Every family has legends and sacred objects passed down through the generations. The stories get warped over time. The items gather dust and scratches. But the feelings of pride and love remain.
Nearly 10 years ago, I wrote “It Began With a Car” about the moment my parents met and the relic, a 1970 Chevy Nova SS, that represents that fateful day. The essay was the highlight of my undergraduate writing career. Not only because it won a creative nonfiction award at the international Sigma Tau Delta conference, but because it is the story of our family. And the beginning of my life’s story.
Here is the essay in its original form, followed by a little update:
It Began with a Car
She was a 1970 Chevy Nova SS. On the drag strip at Topeka’s Heartland Park, they called her “Black Panther.” She wasn’t the fastest car or the most expensive. Garrett Colby didn’t have the money to soup up her engine to the first division of racing, and she couldn’t keep up with her older, more-popular sister, the 1969 Camaro. But she had enough horsepower to hold her own in the slower divisions, and her engine growled at just the right tone to catch Sheila Bell’s attention – and that’s what really mattered.
The whole thing began with the Nova. It also began with a 7-Eleven, a bold co-pilot, and probably a few dozen ounces of liquid courage.
On Friday nights in 1987, the only worthwhile activity in the sleepy town of Olathe, Kansas, was to “Cruise the Fe.” This ritual consisted of driving casually from one end of Santa Fe, the city’s main drag, to the other – then repeating the process until someone came up with something better to do.
When no suitable alternative could be found, the cruisers would begin to converge on gas station and convenience store parking lots. Once the cars were parked, girls with piles of perm-induced curls would wander into the stores for cans of Diet Coke or Budweiser. The guys would lean against their driver’s side doors, unroll tucked packs of Marlboro Reds from their shirt sleeves, and light up for a smoke.
The Friday night when Garrett and Sheila met was in no way exceptional. Garrett had spent the day framing a house for his grandpa’s construction company, and he could not wait to jump into his Nova with his buddies and cruise for chicks. Sheila, on the other hand, had just finished an eight-hour cashiering shift at Dillon’s, and she and her friend Julie couldn’t wait to meet up with the rest of their gang on the Fe.
As with every other serendipitous meeting in history – Benjamin Franklin’s kite and the lightning bolt, peanut butter and jelly in a World War II trench, John F. Kennedy and Jacqueline Bouvier at a dinner party – Garrett and Sheila’s meeting was a simple matter of right place, right time.
Garrett saw Sheila first. He had just turned his Nova into the parking lot of the Fe’s busiest watering hole, the 7-Eleven. He didn’t know what it was about Sheila (maybe her tight jeans or her spiraled golden hair or her smile), but whatever it was, he felt instantly attracted to her. Garrett’s co-pilot, Dean, who was much bolder than he, leaned out the window and began whistling at Sheila and Julie as they passed. When the two women turned their heads to stare at the rowdy boys, Garrett revved the Nova’s engine, honked her horn, and added a few whistles of his own to his friend’s cheers. Sheila and Julie grinned, shook their heads, and sauntered into the 7-Eleven.
It could have ended there. After Sheila disappeared into the gas station to buy her Diet Coke, Garrett drove off and rejoined the other muscle cars to cruise the Fe. Their meeting was nothing more than that of two birds perched on a telephone wire, meant to sway in the breeze for a few seconds and then fly back to their separate nests.
But it didn’t end there.
A few hours later, when the grey parking lots were lit only by the orange cones from streetlights and the yellow beams of headlights, Sheila saw Garrett again. Julie insisted they go over to talk to the group of guys smoking next to the black Chevy Nova, the ones who had whistled at them earlier.
“Come on, Sheila,” Julie groaned, grabbing Sheila’s elbow and pulling her to the other side of the parking lot. “They were cute, and besides, that’s a cool car.”
Secretly glad for Julie’s pushiness, but feigning reluctance, Sheila allowed herself to be dragged over to the whistlers. The backseat passengers were busy talking to a cluster of high-school girls whose eccentric outfits were obviously inspired by Madonna videos and gathered from secondhand stores. Julie immediately engaged the passenger, Dean, the one who had started the cat-calling. That left Sheila with the driver, Garrett.
“Hey, I’m Sheila,” she offered.
Garrett flicked his cigarette to the ground and meticulously stubbed out the ember with the toe of his cowboy boot. “I’m Garrett.”
“Your friend’s pretty, uh, loud,” Sheila laughed. “I think the whole parking lot heard him earlier.”
Garrett chuckled. “Yeah, he’s kind of an idiot around girls.”
“Your car’s pretty loud, too, but not in a bad way,” she said. “It’s a gorgeous car. I can tell you’ve put a lot of work into it. It’s a Nova, right? 1970?”
Garrett raised his eyebrows, impressed. He proudly looked over the Nova, admiring her sleek hood and her glittering, aluminum wheels. He took care of her, his Nova, washing her four or five times a week and polishing her wheels by hand at least twice a month. Most girls didn’t notice all of this effort. In fact, they identified the Nova as “a black car” or “one of those muscle-y cars.” No girls ever knew the year by sight.
“Yeah, she is,” he replied. “Thanks.”
***
I don’t know exactly what happened after that night. I know that Garrett and Sheila began dating: going out to house parties, seeing drive-in movies, and cruising the Fe whenever there was nothing better to do. I also know that Garrett insisted they stop to wash the Nova on the way to every date, even if they were just going over to his parents’ house for dinner. I know that one of Garrett’s housemates borrowed the Nova without his permission, which made him move out of their house in a rage and into a tiny rental home with Sheila. But most importantly, I know that one summer night, as they were driving the Nova home from dinner, Garrett looked over at Sheila and asked, “So when are you gonna marry me?”
Garrett and Sheila were married on October 29, 1988 in the wooden gazebo beside Garrett’s grandparents’ house. They drove away in the Nova, bumper dragging tin cans and light pink streamers and back window (which Garrett would scrub for three hours the next day) announcing JUST MARRIED in white shoe polish.
***
Today, the Nova sits in the grey, metal barn next to my house. In the 25 years my parents have been married, the car has deteriorated from “Black Panther,” the sleek drag racer, into the “summer project” that my dad never has the money, the time, or the will to piece back together. So she sits, broken and scattered, and waits.
Her transmission needs to be rebuilt. Her hood hangs on the wall, and her engine dangles precariously from a metal contraption. Her windows are cracked open, wide enough so she doesn’t get too stuffy, but narrow enough so the cats can’t crawl in and scratch her leather seats. Her ebony body is covered in so much dust that her fenders look brown. Her doors, surrounded by ATV parts and toolboxes, cannot be opened. When they are pried ajar, it is only so my dad can use her for storage: a place for unneeded motorcycle helmets, deflated inner tubes, and ripped cardboard boxes.
In my 16 years of solid, cognizant memory, I have never seen the Nova peel out onto the highway, leaving streaks of rubber and smoke in her wake. I have never heard her engine purr, like my mom did on the first night she met my dad. I have never sat in her leather seats and blared AC/DC, watching as cow pastures and stoplights and 7-Elevens whoosh by.
I will never live in the 1980s, that golden age of bad perms, almost-cancer-less cigarettes, and cruising the Fe on Friday nights. I have accepted that. What I cannot accept is the idea that the Nova will never run again.
My parents don’t understand why I sigh every time we walk past the Nova on our way to feed the horses. They roll their eyes when I suggest that my dad sell his 2006 Chevy truck – a move which would leave him with enough money to resurrect the Nova and buy the 1970 Chevy truck he’s always wanted. And God forbid I propose to buy her from them, or more radically, ask for her (broken transmission and all) as my graduation present.
I can’t seem to make them understand that, while the Nova is worth next-to-nothing in her current dilapidated state, she is worth the world to me. For me, the Nova represents American engineering in its best era: the age of roaring engines and street-racing (before the streets were taken over by plastic, Japanese cars with ridiculous neon lights under the axles). She stands for my family’s racing heritage, for my desire to drive a real car when I’m older, and for general bad-assery.
But more than that, the Nova represents my life. If it weren’t for her, my dad might not have been out cruising the Fe that Friday night. My mom might not have given him a second thought or recognized him later, which she did, because of the Nova. They might not have begun talking in that parking lot.
I might not exist.
It all began with a car. The shadow of my existence began with a car. With that car. With that 1970 Chevy Nova SS.
And I’ll be damned if it all ends before I see her restored.
Epilogue
A couple years ago, my dad finally started restoring the Nova. She has become a he, affectionately named “Omar” after the scarred and surprisingly likable villain in HBO’s The Wire. He needed, and still needs, a lot of work.
Last year, I visited home, and Dad took me out to his workshop. He put the key in the Nova’s ignition and fired him up. When I say that it roared, I cringe at the cliché. But damn, the engine did roar. It was raw and guttural and louder than any rock concert I’d ever been to. The rumbling rattled my sternum and made my eardrums ache. It was one of the most beautiful sounds I’d ever heard.
Dad turned the Nova off and admitted, with a boyish grin, that it might be too loud even for him.
Fast forward to late February 2021. The Nova was up and running. Dad had converted it from a drag car to a street cruiser. He’d even driven it to work, taking the side streets all the way since the Nova wasn’t, and still isn’t, quite up to highway speeds.
On the 26th, Dad got home from work and announced that he was taking the Nova to the gas station to test out his new tires. It was the first time he’d driven the Nova (and I was also free) since I moved back to Kansas. Every bit a dork, I raced down to my room and put on the “Black Panther” t-shirt I’d stolen out of my parents’ closet a decade ago. Then, I ran out to catch my ride.
Sitting inside the Nova was like entering a different world. The world of motor heads and car guys and mechanics. My grandpa’s old jacket was draped over the passenger seat behind me. The unfinished interior left the car’s skeleton exposed. There were no seatbelts. Without a radio, that roaring engine filled the cabin, along with every pop and creak and clink the Nova made.
As we drove, Dad explained what he still has left to do to fix up the Nova. At the gas station, he showed me where the gas goes – in the trunk – and how to fill it. On the way home, Dad stopped in the middle of the road, then gunned it like we were on the drag strip. The Nova’s front end lifted up – or at least it felt that way – and I was plastered back against the seat. I haven’t laughed like that, from pure fun and joy, in years.
We decided to do one more lap up and down the road. About a quarter mile from home, Dad looked over and asked, “Do you want to drive?”
We pulled over and Dad turned around in our neighbor’s driveway. I’m embarrassed to admit, I literally skipped over to the driver’s door. As we settled into each other’s seat, Dad showed me how to work the custom gear shift. Then, I put the Nova in drive and turned toward home.
I drove slow. Embarrassingly slow. But I wasn’t about to risk the health and safety of that precious car. The Nova glided down the road – a little loose, almost squirrelly – and I could feel the untapped power with every nudge of the gas pedal. With great care, I turned into our gravel driveway and parked.
I ran my fingers over the steering wheel and smiled. Something akin to joy and relief settled around my shoulders. Though the Nova still needs work, the story was complete. Dad had gotten him running again. I had seen him run, and even better, driven him myself. And when it’s my turn, I will do everything in my power to keep him running for future generations.
My mom jokingly refers to the Nova as my “inheritance.” Meaning that, after Dad’s done fixing him up, all their money will be in the car. (Ha.) Or that he’s the only thing of value they will leave me. (Double ha.) But she’s right.
The Nova is my inheritance, their legacy, one crucial piece in the story of our family. After all, it began with a car.
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