I'm laughing because both Cullen and Kate have happy memories of Dodge Darts. My parents had one for YEARS...and then they sold it cheaply to the neighbor across the street (my dad needed a reliable car because he had a long commute and I think the Dart had taken to stalling unpredictably) and the neighbor kept it for years. The one my parents had was that deep forest green with the white pleather roof detail.
I remember that car well. It took us on a lot of family trips. I also learned a bad lesson about cigarette lighters in that car...I was waiting in the car one day when my mom had to run into the grocery after picking me up (from day camp, I think, I think it was summer, I would have been 9 or so). I got curious and pulled the cigarette lighter out, and touched my thumb to the tip of it...now that I think of it, it was probably at least a second-degree burn, but because it was so small, it did heal up okay. (My mom's response was, "I'm sorry you're hurt but you should have known that that got hot." Except, no one in my family smoked so I guess I didn't know how hot it got. Anyway. I learned my lesson off of that. And she did help me put Foille and a bandage on it when we got home.)
Still, I sort of miss that car. It was cool in a way a lot of newer cars aren't.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Darts rock
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4 comments:
I'll move the Dart convo up here ... Ours was a light blue 1974 piece of fantasy automobile mechanics that simply isn't made anymore. We had the car until 1984 when my parents bought into the minivan craze, introduced that year. The car ran great, but had no A/C and had a lot of miles stacked on it. Having two kids to haul around an Air Force career, my dad wanted something roomier and newer. Bye-bye Dart.
Flash forward to my 18th year, we're living in Gulfport, MS, and my great aunt lived in Hattiesburg. She had two cars sitting in her driveway that her late husband had bought shortly before his earthly departure. One was a 1965 Ford Custom 500 that I wound up buying from her. The other was a 50s-era dark blue Dodge Dart with a push-button transmission that I spent countless hours trying in vain to talk her into letting me buy instead of giving to one of her sons.
Oh well. The Ford was a great car too.
My greatest memories of the Dart are from Montana, driving around from lake to lake. Once, I had a cowboy hat and leaned out the window, the hat blew away. My dad slowed the car down, got out and ran back to get the hat. My mom didn't stop the car but kept it slowly rolling. I must have been about four years old and I remember being frozen with fear that we were going to leave my daddy behind and he'd never catch up with the car. My mom might wish that that had been true.
There were Darts that weren't light blue? Really? Never saw one in my area.
This is close:
http://www.foundationpc.com/cars/74dart3.jpg
This is a '72 and it's in bad shape, but you can see the stock color and it's the same as what was on our '74:
http://www.drmopar.com/72dart5.jpg
Man, I missed the "n't." If you do a "dodge dart" Google image search you'll find tons of colors. In fact, it was (surprisingly) hard to find that light blue.
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