For years my Dad drove to work hunched over in his little red VW Bug with a granny smith apple sticking out of his mouth as he puttered down the street. When I left for college he finally got the car of his dreams: a mid-1980s model Nissan Maxima. It was brown, it had leather seats, and it had FM radio. My sister and I affectionately called it "The Brown Doo Doo" or just plain "Doo Doo". You know, because it was brown.
Anyway, my dad began riding to work in style. No longer did he have to struggle with the clutch in traffic - this baby was automatic. He covered his leather seat with a sheepskin that he swore kept him warm in winter and cool in the summer. He blasted his FM radio and his AC - no more rolled down windows in the summer for him. He had finally come into his own.
This car had another special feature. It talked to him. The car had a computerized voice that alerted the driver to things they might not have been aware of. A mechanical female voice would sound at the slightest infraction, saying things like "Right door is open", "Fuel level is low", or "Lights are on." I think my dad secretly liked the fact that it was a woman telling him these things. After all, he was surrounded by women at home every day so it only seemed natural that the Doo Doo would speak to him as a woman.
The first few years of the Brown Doo Doo's existence with our family went fairly smoothly. My dad mostly drove it to work and on the occasions that I would come home from college, I would drive it to go out with friends or to run errands for my parents. My dad kept his brown car in immaculate condition, changing the oil regularly, parking it in the garage, driving it slowly as was his natural tendency. Little did he know what lay in store for the Doo Doo.
One summer I decided to stay at college for three extra weeks for something called "May Session". Basically this meant extending the end of the school year, taking one class that jammed a semester's worth of information into three weeks, and finding an excuse to stay at college so that I could hang out with my friends just a little bit longer. I asked my dad if I could take his car for the three weeks as I would be living off campus and he agreed, since he did still have the red VW Bug to drive around. I'm sure he thought "What could possibly happen in three weeks?"
My friend Amy needed a ride back to school so I offered to pick her up in style. When I pulled up to her house she asked if we could fit her bike in the car. Sure! I said and we tried in vain to stuff it into the backseat. When this didn't work we decided that we would tie it to the trunk of the car, since there was a luggage rack on it that seemed like it would work. We padded the trunk with towels, set the bike on top, tied it down and took off.
We were sailing down I-66, windows down, sunroof open, music blasting, loving life. I happened to glance in the rear view mirror and noticed towels flapping violently in the wind. I realized with a panicked jolt that the bike was no longer visible to me, so I pulled off on the side of the busy highway to investigate. We found that the bike had slid off the back of the car but was still dangling by a piece of string and had been dragging down the highway behind us. No wonder cars had been honking at us!
The bike was mangled beyond repair. These were the days before cell phones so somehow we managed to get the attention of a homeowner whose property backed onto the highway, used his phone to call Amy's dad so that he could come pick up the bike, and off we went. I only realized much later that the entire incident had left scratches all over the top of the trunk. I despaired over having to tell my dad what had happened, but decided since I wasn't seeing him for three weeks I'd wait until then to let him know.
About halfway through May session Amy and I decided to take a drive out to a lake for a picnic and some sunbathing. We realized on our way there that we were low on gas ("Fuel level is low") so we stopped to fill up. When we were all set to go another car was parked in front of me, so I threw the car in reverse, stepped on the gas and plowed right into a metal pole. My heart sank as I heard the sickening crunch. We got out to inspect it and it was as bad as it sounded. Great, I thought. NOW what am I going to tell my Dad?
I decided to tell him about that immediately so I called him later that day and told him what happened. Simple mistake, right? Could happen to anyone. He was very understanding but for some reason I left out the part about scratching up the trunk with the bike. When I got home a week later I made up a stupid story about parking the car behind my building and discovering the scratches the next day. I blamed the weirdos who lived below us, insisting that they must have been partying out back and sitting on the car. I'm not sure my dad bought it and to this day I feel a bit guilty about lying about it, but there it is. My dad got the dent fixed but touched up the scratches himself with some anti-rust paint. The Doo Doo was no longer perfect.
Several years later my sister had the Doo Doo at college with her. She was driving herself and several friends to Richmond to catch a flight to Cancun for Spring Break when it happened. The hood of the Doo Doo inexplicably released at 60 miles per hour and slammed up against the windshield, rendering my sister completely blind to the road. She pulled off to the side and discovered that the latch to close the hood was now broken. She and her friends managed to tie it down with a bungee cord they found in the trunk and on they went.
As they continued down the highway, the hood bounced up and down slightly. Then it bounced a bit more. Then a bit more . . . and then . . . WHAM! The bungee cord released and the hood slammed up against the windshield again. I can't quite remember what happened next, but I think they ended up stopping at a service station where someone secured the hood with something stronger. They made it to the airport and their flight with minutes to spare, only to return a week later to find that the light had been left on in the car and now the battery was dead. But that's another story.
The poor Doo Doo never quite recovered from that. My dad eventually went to the junkyard, being the frugal man that he was, and found a hood that was an exact match for his Maxima. Unfortunately the hood was blue, so for the rest of the car's existence with us, the brown Doo Doo had a blue hood. Eventually the only thing that would keep the hood from opening up during driving was a big heavy chain that my dad used to tie it down. Between the chain, the blue hood and the scratches on the trunk the Brown Doo Doo had been through a lot.
I do remember that my dad never made a big deal about any of it. Sure he was annoyed and a little bit mad, but he never made us feel bad for messing up his beloved car. I think he recognized that we were young and dumb and would make mistakes. I see that now and I love him for it.
Eventually my dad traded the Doo Doo in for a newer model in black, but it was never the same. The Doo Doo will always remain the car that saw us through our twenties, those years when my sister and I were both trying to figure ourselves out and testing the limits of adulthood. Much like the Brown Doo Doo, both my sister and I turned out all right, scratches and all.
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