A 1955 Chevy 210, fresh off the lot, is the car that gets the most attention in my book. Why this car? The Bel-Air was a better seller, and some of the other models had more style.
But the work-a-day 210 was a classic nuclear family vehicle. Four door, big bench seats, and a V-8 that had some kick to it.
When I was in high school, I got to ride in one all the time. A friend's Dad had a midnight blue 210, and for some reason unfathomable to me, he let us take it out at night and cruise around. We'd listen to Sally Jesse Rapheal on the AM radio, and smoke cigarettes with the windows rolled all the way down so that he wouldn't smell them. He never did -- or at least he never complained.
But once I told a math teacher of mine about the car, and he reminisced about the 210 his dad used to drive. He and his buddies would take it out cruising, in the late 50s when the car was nearly new. Like us, they'd roll down the windows to keep it free of smelling like smoke.
One time, doing this, my teacher tossed his cigarette butt out the window, not knowing that it blew in the back window. The burning cherry landed on the back seat. He parked the car in the drive, rolled up the windows, and never noticed the little black-fringe hole that had appeared behind where he had been sitting.
Down into the cotton batting it went, where it smoldered and caught the filling on fire. But the car didn't go up: it just ate away the entire stuffing of the back seat.
The next day was his Dad's turn to drive the carpool. He and his neighbor, in suits of course, got in the front seat. Man, what was that smell? That stupid kid was probably smoking in the car again.
But then they pulled up to get the three fellows who were going to sit in the back. All of them climbed in, sat down, and the seat collapsed, springs coming through the vinyl. Black charred cotton coating the suits of these finally dressed gents, filling the entire cab with ash.
Let's just say the teacher never got to drive his dad's car again.
As for my friend and I: we'd cruise Bellingham, Washington, pull up to the water's edge, and look out at the bay. We never did anything too bad. Maybe we were guided by the wisdom of Sally Jesse.
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