Out with the Old: A Bunch of Old Crap, a Camaro, & an Uncle
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Old Crap
Everything of mine was old when I was a kid. My bed — the frame, mattress, box spring, sheets, those itchy wool blankets; my second-hand clothes; the scratchy, low-pile carpet in my room.
But, really, it wasn’t just my stuff — everything was old. Our TV, the furniture, my grandparents, the fans, the trees, the house.
I lived in an ‘historic’ area of an East Coast suburb. I knew it was a place that drew some sort of envy, the way people would differentiate it from the rest of the town. But, to me, it was just old.
My house was supposedly in a history book at the library, and my neighbors’ house, somehow, used to be the barn for the horses my house’s owners kept back before cars even existed, or something. Grandma always told people that; it made the house important.
We had a gravel driveway, making it hard to ride a bike on or run barefoot on or do anything driveway-related on. There were no sidewalks, or very few, and the enormous old houses were miles apart, or felt that way.
I wanted to live in one of those places like my friend Jenny lived: the streets were lined with brick houses; most of them had very little grass between them; all of them looked alike; and the sidewalks were nearly wide enough for two Big Wheels to ride side-by-side. On top of that, Jenny got to eat Spaghettios and hot dogs for lunch. Her floors were covered with soft, plush carpet through all the rooms. There was air conditioning in the summer. And, she had new curtains and a matching comforter for her bedroom.
Jenny’s older brothers and my uncle David were friends, and they liked to fix up old cars. Sometimes, her brothers would come to our house and help David work on his cars. My uncle had three old cars: a late 50s, dark blue Volvo; some unremarkable car that was Bondo gray; and, a ’67 or ’68 white, convertible Camaro SS with blue interior — the most beautiful car I’d ever known (or at least it was, until the night a Trans Am [with that gold eagle emblem on the hood] crashed through our fence and into one of my dad’s favorite old holly trees).
