Take Me For a Ride

With all the driving folks do at this season I'm thinking a lot about cars. It’s amazing what people can do in a car. Parents in the Roaring 20s went crazy worrying what their kids were doing when they borrowed the Model A for a night out. “Rolling brothels!” one worked-up elder called the cars of those days but cars were always much more than settings for sex. They were wonderfully mobile spaces people could climb into and go just anywhere - provided their tires didn’t blow and their little sewing-machine-sized engines didn’t fail.But if a car was nice to have then, how much nicer it is now, especially if your car is the much-mocked minivan.In my book the minivan is the best invention since the blow-dryer, the pencil sharpener, the washing machine even. I bought my first Chrysler/Dodge minivan back when the man with the velvet voice took up residence in the White House. It was bright red, like 90% of his First Lady’s wardrobe. Nancy Reagan was chic all right, but I FELT chic tooling around in my Caravan. And so, seven years later when it died, I traded it in for another one, again made by Chrysler, only white this time.

• Then, seven years later, I got a green one.
• Then in seven more years, another red one.
• And now these 30 years later, I have a van of midnight blue with big wide shoulders and a decidedly masculine feel.

I have loved them all, and done my best to nurse them back to health when any one of them got injured, as this one did, when, in a freak accident, our neighbor's construction-related porta-potty ended up falling on it.Yup, in my book, whatever year’s model you have, this seven-seatbelt marvel has all other vehicles beat because of Chrysler’s patented ‘Stow-and-Go’ seats in back, big comfy thrones that, with a touch here and a tug there, sink away under the floorboards, yielding a ballroom of space. Then, another touch-and-tug and up they come again like a band of jolly ghosts bringing mirth to the family table.I have at various times toted whole dining room tables in there, large and swoony palm trees, and up to eight chairs, both wooden and upholstered. I have practiced both yoga and piano back there, the latter on my portable keyboard.  I have soothed whole pet taxis of white mice alarmed by their visit to the vet. I have even refinished furniture back there, though not with the lung-searing chemicals you’d use for a major strip-job but with sand paper and steel wool merely. And this past summer I filled it with two seven-foot paddleboards while two nine-footers rode on the roof.  But the chief joy I take in my minivan comes from the peace I feel inside it, a peace that suffuses the whole car so that even behind the wheel I feel held and soothed.And while I love the model I have now, that doesn’t stop me from imagining the fresh delights that a new model might bring me five or six years hence. Maybe in that van’s roomy back I can set up a ‘The Doctor-is-in’-Style booth for compassionate listening, or – wait, I know! - how about a couple of lanes of bowling for my mice?In the meantime it will just go on being this family's faithful friend, in all our comings and goings.   

A Busy Mom's Best Friend

It’s amazing what you can do in a car. Parents in the 1920s almost lost their minds worrying what the young people were doing in their cars, these rolling parlors they could get in and go just anywhere, get themselves just anywhere, as far as they liked if they had gas enough .But I’m not talking about THOSE kinds of activities.I’m talking about the myriad other ways your car comes in handy, especially if it’s a minivan.In my book the minivan is the nest invention since the blow-dryer. The pencil sharpener. The clothes drier even.And I’m serious. I got my first Dodge caravan in 1986. It was red, like three-quarters of Nancy Reagan’s wardrobe. When it died in seven years’ time I got a white one. Then a green one. Then another red one and I’m here to tell you my lords it over the cars of every other car out there, be it Honda or Subaru, Toyota or big old Caddy.The Chrysler is the only minivan with the Stow-and-Go seats, these plush comfy thrones that at the push of  a button fold up and sink away under the floorboards, yielding me a ballroom of space. Then another touch and up they come again like a band of jolly ghosts appearing  once again at the dinner table.Look at all the room!In this space I can and have toted swoony big palm trees, dining room chairs past counting, whole dining room tables, or as I did yesterday, a seven foot long buffet. I have stretched out for a nap, soothed travelling cats, cages and all, and now apparently refinished furniture. (Just as a note the furniture refinishing I did in my car Sunday and Monday didn’t involve any 5F5 which you wouldn’t use in a small enclosed place of course, unless you wanted to keel over  dead within ten minutes. It was just a little subtle steel wool-and-rubbing agents that I know about as someone who has been rehabbing furniture since before Nancy Reagan was First Lady of California, speaking of that slim the giant-headed clothes horse who went to my college but didn’t finish, just like Fellow Republican Barbara Bush did with her pearly dog-collar and her salty talk. (Did you know she is famous for sketchy? I didn’t know that I until I read that thinly disguised 2008 fictionalization of Laura Bush. Which I read. In my car. In stolen moments in various grocery store parking lots.))Here they are the two of them, Miz Pearls first  and Nancy below her.Well here’s the beauty of a blog: you can just go on and on spooling out stories and nobody fires you or gets out the red pencil. even. Everyone in my family of origin could do this, speaking of ghosts at the table. There were four grownups at my dining room table growing up and any one of them could talk tile the cows came home. Once my 90-year-old great aunt fell asleep during one of these talkathons and fell clean out of her chair and onto the floor.Anyway the Chrysler Plymouth people have a wonderful car in the minivan. Mine is now eight years old and I can hardly wait to get the new model. In the 2013 Chrysler I’m hoping to set up a small bowling alley. :-)