The little truck that could

The lean, mean green machine turned 10 years old yesterday (March 19). That's a banner acheivement in the history of Michael Melissa (I often speak of myself in the third person, it gives me a sense of omniscience) since I can't even make a pair of tighty whitey underwear go 10 years let alone an automobile.

Before she came into my life, I went through cars like they were disposable hunks of metal. Granted it was never my decision to get rid of a vehicle, instead it was my driving (in)ability that deemed the vehicle expired. You can only roll a car once before an insurance adjustor rules it too smushed to drive. It got to the point where horse and buggy was a better option. Hell, if the HOA in our neighborhood would have allowed a stable of ponies, I would have become the D. Wayne Lukas of West Vegas.

The roster of cars I went through before the Green Machine reads like a '70s/'80s scrap heap of used cars. My old man had a fettish for Subarus, so of course, I landed two of them: one was the first car I bought with my own cash (had rake a crap load of yards - and in the middle of a pine forest that ain't no small task - which was better than the alternative: blowing drunk vets as they stumbled out of the American Legion hall); the second Subaru was a hand-me-down from the old man that we resurrected with parts from my first Subaru which I decided to roll while messing with the tape deck (damn The Police, it was their tape that wasn't playing right). As an aside, the Gray Ghost (that's what the old man called it, I think to sell me on driving this to school on a daily basis; his thought was that if I told my friends that it's name was the "Gray Ghost" they wouldn't laugh as hard ask whether it was safer to just walk the 50 miles from school) was our Duke Boys car, meaning the old man would take that Subaru in the backwoods behind Melissa's Idyllwild Compound. So he was thrilled to breathe new life in to the Gray Ghost. I tried to modernize it with new fenders and a paint job befitting of a '79 Subaru hatchback that was rumbling around the hill 11 years later.

My first car was the family truckster for many years, a '72 Plymouth Duster that preceded me by a few months and came complete with a vinyl roof and bucket seats. The parental units spared no expense. That car saw some great action. Get that mind out of the gutter ... not that kind of action; it took the mountain roads of Idyllwild at 60 with a berrings squeal we could never accurately locate. And when I hit the orange groves in Hemet, well, let's say that old Blue Beast could still hit 80 on her good days.

The Duster came into my possession because I said I wouldn't drive the '76 Chevy Nova my dad won in a poker game with my grandma (hey, we play for keeps in this family; I tried to wager off my sister in a high school craps game for a stack of hall passes that would have got me out of fifth period so I could head over to the golf course for twilight hours. My friends wouldn't take the bet). That decision would come back to haunt me in the end, but more on that later.

After the Subaru twins, came my first real car. I talked to Loanshark Louie in Idyllwild and he dropped the few Gs on my that I needed to land a '89 Mazda 4-door 323. It had so much pep, I think that little car would have challenged Tony Stewart at Daytona any day of the week, and had a shot to win. I guess her speed was misleading. I thought I had enough time to make a right and outrun the two-tone Chevy Destroyer, or whatever the hell was bearing down on my, instead the drunk, expired-license Vegas burnout wanted to sit in my back seat, in effect making my Mazda a hatchback with a tweaked chassi and no trunk space since it was in my backseat now.

I drove my uncle's hand-me-down early-80s Toyota Supra for a few months before deciding I was smart enough to head over to a car lot and negotiate my own car price. The car salesman knew just what I wanted and how much I should spend on a '89 2-doorPontiac LeMans. He failed to tell me that it was not front-end crash resistant, however, which I tested on a rainy Vegas day (how many times does it rain in Vegas, really, that's just my luck).

Remember that Chevy Nova I mentioned? Yeah, the one I didn't want. Guess what I inherited? A five-cylinder, 2-door Chevy Nova that rumbled when started and sounded like it would eat Honda Civics and Mini Coopers for lunch. God does have a sense of humor, doesn't he? Jerk off.

The Nova lasted longer than my last two cars combined, which was unfathomable. I even offered to park it around the corner to not bring down the home values in our Vegas neighborhood, but my good friends Dina and Shane - who live in Montana, so I'm sure they are used to seeing cars parked out front that are on the verge of crumbling into scrap when the garbage truck rolls by - said as long as I kept it covered or slapped the fake impound sticker on the driver window I could park it out front.

After the Nova, I was due for some luck and a little vehicular treat (in Vegas, vehicular treats can be found aplenty). And this is where the Mean Green Machine comes into play. 10 years later, my little baby still runs strong - thanks to Dave's Tire Corrall and Auto, who just wired up a new alternator to keep the Mean Green Machine running strong. She's got a 111,000 miles on her - a trek to Butte, Montana, and Rosarita Beach, Mexico, will rack up the miles quick - but runs like its only 70,000. Those two hamsters have pedaled their little paws off.

And now that I've written this, I'm worried that I might jinx my good luck with the Mean Green Machine and some blue hair who forgot to take his/her medication will make my little truck into ground beef tomorrow.