Sunday, August 11, 2013

Lurch

Back in the late 1960's, my sister Kathy was forced to drive a powder blue and navy 1954 Buick. I'm pretty sure it had those chrome bullet holes in the sides. Until Kathy was given the car to drive, "Lurch" had lived in a rented garage. My dad drove the car once a month to keep it in mint condition. This car had shiny acetate upholstery. The only safety feature in the entire car was a bungee cord on the back of the front seat. In lieu of seat belts, riders in the back could hold on for dear life while careening around corners. If you wanted to live on the edge, you could forget the bungee cord and slide across the 10 miles of backseat. It was a behemoth of a car. Adding insult to injury, Kathy was in college at the time, and had to drive a weird neighbor girl to school with her. Lurch got her from point A to point B, so Kathy put up with it. One day on her way home from school, she had to pull over because smoke was coming from under the hood. Then the horn jammed. A fire truck arrived to save the day, with sirens blaring. Kathy was humiliated enough driving Lurch, let alone being the center of a smoke-filled, noisy spectacle. Lurch's demise finally came late one night in September 1968. We had thrown a 25th wedding anniversary party for my parents. Lurch was parked on the street in front of our house. Sometime in the night, a drunk driver somehow hit Lurch broadside, and pushed it up onto the lawn. That must have been some cocktail, to T-bone the Queen Mary like that. A neighbor remarked how it must have been some party for my parents. Seriously??? Just how does someone park a car sideways up on the lawn like that with one side caved in? I can’t imagine what the other car looked like as it limped away. Couldn’t have been pretty. RIP, Lurch.

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