The Ugly Green Car

I can’t say for certain she was in the ticket booth the first time I saw her, but later she told me she had worked at the theater, selling tickets under the marquee lights, and I went to the movies there often, so it’s entirely possible. I have a vague memory of it, but I’m unsure if it’s a real memory or one I invented. We were formally introduced in the early months of 1971, when we were on opposite sides of a double date, but within a few weeks we were dating each other.

She was seventeen that spring, just over five feet tall, somewhat petite but endowed with womanly curves that did not fail to attract the notice of other boys, something I both liked and hated. Her hair was long and straight, parted almost in the middle but not quite, so she projected a hint of the flower-child, but not too much. We met on Olive St. every morning before school. I can still see her walking towards me, her hair blowing in the breeze, arms full of school books, a vision in bell-bottoms illuminated by an unseen light. I was so enthralled I would have thrown myself into the traffic at her whim.

We saw little of each other during the school day, but we made up for the lost time afterwards. We could usually be found zipping around town in her car. She drove an ugly green Ford with no air-conditioner and no carpet on the floor. We logged thousands of miles in it, but it was the times when the ugly green car wasn’t moving that I remember best. 

As our relationship evolved, we sought more time alone together, away from friends and other distractions, and we found the perfect spot for it. We called it “the port”, a remote picnic area that overlooked an old channel of the Arkansas River. To get there we sped the ugly green car through a shanty town, then we gunned it past the Cotton Belt railroad yard, then we launched it up and over a levee, finally sliding to a stop at a picnic shelter, where we could look out across the water. Sometimes we were treated to the sight of a tugboat pushing barges to the wharfs downstream. The view across the water, as the sun went down in the evening, was about as close to scenery as our town could get. However, we didn’t go to the port for the scenery.

For the next eighteen months we were inseparable, and insatiable. We parked the ugly green car anyplace we could find privacy; at the port, on old logging roads, in cemeteries, in city parks, even in the driveway at her parents house. That one was especially risky, but we didn’t care. We became connoisseurs of the drive-in movies, fixtures on the back row. When it was cool we fogged the windows thoroughly. When it was warm the vinyl seats glistened with our sweat. Recapping the film the next morning was always a challenge, and my attempts were the impetus for many sideways glances between my parents.

The ugly green car was our classroom and we were the most willing of students. We furthered our education together, learning a great deal about each other and about being human. We learned about pleasure and about passion, how to let go of our inhibitions and how to trust each other. And we learned that, despite what our parents and teachers and preachers may have thought, we had nothing to be ashamed of.

In the Spring of 1972 we graduated from high school. So often this is where the plans and promises of a young romance go by the wayside, fading in the excitement of new places and new experiences. New replaces old, and in our case that included the ugly green car, which was supplanted by a sporty blue one. She went to college in one town, while I did the same in another. But we turned out to be the exception, because the distance that separated us proved to be no obstacle. After college we were married, and last August we celebrated thirty-five years together, and you’ll never convince me it’s not because of the bond we created and nourished in the ugly green car.