$900 Wheels and Frozen Pizza

Remember your first car?

I do.

Mine was a mid-1980s light blue Buick LeSabre, four-door, incredibly long.

I got it for $900 from Maxwell Motors in La Grange my sophomore year of high school. I got a loan from what was then First National Bank of La Grange (now NBT) and paid that sucker off $100 a month from money I made as a bagger at HEB.

Back then you got a little payoff booklet from the bank, and you ripped out the monthly bill and mailed it in along with a check every month.

I’ve been thinking about first cars a lot lately as our daughter (and by extension my wife and I) begins the process of finding her first car.

She’s not too picky, but we’ve found that used cars are not like they used to be.

Let’s just say you can’t find one for $900 anymore.

Back when I was in high school I got the car first, and then the job.

Our daughter’s done it more conscientiously. She got the job before the car.

But she only drives herself to work on the rare occasion that my wife and I don’t need our vehicles.

So some days, she’s still stuck getting a ride from dear old dad to work.

And I don’t mind a bit.

Gives me more time to indulge in one of my favorite pastimes while driving through town – reminiscing about the La Grange I grew up in.

Last week as my daughter and I were passing 304 East Travis St. (the building you may remember more recently housed the since-closed Anytime Fitness) I embarked on a story about how that place was called Home Run baseball cards in my youth.

Its arrival in town coincided with the height of my baseball card collecting and I loved to go there and gaze upon the inventory. The guy who owned it was a particular fan of Nolan Ryan, as was I.

One day I remember even seeing a picture in The Record that Nolan Ryan himself had stopped by the shop to see all his baseball cards.

Invariably talk during car rides with my kids in the summer turns to the La Grange swimming pool of old.

It’s still a great pool, but when I was a kid it was so much more. It had a low and a high diving board and two water slides. My kids can hardly believe it.

I’ve told them about how we had a Mr. Gatti’s on the square, with a huge television screen. I tell them about how we had the Cozy Theater downtown when I was a kid too. I remember they played matinees during the summer once a week for like $1 a ticket.

I tell our kids about how we had a whole store on the square devoted to shoes – Shoe World, and one devoted to sports equipment – Sports and Stuff, and one that had all sorts of fun hobby stuff – Ben Franklin.

A lot of those stores closed up in the aftermath of Walmart coming to La Grange about 30 years ago, but back then I didn’t care. They gave out free gold fish at the grand opening of Walmart here and that won me over – that and that snack bar that sold slushes and pretzels.

One thing that hasn’t changed is the library’s summer reading program. I’ve taken photos for the paper at several of their programs this summer. That thing’s been going on for like 40 years now. Wednesday mornings in the summer when I was a kid were for going to the library summer reading program, and it’s so neat that tradition continues.

I’m a little too young to fully remember and appreciate The Bon Ton restaurant that was in what is now the Tejas Clinic. My main memory of that place is all four of my older siblings worked there and would bring home leftover pie from the buffet after their shifts, and once in a while there was enough for me.

I’ve told our kids how you could buy cheap candy and He-Man figures at Perry’s next to HEB.

I was a high school bagger/checker/stocker when HEB made it’s last big move about 25 years ago, and now it’s getting expanded and reconfigured again.

It was on a trip home from work at HEB one night when I made my last drive in that old LeSabre I started this story talking about. I was on the closing shift and hadn’t eaten supper. Right before we locked up the store, I had bought a four-cheese Red Baron frozen pizza to make when I got home.

I was driving up the bluff thinking about that pizza when I got hit hard right on the driver’s side door by a car that was coming down the bluff like it was a straight road instead of the windiest road in Fayette County. The old LeSabre spun around a couple of times, the glass from the driver’s side door shattered all over me.

I was still trying to make sense of what had happened when I saw the lights of an officer’s vehicle.

“That was fast,” I still remember thinking.

Turns out the officer had been following the car that hit me on the suspicion of drunk driving and was waiting for a good reason to stop them. He found his reason.

I wasn’t hurt except for a few cuts from the glass (27 years later I still keep a couple of pieces of that glass), but my car was badly wrecked and totaled – but it had kept me safe on its final voyage.

The next day my folks took me to whatever wrecker yard my car had been towed to get whatever personal stuff I had left in the car before it was sold for scrap

Staring back at me from the back seat was that unopened box of Red Baron four cheese pizza – never to be enjoyed.

It’s still my favorite frozen pizza.

And I still get nervous every time I drove home after buying one.