My grandpa drove an old Chevy Caprice. Brown. We called it “the Turd.” I think its color at one time was blue, and he spray-painted it brown. Yes, spray painted. This was in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in the very tiny town of McMillan. My grandparents, Nelson and Vera, had lived there nearly all their lives, and they had learned to do everything themselves - for better or worse. Worse, when it came to the Caprice.
The Caprice however turned out to play a pivotal part in my teenage years. It was 1990 – I had just turned 16 and I had a driver’s license. No one – meaning my dad – would loan me a car, but I got it in my head that us teenage girls in the family would head out for a night on the town. Town being Newberry some 10 miles away. And I, naturally, would drive. It was my idea after all.
With dad’s refusal heavy in our hearts, we looked innocetly at Grandpa. Would he loan us The Turd for a few hours?
He replied like he often did - with a laugh, a Holy Christ! and a slap on his knee – the crooked one, the leg that he’d nearly lost when the chains gave way on a lumber truck, the logs rolling over him, crushing him, taking away two years of his mobility, nearly killing him. Leaving him with one stiff leg, it always stuck out in front of him. On his snowmobile, he would have to sit almost sidesaddle – his leg out, the throttle wide open. It never seemed to slow him down, maybe even when it should have.
My grandpa was famous for his outrageous stories. His bad leg all but proved his stories. This man had survived that, why would he have to tell a tall tale? He’d lived the biggest story we kids had ever heard of already.
My grandma, standing at the stove – always, it seemed, making a bread-sized meatloaf she somehow fed 10 mouths with, more if someone arrived unannounced – would listen with half an ear.
Grandpa would sit in his chair, his leg straight out – holding a space twice that of most men, but one he filled with ease – and when his story was tall, too tall, we would shout into the kitchen, “Grandma! Is this true!”
She would answer one of two ways:
Oh, Nels! (We shouldn’t believe him.)
Or
Oh, you kids! (We should believe the lie.)
And each time my Grandpa would laugh, “Come on, tell ’em, Vera!” and swing around in his chair, his leg sweeping a full circle from the kitchen to the living room audience – his grandkids, sometimes as many as eight at a time, on the floor at his feet. The story would get bigger and bolder on the rebuttal.
So it was, the night we asked for the keys to the Caprice, we really weren’t sure Grandpa had the authority to allow us to go.
Grandpa looked at my mother, “What’s the worst that could happen?”
My mother protested weakly. She had, after all, grown up in the U.P. She knew exactly the worst that could happen.
But with Grandpa’s insistence, she relented: “Be back by 9.”
We were indignant about the early curfew – but we rushed from the room and barreled into the driveway and the front seat of the car – three of us girls, all barely tall enough to see over the slippery bench seat. My cousin grabbed the phone book my grandma used to sit on for driving and tossed it into the backseat. I grabbed the huge column gear shift and racked it down into drive. We were on our way.
Where?
To the main drag down in Newberry. The tiny downtown was lined with just a few businesses, all of which were closed on a Saturday night - save the bar, which seemed to never close. But the street itself was a ghost town. “Where is everyone?” became the war cry of the Caprice. We were looking for local action and, finally, with dumb luck, we found it.
Having reached the end of main street and not wanting to cross the railroad tracks, nor having the ability to turn the boat around in the street, I swung the beast into the IGA grocery store to turn around out behind the building in the very lot we’d taken granny to get milk at earlier that day. There, lo and behold, we came across a lineup of teens parked in their cars.
“Keep going!” my cousin screeched.
To which I slammed on the brakes, took a spot in the lineup, and rolled down my window. Yes, rolled down with an actual old crank handle.
“Hello, boys!” I shouted to the pick-up one over. My passengers shrunk down into the bench seat in horror.
The local boys, however, sat up straight.
“You aren’t from around here,” they assessed, hooking their elbows out their windows and leaning out for a better look.
“Oh, our grandparents live here,” I said, unwittingly delivering the pick-up line of the century. We were out to impress and simply being from out of town, seemed like plenty.
“How many of you are there?” one of the boys asked.
“Three!” I said. Side note: I was absolutely crapping my pants. The Turd was about to earn its name.
“We know where there’s a bonfire in the woods, wanna go?” the driver said, having done some quick math to match the three in his truck to our three.
“Sure!” I replied. The Caprice erupted. I shushed them, did they want an adventure or not???? I seethed.
“Want to ride with us?” he offered.
I was no idiot: “We’ll just follow you,” I said.
The Caprice exploded behind me again with NOS, NOT IN A MILLION YEARS and ARE YOU CRAZYS.
With that, the local boys took off in their pickup, and I threw the Caprice back into gear. As we roared out of the IGA, I knew we were the talk of the town, every car in the lot watching us.
Off we went, until 5 minutes later, the boys took a hard right onto a two track into the woods. I hesitated. But if we wanted to have any tall tales of our own, we’d have to see this through, right? And it wasn’t 9 p.m. yet, so technically we reassured ourselves, we were still following the rules. No one had said we couldn’t off-road with this thing.
But as I drove the – did I mention – gigantic Caprice through the ever-narrowing trail, I started to sweat. The gals in the car continued to scream and we were, in general, in a frenzy. Branches were tearing at the paint and just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse, the next turn in the road revealed a huge water hole. I watched the pickup sail through it ahead of us.
“Don’t do it!” my mind said. But I realized we had no choice, because there was nowhere to turn The Turd around.
So, I did what I had to do.
I gunned it.
With horror, we watched the mud crest over the front of the hood – and wash down Grandpa’s freshly painted and much-beloved Caprice. With a thud and a jerk, we surged forward, clearing the mud hole, spraying dirt everywhere and landing , more or less, on the other side.
Absolute TRIUMPH filled the car.
We’d done it!! We were women of the world! Grown-ups! Out on an adventure! Right?
Too right.
Because the next phase was a little beyond our ability. We had finally reached the bonfire. It was in a field filled with trucks, plus little ol’ us in The Turd. We came to our senses just about then. It was getting late at a mere 8:30 p.m., and we had to get home. Also, we were probably going to get killed by strange me if we stayed.
I locked the doors and rolled down my window down 2 inches as the boys approached.
“Ladies, we’re here!” they said. One was in a ball cap, the other two in shirts with no sleeves.
“Actually, change of plans,” I told them. “We need to return my grandpa’s car by 9.” I was way past being smooth at this point.
“Aw, come on,” they said, “are you serious?”
They looked so sad, our new friends, but I had a stroke of genius: “Don’t worry boys, my aunt has a minivan. I’ll ask her if we can come back in hers next!” My pick-up-line game was back.
The boys brightened with joy. “Yes, do that!”
But, as we waved goodbye, a huge jacked-up truck came and blocked our one and only exit, blaring its horn. We sat in the Caprice and through the crack, realized our “boyfriends” were actually about to brawl with these newcomers.
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