It’s amazing what you can do in a car. Parents in the 1920s almost lost their minds worrying what the young people were doing in their cars, these rolling parlors they could get in and go just anywhere, get themselves just anywhere, as far as they liked if they had gas enough .
But I’m not talking about THOSE kinds of activities.
I’m talking about the myriad other ways your car comes in handy, especially if it’s a minivan.
In my book the minivan is the nest invention since the blow-dryer. The pencil sharpener. The clothes drier even.
And I’m serious. I got my first Dodge caravan in 1986. It was red, like three-quarters of Nancy Reagan’s wardrobe. When it died in seven years’ time I got a white one. Then a green one. Then another red one and I’m here to tell you my lords it over the cars of every other car out there, be it Honda or Subaru, Toyota or big old Caddy.
The Chrysler is the only minivan with the Stow-and-Go seats, these plush comfy thrones that at the push of a button fold up and sink away under the floorboards, yielding me a ballroom of space. Then another touch and up they come again like a band of jolly ghosts appearing once again at the dinner table.
Look at all the room!
In this space I can and have toted swoony big palm trees, dining room chairs past counting, whole dining room tables, or as I did yesterday, a seven foot long buffet. I have stretched out for a nap, soothed travelling cats, cages and all, and now apparently refinished furniture. (Just as a note the furniture refinishing I did in my car Sunday and Monday didn’t involve any 5F5 which you wouldn’t use in a small enclosed place of course, unless you wanted to keel over dead within ten minutes. It was just a little subtle steel wool-and-rubbing agents that I know about as someone who has been rehabbing furniture since before Nancy Reagan was First Lady of California, speaking of that slim the giant-headed clothes horse who went to my college but didn’t finish, just like Fellow Republican Barbara Bush did with her pearly dog-collar and her salty talk. (Did you know she is famous for sketchy? I didn’t know that I until I read that thinly disguised 2008 fictionalization of Laura Bush. Which I read. In my car. In stolen moments in various grocery store parking lots.))
Here they are the two of them, Miz Pearls first and Nancy below her.
Well here’s the beauty of a blog: you can just go on and on spooling out stories and nobody fires you or gets out the red pencil. even. Everyone in my family of origin could do this, speaking of ghosts at the table. There were four grownups at my dining room table growing up and any one of them could talk tile the cows came home. Once my 90-year-old great aunt fell asleep during one of these talkathons and fell clean out of her chair and onto the floor.
Anyway the Chrysler Plymouth people have a wonderful car in the minivan. Mine is now eight years old and I can hardly wait to get the new model. In the 2013 Chrysler I’m hoping to set up a small bowling alley. 🙂
EXIT ONLY 