My First Car Thomas M Parsons

15. My First Car

For the five-and-a-half years I was a student at Wayne, I shared my dad’s car, at his expense, of course. But now, with the prospect of going to Grand Rapids in the fall, I would need my own car. I could not commute to Grand Rapids every day; it was one hundred and fifty miles away. And I could not expect Dad to let me take his car to Grand Rapids with me. He was still working and still needed a vehicle. So he and I went car shopping.

It wasn’t long before we found a white, 1963 Plymouth Valiant sitting on a dealer’s lot not far from our home. The price was reasonable, and credit was arranged. In one evening I got my first car and my first debt.

The car had a manual shift, and I was used to Dad’s automatic, so I had some rough rides at first. But soon I learned to coordinate my right foot on the accelerator and brake, and my left foot on the clutch, and I drove the little car to work, and to church, and to everyplace else I wanted to go all that summer. But we did find a problem.

I don’t remember if it was Dad or me who discovered the problem, but the car was leaking gasoline. That was not good. I quickly figured out that a spark or a lit cigarette tossed from another car could theoretically light the gas that was leaking from my car. I didn’t think the results would be very desirable.

Dad and I took the car to the service station where Dad had his cars worked on. He had dealt with the owner of the station many times, and knew him personally. Of course, being a salesman, Dad claimed to know everyone personally.

I believe the man’s name was Leo. He looked under the car and found a slow dripping of gas from the tank.

“What we’ll have to do,” Leo said quietly, but confidently, “is drain all the gas out of her, drop the gas tank, and then flush it with water for a couple of days. Then I can put a weld over the hole and put the tank back on the car.”

“That sounds expensive,” Dad said. I thought about the money I was earning for seminary in the fall. It would be going to put a weld on the gas tank of my car.

“Well, yes,” said Leo. “It is. It’s a lot of work. But I can’t put a weld on her until I know all the gas fumes are gone. She would explode in my face otherwise.”

That did not sound like a workable solution to Dad and me. We told Leo we would let him know. Later that evening Dad was talking with his friend from across the street, Red. Red was a do-it-yourselfer who had a remedy for everything. Some might identify him as redneck, and maybe he was.

“We got a leak in the gas tank of Tom’s car,” Dad said. “Leo wants a lot of money to drain and flush the thing and put a weld on it. Tom’s going to school in the fall, and he doesn’t have the money.”

“Mind if I look at her?” Red asked.

Dad looked at me. “Not at all,” I said.

We walked out to the street where my little white Valiant sat by the curb slowly leaking gas into the street. It was not a lot of gas, mind you. Just a little leak. But it was persistent. And potentially dangerous.

Red got down under the car and looked around to see where the leak was.

“I think the leak is on top,” he said. He had me open the trunk. We removed the floor and the spare tire — it was a real spare tire in those days, not one of those fake donut things you get today — and there was the leak on the top of the gas tank.

“Hold on, “ Red said, and went to his house. Soon he came back with some screws and a screwdriver. One by one he put the point of the screws into the hole until he found just the right size. Then he took the screwdriver and with a few twists tightened the screw into the hole.

“All fixed,” he said.

Now, I had my doubts. If this was such a great solution, why didn’t Leo, the professional mechanic, try it. How would a little screw hold back the flood of gas? How could this be safe?

“All fixed,” Red repeated. “It should be okay because it’s on the top of the tank. It only leaks when the tank is full. As the gas level goes down, there is less pressure on the hole. The screw should hold it.”

“For how long?” I asked. I envisioned a weekly session with a screwdriver.

“It should be permanent,” he said. “It should hold.”

And it did. I never had a further problem with the leaking gas tank. Now, I understand this might not be a workable solution today, what with the EPA and standards in place for gas tank repairs. But I was not going to complain. And, as far as I know, that little white Valiant went to its grave with the screw Red placed there in the gas tank.

Now that I had a car I was free to go where I wanted or needed to. I did not have to ask Dad for his car. My new freedom allowed me to make at least two trips out of town during that summer. The first one I made with my friend, Jim. Jim was a Christian, but not a member of my church. He was not a Baptist, but he did know and love the Lord. He had graduated from LPHS, and also had gone to WSU. We had become friends at WSU. He and I drove to Grand Rapids to check out the campus where I would be a student in the fall.

I had become interested in photography while in college, 8mm motion picture photography. In fact, Jim and I had made a short film together at Wayne. We called it Autumn Sunday. The premise was simple. Jim played a college student who walked through the campus looking lonely. After about fifteen minutes of walking, he sat down beside the reflecting pool at one of the buildings.

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Here he wrote a note. The last shot shows what he wrote, a note that he missed his girlfriend. It was a silent movie, but my plan was to show it with taped music. I never showed it to anyone but Jim and my family. I still have it, but I don’t have equipment to show it anymore.

Jim and I shot some 8mm footage at Grand Rapids, both the city and the college and seminary campus. One of my favorite shots shows Jim at the grand piano in the student center. It is a wide shot, and I walked from left to right keeping Jim and the piano in the center of the shot. It is shaky, since I was walking the whole time. But I like the way the camera is moving, yet focusing on Jim and the piano.

The second trip I made that summer, I made alone. Instead of going west to Grand Rapids, I went north, to Flint. There another friend from LPHS, a young man named Dan, was to be married in the big Presbyterian church downtown. I was one of the groomsmen. This would be the first time in my life I had traveled away from home, by myself, and stayed out overnight. The fact that I was twenty-four years old made it seem somewhat unreal. After all, my brother, Ron, had left home a few days before his eighteenth birthday. Here I was six years older than he was, and just staying away from home overnight for the first time.

Dan and I stayed in a motel in Flint after the rehearsal and dinner. That was Friday. The next day was the wedding, and another dinner at the reception. Dan stayed in a motel that night as well, but I was not with him. He had someone else to spend the night with, it seems, and so I returned home to Lincoln Park in my little white Valiant with the screw holding the gas in the gas tank.

That was a nice summer. I worked, but I did not have to study. I earned a paycheck, which, after making my car payment and my food expenses at work, left me some to put away for seminary in the fall. I continued to attend services and be active at First Baptist Church, and to see my friends there. But soon my little car and I would change our residency. As summer begin to wind down, and September’s crispness was in the air, I began to think about the fact that I was leaving home for good.

Now that thought scared me a little. Okay, that thought scared me a lot. I began to get cold feet. Leave home? How could I do that? The house on Farnham Street had been my home since I was ten, fourteen years ago. Leave my parents? But I had been with them since I was born twenty-four years ago. Leave my church? But I had been in that church for five years. Go off on my own? I was not certain I could do that.

In fact, I began to have stomach pains. Not constantly. But sometimes. Not real bad. Just enough for me to be aware of them. I feared something terrible was wrong with me. But I did not have the courage to tell my parents about the pains, or to go to a doctor. I had already been to a doctor for a school physical and been given a clean bill of health. I didn’t want to go again and find out something was wrong, something that would keep me from going to Grand Rapids.

I remember having the pains while shooting another 8mm film which I called Feed the Birds. I shot the film from a bedroom window of our house focusing on birds in the back yard. Again I shot it silent, but planned to show it with the music from Mary Poppins about feeding the birds in front of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. But again, I did not have the opportunity to show it to anyone but family, which is probably a good thing, copyright laws on the music being what they are. My family always liked my films. But I think this was a particularly boring film to watch, since the only birds that visited our backyard were sparrows, robins, blue jays and cardinals, pretty common birds, after all. And all they do is hop around in the grass. I had no strong telephoto lens, so the birds are small in the film frame. Maybe I got the stomach pains from the boredom I felt with my own film! And how could I know it then, but I would spend a lot of hours over the course of my life watching birds.

But I said nothing, and suffered from the pains from time to time, and prayed that the Lord would show me His will. And I continued to prepare for my leaving, which was coming fast. I purchased a trunk to carry all my stuff with me. I was planning to live in the dorm, something I had never done before. I wasn’t certain I would like dorm life, but I was certain God wanted me at Grand Rapids. Stepping out on one’s own, no matter what the age, is never easy. I don’t think it was easy for my brother, Ron, to leave home twenty-two years before I did. I don’t think it was easy for my parents in either case, especially Mom. But sooner or later every little bird has to leave the nest. It was time for this little bird to fly out on his own. Sooner or later, Maria has to leave the security of the Abbey to find love and fulfillment with a man and his seven children. Sooner or later, each one must climb every mountain. Of course, I wasn't looking for a man or seven children for that matter. But you get the point.

So, on a bright and beautiful September morning with all my stuff packed in my trunk, and my trunk in the trunk of my little white Valiant, the screw Red screwed still in place, I said goodbye to my family — Dad, Auntie, Lynne, Gloria and Mom, as well as my married sisters, Diane and Pat — and headed for I-96 which would take me on the hour and one half journey to my new life and to an event as yet unknown to me that could have destroyed the screw in the gas tank along with the car to which the tank was attached.