My First Car – 1973 Dodge Colt Wagon

My First Car: 1973 Dodge Colt Wagon

by Kristin Casey

My first car was a hand-me-down. It had been my older sister’s for three years before I got it, on my way to college in 1985, at seventeen. I drove 553 miles—eight hours of nothing but hot sun, tumbleweeds, and Dairy Queens—from Amarillo to Austin in that 1973 Dodge Colt wagon.

It was mustard colored, with a broken radio, nonexistent AC, and rear window plastered with punk band stickers, from Crass and Conflict to Social Distortion and Suicidal Tendencies. (I could barely see the cars directly behind me but if they got close enough to read my abrasive sticker medley they’d fall back on their own fairly quickly, anyway.)

I was not a good driver.

I managed the complexity of a manual transmission better than the simplicity of a four-way intersection. I was a kid in some ways, with a still developing brain quick to embrace the power and freedom of car ownership, yet slow to grasp the rules of the road that I shared with other
drivers and their families.

It was a hatchback, roomy enough to cart around 4-5 rowdy punks every weekend night—bunch of amateur driving instructors shouting randomly to go faster, slower, signal, look out, don’t hit that truck, speed through yellow and stop on red you idiot. I’d get in free to punk shows in exchange for hauling band equipment to Dallas or Houston, once in the worst storm I’d ever seen.

I learned what fishtailing meant and how to pump the brakes (we did that back then), how to change a tire and what it felt like driving on a rim (not necessarily in that order). I learned the hard way when to check its fluid levels

(hint: before billows of steam block every inch of your view through the windshield).

At nineteen I passed down the mustard mobile to my younger sister.

Then I bought an ’82 Cutlass Supreme with burgundy interior and double tinted windows, a functioning radio, automatic transmission, zero punk rockers, and plenty of room for stripper gear and a girlfriend or two, to drive to the lake on weekends, to watch the sunset, drinking margaritas on the patio of Austin’s famed Oasis restaurant.

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Kristin Casey,
is the Author of Rock Monster: My Life With Joe Walsh (guitarist/singer of The Eagles)

http://kristincaseyauthor.com/

Kristin Casey’s previous publishing credits include short stories, essays, articles, and poetry in the Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, The Nervous Breakdown, The Fix, Metal Scratches, From The Asylum, $pread, and elsewhere. Her screenplays have placed as high as Nicholl quarterfinalist and AFF second rounder.

She’s a recovered alcoholic and addict who’s rigorously inventoried her every resentment and relinquished ninety percent of them. She’s survived clinical depression, a suicide attempt, numerous addictions, the panhandle of Texas, and seventeen years of Catholicism. She writes about addiction, dependency, intimacy, and sexuality. Her comma policy is to throw a handful at the screen and where they land is where they stay.

She is currently writing a nonfiction series and is repped by Peter McGuigan at Foundry Literary + Media. Her first book, addiction memoir Rock Monster: My Life with Joe Walsh, was released by Rare Bird Books in March, 2018.

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