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I felt the need to better convey my point with some visuals.

There she is, The Party Wagon herself, in all of her poopy glory. For any of you who knew her, I don’t apologize. You loved her, don’t hate.

The pimped out dashboard, notice the hula doll and happy face between the vents. The hula doll didn’t last, because dad drove it one day and I’m not kidding here, he ripped it off the dashboard and threw it on the floor saying “I work at GE, I can’t have all those guys thinking I’m gay.”

Ahhh, adding another bottle of power steering fluid to the beast. I’m glad someone was there to capture this moment for me. Tears….

During a night of reminiscing with old friends we landed on the ever fun topic of our first cars. There was a plethora of rust, non-operational windows (even the hand crank ones didn’t work!), bullet holes, and cars that should have reached terminal velocity at 45 m.p.h. because beyond that point the turbulence was almost too much to handle. This is how I know there’s a God, otherwise we would have ALL died in any one of those cars back in the day!

So here’s to my first car, “The Party Wagon”. It was a 1990 Ford Aerostar minivan. It was two tone brown and Aaron had a two tone brown Jeep. We were destined to be together with those poop mobiles. I started the minivan trend, THEN someone else tried to one up me with his own two tone brown Aerostar (I believe his was the extended version though. Remember, bigger isn’t better kids), but alas, no one could trump my party on wheels. How appropriate of me to use Spades terminology when discussing high school. I hope you Landmarkers appreciate it.

I am 99% positive that my car wasn’t street legal for the majority of the time I drove it. I’m also sure I was the loudest car to be found, since the entire exhaust system fell off on Cox Road on my way home from work one night. Shortly after the exhaust system went A.W.O.L. from the rest of my vehicle, the transmission peaced out on me as well. Let me tell you, when you live on a busy street where the speed limit is 40, you KNOW people are doing at least 55. BONUS! We lived at the top of a hill. So here I am every morning for about 2 months, van stuck in reverse with other cars flying up the hill behind me, then screeching to a halt and honking their horns angrily at me. All I could do was sit there, car in drive, pedal to the floor until the gear finally caught and slammed me into drive with a force that cracked my sternum against the steering wheel. It’s a good thing I’m flat chested!!

Best part of that story, I had complained that the transmission was on the fritz and dad blew me off. Then one day mom says, “Nik, why do you sit in the street every morning? You’re gonna get hit ya know.” WHAT?! Um, HELLO! Mom, I’ve been complaining about this problem for a month. I’m not gonna get hit, I’m gonna DIE!

If it had rained the night before, oh you could just forget it! That blasted heap would give me fits just for trying to start it. Then it would proceed to accelerate at negative snails pace while backfiring repeatedly for about 10 minutes. Just until she got warmed up and stopped changing gears. What an obstinate piece of machinery. Dad was like “needs spark plugs”. We were so far beyond spark plugs….what it needed was a good beating with a hammer. A good kick in its van pants.

The passenger side window broke about the time I started driving and my dad’s solution was absolutely awesome. He ripped off the door panel and crammed a piece of wood under the window to hold it up. He failed to put the door panel back on, so I drove around for a good year with a door panel in the back seat. You had to be careful in the passenger seat, or you’d risk tetanus when you sliced your leg on some bit of rogue metal.

I’m pretty sure I was still in junior high when the A/C blew, so it was pretty steamy in the Party Wagon. This is how we came to judge the effectiveness of certain deodorants. If you could ride in the van and not come out sweaty, that brand was a keeper.

To say that the alignment was off is a severe understatement. You had to turn the wheel 180 degrees just to keep the darn thing in a straight line. While it didn’t leak oil, that hunk of junk leaked power steering fluid like it was it’s job! Eventually I got tired of buying a bottle every other day, so I went without power steering. How old school of me. The driver seat was wobbly because I broke it with my head when we got rear ended on the way home from school one day. I also had an imprint of a Buick symbol in the back and a spare tire with a bent rim thanks to that idiot.

The van’s terminal velocity should have been 55 m.p.h., because that’s when the shaking started. When I say shaking, I’m talking serious tremors here. However, I will NEVER forget the shakes it had when I buried the needle all those times on the ramp from 275 to 75 north. Gotta get home on time yo! Just for humor: the needle buried in the van at 85 m.p.h. (136.8 kilometers per hour for those of you who go metric!).

By the time this party was all said and done there had been a fire in the alternator, power steering was a thing I only dreamed about, only 1 of the doors would cooperate with the power locks, one of the running boards was falling off (Dear Brandon, if something is being held together by rust you probably shouldn’t stand on it), and it took some serious muscle to get that sliding door shut. Not to mention the fact that the summer before my senior year I barely drove it because the battery died, the starter AND the starter relay switch just gave up. None of this stopped me from pimping my ride with a little quarter machine happy face stuck to the dashboard & my dashboard dancing hula doll.

Why did I drive this car? Because it was free and I loved it, in my own way. Besides, I didn’t know better.