Car (Ac)culture
To adjust to life in a new country, I had to kill my American dream.
When my grandfather died, I was a very tiny baby. In the last picture ever taken of him, he is pale and thin, sitting in a stuffed armchair, holding the two-week-old me. No one was aware of it at the time, but the vehicle that would one day become my first car was in the garage outside.
When her husband first became ill, my grandmother didn’t know how to drive. My grandfather persuaded her to take lessons so that she could get herself around after he was gone. In the same year that I was born and he died, he bought his soon-to-be widow the biggest, safest car that he could find, the landlubber’s answer to a battlecruiser: the 1970 Plymouth Fury III. It was 18 feet long, with a 10-foot wheelbase, and avocado green inside and out.
The 1970 Plymouth sales brochure shows a man standing alongside this car in a ridiculously tall hat. Forget a 10-gallon hat; this is a 20- or 30-gallon hat. The text underneath the picture says,
Having a big car just to have a big car is ridiculous. But when a big car means more comfort and convenience, then you’ve got something — like Plymouth’s Fury III…Without a doubt, our Fury III is a big car. But more importantly –in the right places, for the right reasons…
