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Health & Fitness

Cars, Flying, And The Fear Of Heights

A first airplane ride and a weekend away from the folks near a Marine base.

I didn’t much care to drive at first.  I liked being a passenger more.  A girlfriend from high school had a 1936 Ford Coupe which we cruised the strip with in Hayward with all the other kids at the time.  It was a great hang out especially after leaving Frenchy’s nightclub which I had to sneak into either with friends or a date.  I loved her car and it sure was envied by the guys that cruised the strip with us. The car was hot and us girls were not bad either.

My first car was a hand-me-down old 1956 green four-door Cadillac that my Dad gave me.  It was a gas guzzler and needed oil all the time, but it was a sturdy vehicle.  I drove it until it needed work. When it died finally my Dad accompanied me to Pierotti Motors in Fremont to trade it in and buy a car for myself.  Hindsight is always 20-20 but what I wouldn’t give to have that old Caddy now. 

Dad co-signed for me and I paid for all of it myself.  I purchased a cute clean white used 1964 two door Studebaker Datona with a red interior and with what they call glass packs which made it sound really great.  I loved the car, but I wanted to have it striped or something because plain white did not reflect my personality at all. 

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When I worked for the chemical company after graduation, I wanted to fly down to San Diego to visit my best friend from school and her new husband (also a classmate) on the Marine base in Oceanside.  It was like pulling teeth for my Dad to allow me to go and he refused time after time although I was out of school and working. I had to have some divine intervention from my Dad’s cousins from SF.  They spent many weekends with us in our new home and I explained my situation to them. Cousin Bummy spoke up for me and convinced my Dad that I should be allowed to go.

God love Bummy. He was the most sweetest and wonderful man in the world. How I always wanted to be his daughter. He always said he would dress me in beautiful velvet dresses if I was his daughter and I was always ready to go home with them since they had no children and I could have been the daughter they never had. Dad was so strict and I am sure I resented him for it and Cousin Bummy was totally cool.

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Dad was so worried about me on my first flight that he had me take out insurance naming him my beneficiary should the plane go down.  Dad was a very concerned parent, only looking out for my welfare, I am sure. Dad was also afraid of flying.

I couldn’t believe it, I was actually going to fly to southern California alone.  I was scared of flying which was pretty funny since when I was a real little kid, I wanted to be a stewardess.  That never happened because as I got older, I realized that this was not what I wanted to be.

When I had little arguments with my Dad which were fairly frequent because he was so strict, I used to tell him that I wanted to take up sky diving because I knew it would get his goat.  I had no interest in doing this at all.  When Dad got angry, his forehead receded and you could tell he was mad and whenever I said it, he became visibly angry. He said he didn’t want to scrape up his daughter splattered on a sidewalk somewhere.  I had no intention of ever sky diving since heights scare the daylights out of me. I also hate flying but it is the fastest way to get from point A to point B.

From when I was a kid up to being an adult and going to the Catholic cemetery in Colma with my parents there was an issue about climbing up high.  My Dad’s parents were buried very high up in the mausoleum which required us to get up on a ladder to put our flowers in front of the crypts and they were located in separate areas of the mausoleum.  Dad must have been scared of heights too because I was usually the one who climbed up the huge ladder with wheels on it while Dad held the ladder in place.  I was so scared that I could not look down.  I did not tell my Dad I was afraid, however.  I never wanted to disappoint him.  He never offered to go up the ladder since he had us to do it for him. 

The trip to San Diego was fantastic.  I stayed with Lil and Joey at their home off the base.  I was introduced to Frank, a fellow Marine, and my date for the long weekend.  We all went to Tijuana, Mexico, and I saw things that blew my mind because after all I led a very sheltered life.  I was shocked that women would come up to the men in our presence walking down the street and offered to have sex with them for a price.  Scantily clad women danced on top of the bars in the taverns, and it was “sin city” to me but fascinating at the same time.  Tijuana was something else.  We also went to a greyhound dog race in Caliente, Mexico, which was something I had never seen before either.

At the end of the long weekend, it was sad to leave my friends and all the fun we had but it was a wonderfully freeing experience as an adult being away from my strict parents.  Frank was a very sweet southerner who begged me to stay in San Diego because he said he fell in love with me. I told him I was engaged to someone else which was not far from the truth. I often wonder what happened to him like we all do when someone has touched our lives. 

Well, the “you-know-what” hit the fan when I got home.  I left my car keys with my parents in case my car needed to be moved while I was gone.  One of them let my brother use my car and I expect it was my Mom because she was an easy touch.  My brother smoked and somehow he caught my dashboard on fire. When I got home and saw what he did to my beautiful lovingly cared for car, I had a fit.  The red interior was marred with an ugly blackened dashboard.  I cried.  My car was ruined.

Dad felt pretty bad for me and agreed to take me car shopping.  I found one I loved.  It was a brand new red 1968 Datsun convertible sports car.  Dad co-signed for me but I paid for all of it myself.  It was so cute, but it unfortunately it had a stick shift and I did not know how to drive a stick shift at that time.  So, the wonderful salesman met me for a couple of nights after work and taught me how to drive it. He made the sale. I got my car. But, I thought I signed my life away. The car cost a whopping $3,300.  It had both a removable hard top with a cute porthole window and a rag top.  Now we are talking, as I felt that it surely reflected my personality. 

I discovered that I was not fond of the stick shift.  The problem was that I didn’t like downshifting  so I sometimes rolled through intersections without stopping at the yellow light as it turned red. It was a fast little car and I enjoyed driving it. The problem is that only one other person could fit in the little sports car, so going out with the girls was limited in my car.

When I worked for the municipal governmental office, my second job, we had happy hour on Fridays at a local tavern and I always went out with my co-workers and had a few cocktails.  I was always the youngest one wherever I worked. Although I was too young to drink, I was never carded. Being young and foolish, we never thought about our mortality and we certainly never thought about driving under the influence.  One of the engineers from Public Works always followed me home to make sure I managed to get there in one piece and because red is a color the police can spot miles away. Since I knew all the cops in the city where I worked, I guess I felt safe enough.  One of them told me he saw me going though a red light when it just turned.  I told him I would be more careful in the future but I am not sure he bought it.

When I brought the car to work for the first week, the guys wanted to take it for a spin so I gave them my keys and they drove it around the industrial area near City Hall. They all acted like kids again.  Everyone loved my cute little car as much as I did. 

I kept the car for about 16 months when I married.  I had a purebred white German Shepherd puppy that I took for a ride in the car with me one day and stopped to see my sister-in-law at the hair salon where she worked.  I left the puppy in the car and I couldn’t have been in there ten minutes.  When I returned to my car, Keno had eaten the inside of the door.  I was so angry with him because he ruined the inside of my pretty little car.  I didn’t have that much experience with puppies and didn’t realize they could be so destructive. It was a lesson learned.

When I got pregnant and had my daughter, I realized that this was truly not a family car.  We traded her in on a red Nissan Patrol, a four wheel drive jeep type vehicle, which was fun to drive.  It was great on trips and a good family car.

Needless to say, I never let my brother, Reno, drive either one of those vehicles. I will never forget what he did to my car because he showed no remorse and still doesn’t.  And truth be known, after these 44 years, although I love my brother, I will never forgive him for it and he knows it.

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