When the movie Cars 3 came out, I realized (again) how disinterested Miss Lo is in moving vehicles. She’s a girl, after all, and she had no interest in the first two movies beyond getting a little bit tickled over the commercials for them.
I have a theory, as I’ve written before, that all baby boys are born with a gene that has them going “vroom, vroom” as soon as they’re able to make such a sound. They’re born loving cars, trucks, tractors, mowers, motorcycles, and even vacuum cleaners — anything that makes that sound.
Our son Miller was vroom-vrooming before he was a year old, and I’ve noticed the same thing in almost every little boy I’ve known. Boys also seem to have a predilection for identifying makes and models of vroom-vroom vehicles of every sort. As a lifelong musician I have a pretty good ear, but I don’t have the ability (or maybe interest?) to identify what just went down the road made that sound.
As a teenager I went through a brief flirtation with motorcycles. A family of girls who lived near one of my great-aunts had several small dirt bikes and moped-type bikes that we rode on trails in the woods. Their dad was a mechanic and he built them and kept them going, other than the oldest daughter’s “real” motorcycle. At one point I begged my mother to let him build one for me, but I’m just as glad now that she denied granting that wish. I was riding one of their bigger motorcycles one day and had a little mishap that hurt my ankle, effectively ending my love for those things.
The only appeal cars have held for me is in getting me from point A to point B in a reliable manner. My first car was a second-hand Mercury Monarch that had several mechanical quirks, but I liked it just fine. Next came a used Honda Accord that I liked a lot because it ran like a top and cost almost nothing to maintain. The worst thing Scott and I ever did vehicle-wise was trading the Honda in on a Ford Taurus station wagon that turned out to be a lemon. Well, I needed something larger than a small car for hauling kids and instruments, but we should have shopped around more.
Not long after we moved to Texas in 1993, we traded in a 1980 Buick Electra to get a white GMC conversion van that was great for trips because it was so roomy inside. The kids loved it because it had what they called “movie lights,” tiny lights along the floor and ceiling that we could turn on at night so they could see to play games or read. The van, which Scott dubbed Vanna White, became iffy at best the last few years. More than once she died in the middle of the road/highway, and we couldn’t find a repair person who could figure it out. Best thing about Vanna White was that she came in handy when the Cash-for-Clunkers program came along years later. We got a good trade-in for that heap of junk to get daughter Afton her first car.
In 2001 we needed and got a reliable SUV for me to transport kids and instruments, and Scott took over the van. We sold his parents’ former car, a 1986 Mercury Marquis (Gray Nell) that we inherited when they got a new one. Gray Nell was a broken down old mare for which we got $400 from some guy that liked land yachts. Vanna White got us to Huntsville, Texas, where we ended up looking at Ford Expeditions.
The 2001 Expedition was the first vehicle I had with an all-leather interior, and I thought it was fabulous. The ride was smooth and much quieter than Vanna’s. Scott decided that we should break it in with a grueling road trip that took us from College Station to St. Louis for a Cardinals game and ultimately to Niagara Falls. We saw many great sights on the way up and back — including the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and Loretta Lynn’s homeplace in Butcher Hollow — taking different routes each way.
The leather seats in the Expedition have long since cracked and become unsightly, and we’ve had to have it towed a couple of times in the last year (thank you, Mike Linkous), but I’m so attached to it that I can barely stand to think about having another vehicle. As long as our favorite mechanic Robert Colquitt can keep it running, we’re going to hang on to it. Who knows? The 2005 Scion (a.k.a. Milk Carton) that Scott inherited from our son Miller may conk out first.
With cars — as with houses — it’s always something. None of it is the least bit entertaining, even though movies about cars may be to some.
I still think it’s a guy thing.