1977 4-Door Nova with an inline 6 250ci single barrel carburetor. Her name? 50 Bucks, that’s what the license plate read because that’s how much my dad paid Ed down the street for it.

Now, it didn’t start as reliable, but I fixed things before they broke, I did oil changes religiously every 3k miles.

It only really broke down on me twice, once 3 miles from home on my way back from a 300 mile trip! And once when an oil sending unit blew.

Ultimately, accidentally Jumping a ditch Dukes of Hazzard style did it in, bent the frame. But even then, when I found myself very unexpectedly in the dark in the middle of a field, a historic battlefield in Yorktown Virginia to be exact, the beast was still running, even with the radiator fan pushed into the busted radiator, i could smell the coolant, but the beast lived and breathed, coming to my senses having bashed my head on the roof, I didn’t even get out, I put it in gear and got out of the field. Like the good civil war soldiers who gave their lives to their comrades in the very field I was in, the beast, 50 Bucks, got my sorry ass out of the field and a mile or two from the scene where she gasped her last, over heating I coasted to the side of Route 17. Minutes later a local cop stopped, asked a few questions, assessed that I wasn’t drunk. He knew something went down, the busted radiator, the broken windshield, grass under the front bumper, but I was tight lipped. I had dealt with literally dozens of cops from 13-22 years old, riding bmx, skateboarding, and driving a shitty looking car at all hours of the night for 6 years, I knew he had no case, no charges, and no witnesses if I said nothing. “She just overheated sir. Already called a tow truck.” Sure, “Okay. Am I gonna get a call later on about a hit and run?” Tell the truth, “nope.” And he was on his way. Not his monkeys and not his circus.