…and I started reminiscing about my first car which was really my dads but after I got my license I started to use it more than him so who cares who paid for it when your 17 years old and living at home, it was my first car. It was the first car I learned to drive when I was only 13. It’s a car that I visit from time to time which I’ll get to in a minute. It was a 1957 Olds Rocket 88 and man did it live up to its name. Punch it around a turn and whoever was in the back seat got smoked out from the rubber I was laying down. Mainly because the trunk was so rusted out you could see the wheels of the car. In fact the whole car was a rust bucket that I sanded, puttied up and painted white with a roller. Not spray painted, but roll painted and a car that earned the name of the White Elephant by everyone in auto mechanics class. It was a class that let you work on your own vehicle for credit. I don’t think I got any credit the day I decided to repack the front wheel bearings on the ’57 with fresh grease because I put the bearings back in one of the wheels backwards. It wobbled all the way home and my dad was not amused especially when he had to pound it off the axle and replace. It was the first car I learned what not to do on a snowy street after I plowed over a mail box. The home owner gave me a shovel to put it back. It was the first car I got into an impromptu drag race and beat a GTO but almost lost control of the car and stopped inches from a big ole tree. Talk about shaken. Me and the two guys I was with got out and kissed the ground thanking God we were still alive. Then one day while driving to school I got sideswiped and all that putty cracked and fell to the ground. It was then my dad said it was time to say goodbye to the White Elephant and when a friend in auto mechanics class offered to buy it for the engine because that four barrel kicked butt. Like I said it smoked everyone sitting in the back seat. So we yanked the engine in class then pushed the car up against the woods next the school parking lot where it sat for a couple of weeks until the senior class decided to push it over the hill. Every now and then during the summer I’ll visit the ole white elephant. It still sits there, what’s left of it, among the weeds and trees but its not everyday you can actually visit the first car you called your own and reminisce.