’t see that, and I hoped that Connie hadn’t seen it either. We later learned there was extensive damage in Newton, but that was the only fatality. Newton is a town in central Mississippi that has seen a lot of tornadoes. Along with the one that totally destroyed our home when I was ten, another one damaged their home after you and I were married. That time only part of the house was damaged. This damage we had witnessed on this day took place only a mile away.
After the storm came through, the temperature dropped rapidly. It was even cold in New Orleans. The following morning, our students left to go back to college. Once again, we let them take the van back with them. They ran out of gas just as they got into the Chattanooga area and had to walk to a service station in a freezing wind.
*********
Carol was starting her second semester in the nursing program. She was a good student, but she was much like I had been in college. She crammed for exams and did well, but that isn’t the best way to retain the information. I really don’t think she found the nursing subjects that interesting. I wondered if nursing was really her calling. Christi and Don were still taking core subjects, which they had to have in order to graduate, whatever their major. Both of them had made a lot of friends. Carol was the type of person who kept her friends to only one or two who were close enough to share her feelings with. She was a more private person.
********
The kids hadn’t been back in school long before we got a call from Don. “Mom, get Dad on the other line. I need to talk to both of you about something important.” With a bit of anxiety, I called you, and you picked up the other line.
“What's up, Don?” you asked.
“Y`all won’t believe this deal, I’ve found.It’s a classic car. It’s a Fire Bird. I’ve always wanted a Fire Bird. The girl who had it last, hardly drove it. And I can get it for practically nothing. I just need to borrow a little money. It is a really great deal. I can’t pass this up. It needs a little work, but I’m planning to take a course in Auto Mechanics next semester, and I’m gonna have to have a car to work on. I can do all the work on it myself."
“How much, Don?”
“Not much at all-- Just $500. Can you believe it? It’s a really good looking car. I just need to borrow the money. I’ll pay it back when I get a job this Summer.”
After much more discussion, with emphasis on the urgency of needing the money fast before someone else scooped up this wonderful bargain, he finally managed to get us to agree to send him the money. Maybe our son had a future as a used car salesman.
Believe me, there were a lot of things left out of our negotiation with Don. These things were slowly gathered over the next few months, in spite of the fact that further information had to be dragged from our son. First of all, the fantastic car that he found was located in the junk yard. The reason the girl that owned it last hadn’t driven it much was because it didn’t run. The motor was toast. All the other mechanical parts were, as well. Our son and his friends almost got arrested trying to tow it down the highway. Once he got it to the school, he wasn’t allowed to leave it on the campus. He finally managed to get a married student, who had an off campus apartment, to agree to let him leave it in their drive. I have a feeling that this agreement was arranged without the guy’s wife getting to express her opinion.
No more was said about the car for many, many months. If Don was having buyer’s remorse, he didn’t dare mention it. I’m thinking the anxiety over the deal, along with Don's hyperactive nature, and also the fact that he’d never really learned how to study, caused his grades to drop to the 'C' level. He was very intelligent, but due, partly to bad decisions things weren’t going so well for him. I felt maybe we deserved some of the blame for allowing him to go so far away to school when he obviously wasn’t ready to be on his own.
The car would bring about more problems during the following semester.
 Recognized |
I'm continuing to recall memories of life with my deceased husband, Evan, as if I am talking aloud to him. I'm doing this because I want my children to know us as we knew each other and not just as their parents.
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