The Car of My Dreams

I was about 8 or 9 years old when Smokey and The Bandit came out. I can’t remember whether I saw it in a theater or drive-in. For that matter I might not have seen it in either of those places. For all I know it was on a friend’s Betamax but none of that applies to this particular post.

Because what is most important to me is that Trans Am that the Bandit is driving and the memories of the little boy who once was.  That boy and his friends used to ride their bikes around the neighborhood and pretend that they were being chased by some crazy County Mounty. We had our walkie-talkies that we would use to talk to each other using our CB handles and lots of stories about adventures.

Some of those stories actually happened and some are just clever fictions that little boys create to impress their friends.

Fast forward a decade or so and the little boy who was once me picked up a ’77 Camaro. It wasn’t the exact version of the dream car but it was $600 bucks and I had a $1,000 in the bank so the deal was done. Took that Camaro and fixed it up and created some new memories that had a bit more substance than those of the boy on the bike.

A few years go by and the Camaro is traded in for a used Camry. The Camry wasn’t as fun but it was far more reliable and the boy needed transportation to an office each day.

Fast forward another decade and the boy stumbles onto his dream car. It is a private seller who asks $8,500 or best offer. The boy thinks very hard about it. He has the money in the bank and is within moments of going for it when all of a sudden a baby starts to cry. And then the boy looks down at the stroller he is pushing and sees the face of his boy and sighs deeply.

That dream will have to wait for a different day because the boy in the stroller needs a house with a backyard. But every now and then the boy who pushed that stroller plays this video and remembers days long gone by…