A Car Called Wanda: Part One
by James Roland
He cried when I bought her from him. At least, that’s what his wife told us: He went inside and got teary-eyed, quiet, depressed.
He had two other cars. I’m sure he got over it, but it was still a sign that I had just bought a good car.
A 1986 Honda Accord LX named Wanda. Not much to look at from up close or afar, a wide vehicle with flip-up headlights and bucket seats, four doors, rickety power windows and an amazingly tough engine.
My dad drove her home for me and I began that long, arduous task of re-learning how to drive on a manual transmission.
It didn’t go well.
After a few aggravated sessions with my father, I was having flashbacks of the first time he taught me to drive on an automatic and I crushed the back of a gosling that was trying to follow its mother across the road (for more info, please contact my therapist . . . I think he’s writing an entire book out of that one incident alone).
My parents manage a dry land marina at the mouth of a creek that dumps into Puget Sound, and the parking lot is the perfect place to practice driving. I had managed to get the car started and into first gear a few times, and after I felt confident I bumped it up to second gear. My dad informed me that I was doing well – all I had to learn was starting the car and taking off while stopped on a hill. He took the keys and told me to take a break, he’d be back in a few minutes.
When I returned, my dad was standing in the middle of the parking lot. The car was nowhere in sight. I was suspicious; whenever something odd like this happened with my dad, I suspected either A) a ‘Nam flashback or B) a modern Right of Passage Ceremony. Luckily for me, it has always been option B (although, the whole “gosling” incident sits precariously on that particular fence).
I asked him where the car was, and he pointed to the boat ramp. There, barely peeking up over the edge of the parking lot, was Wanda’s front bumper.
The walk to the ramp was like a prisoner’s walk to Death Row in a TV movie: long . . . slow . . . melodramatic with an ominous soundtrack.
Wanda was parked in the center of the ramp; twenty feet behind her was high tide. I climbed behind the wheel and immediately began to sweat, wiping the palms of my hands on my jeans.
My dad said, “It’s just the same as before, just do it faster.”
I popped in the clutch, released the brake, and slid towards the ocean. What my dad yelled wasn’t technically a swear word, but it still knocked seagulls out of the air as it rebounded across the water and between the long rows of white storage buildings. Before he could yell again I rolled back another five feet. I was crazed at this point; the only thing in my rear view mirror was dark water and a pack of carnivorous crabs waiting under the waves with claws poised.
My dad decided to clarify the confusing situation for me. “You’re going to roll into the ocean!” he screamed.
He eventually pulled me out of the car and drove her up onto the flat parking lot for me. I later took the car to another neighborhood and practiced on a hill, managing to pull off in first gear every time. Something about the lack of impending drowning seemed to do the trick.
That was day one.
Over the years it wouldn’t be the first misadventure Wanda and I would have. There was the time I returned from a restaurant and found her missing from her parking spot. I looked around and found her in the middle of the road, doors locked, parking brake pulled tight.
There was the time some punk kid squirted ketchup all over her hood, and the acid ate through the primer. Then I drove her to Rosarito, Mexico and parked her for eight days. When I returned, I stood in front of her for three minutes before I realized it was Wanda, her entire front end turned maroon with rust.
And then there was the time her engine blew up in the middle of I-5 . . . .
