Silver Thunderbird

Prompt #4- Write about a car.

       Just before the start of school in 7th grade I was lamenting the poison ivy scabs that still oozed out of her chin despite my best efforts not to scratch them.  My dad came almost dancing into the indoor/outdoor flag stone floor of our kitchen.  I turned to him and threw the front door open wider motioning for us all to come and look.  I peered behind him and saw my mom’s maroon station wagon that he had bartered a whole summer of roofing to get, and next to it I saw a new car.  Well, truth be told it looked like a very used car but definitely new to us.  It held some similarities to the 1985 Camry that had died about the time Dad began his roofing for the station wagon. “It’s a T-bird,” My dad gleamed.  “The Shoemachers
      “Why?”  I asked taking a bite of my peanut butter toast.
      “Why?!” He echoed. “They are classic cars!  Marc Cohen ‘Silver Thunderbird?!’” I knew the song and I double checked.  This car could not truly be a Thunderbird.  It had no chrome, no fins, small lights and looked nothing like the bat mobile. Dad headed into the living room to play the CD. He was all about CDs in 1997.  I was skeptical but he had given me almost all of his cassette tapes in favor of the “Compact Disc.”  My mom still listened to her records on the record player and those songs were my very favorite.  I wished she’d let me play them.  But in no uncertain terms I knew that if I ever touched the record player I would instantly break the needle and then it could be months before my mom could harangue my dad into getting her a new one.  He slipped Marc Cohen into the entertainment center that he had built from scrap wood from various side jobs. 

    “Why were Rick and Lynn getting rid of it?”  My mom asked, wiping her soapy hands on a dish towel.
    “Aww, you know Rick, he doesn’t really work with his hands. Some small electrical problem and he’d just as soon get a new car.”
         I marveled at this.  “One man’s trash is another’s treasure” held Biblical status in our house and that was saying something.  I looked at my mom, for I knew she did not ascribe quite as whole heartedly to the axiom.  The pressure in the room suddenly made my head hurt, the same way the atmosphere warned me when a thunderstorm was coming. My headaches were totally debilitating but they were also what had taught me the joy of escaping to my room with tea and a good, easy read.  No-one would knock, knocking would make it worse.  So, I crept upstairs and tucked myself under my comforter.  It was a little scratchy but looked paint splattered which was exactly the motif I’d begged to instill upon my entire room.  It was not to be.
        
My sister came in, up from a nap, or a session of reorganizing her books across the floor of her room.  She wore the sesame street ABC comforter that I’d handed down around her like a cape.  She lay down next to my bed. 
        “I can’t read out loud.”  I told her flatly. 
        “Ok,” she shrugged. She produced her LiteBrite miraculously from the folds of the well worn canopy.  She settled down against the spray painted metal bars of my bed.  We’d rescued it from the trash and it’s fancy wrought iron work reminded me of “The Little Princess.”  I liked to imagine waking up to a surprise feast one morning.  I’d even imagine eating and enjoying a tangerine which was something I’d never done.  Anything with seeds was anathema to me.  I gagged at the thought. 
    
    “Do you want to make a radio show?” She asked.  Sometimes we’d hide in my wardrobe; I was fairly certain one of these days we’d be allowed to enter Narnia but until Aslan deigned to see us, we made radio shows.  We had a cast off cassette player from my dad and a good amount of blank tapes and those we’d tape over.