Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit
“Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit;” it’s the first thing you are supposed to say on the first day of every month, in order to ensure that you will have good luck for the rest of the month. At least that is how the folk legend goes. (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_rabbit_rabbit)
I should have known that folk legends are just that, stories made up to make people believe that something really happened or will happen. At the time, I was not a storyteller yet, that wouldn’t happen for another 8 years, so I was rather naive.
The year was 1972. Her name was Noya as in Annoya and Paranoia. I was 21 and she was my first car. She was a 1966 Mercury Comet sedan. Buying a used car was all I could afford, and for the price that I paid for her, Noya was mine. Of course, when you buy a used car you have to expect there will be some extra expenses that come along with it. I knew that would happen, but I wasn’t prepared for the amount of them I would have to deal with.
The first clue I had was the windshield wipers. It didn’t rain the first month I had the car, so I had no clue that there was a problem with the wipers. However, I was out one evening driving on dimly lit roads when a torrential downpour occurred. I switched on my wipers and they worked for a very short time and then froze in place. Choosing to pull off the road, I turned on the turn signal to let everyone else know that I was exiting the road, when low and behold my wipers started working again. Well, sort of…every time my turn signal light went on, the wipers moved, and every time the turn signal blinked off the wipers would stop. So as long as the turn signals were on I would get a stuttering set of wipers, which as soon as my turn was complete and the blinkers reset to neutral, the wipers stopped again completely in whatever position they were in. For the long trip home, cars behind me had no clue what that crazy driver in front of them was doing.
The next big event I had to go to was the wedding of my friends Allen and Nancy which was to take place in New Rochelle, NY, about 60 miles away from where I lived in Stony Brook, NY. I was taking another one of their friends, Robin, to the wedding. It only took us 25 minutes, about 12 miles from our starting point on a parkway, when I heard the loud clunk then screeching sound, and felt the car slow down. I pulled the car off onto the grassy side of the highway, little knowing that when the driveshaft that connects the front car wheels with the rear wheels snaps in half you can furrow a deep trench in the ground. Needless to say, the car was shot, had to be towed, we had to hitch a ride back to Stony Brook, so Robin could get her car and drive us to the wedding reception, having missed the actual wedding.
Skidding on ice on my way to student teaching one winter’s day on tires that should have known better also gave me an understanding of why Noya was so aptly named.
And those are just a few of the minor/major repairs that I had to deal with during my first few months of owning Noya. She co-existed with me for more than a year. As I was preparing to begin what would be a 33-year teaching career in Shoreham-Wading River, I decided that I would have to put her out to pasture. In the end, she cost me about 3 times more in repairs than her original purchase.
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It was August 1, 1973, when I woke up very hopeful. The first thing out of my mouth was…Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. It was time to give up on used cars. I was about to start a real job. Thus began the story of “Little Hoops”. A 1973 Plymouth Duster, a manual shift car with the shift handle on the column, not the floor. Of course, I had never driven a shift car before. A tale for another time.
