My father always had cars, all of them old models that he knew how to keep very well. The last one, which he drove until a few years before he died, three years ago, was a Volkswagen Fastback van from the 70s.
My old man was very jealous of his cars, he wouldn't lend them to anyone. He didn't teach my mother, or me, or any of my siblings to drive. So I became a man without knowing how to drive a car.
At the end of seventy-five I finished my university studies and immediately started working as a teacher. My salary at that time was over eight hundred dollars, which allowed me to have a fairly decent standard of living. Our currency had a good relationship with the dollar, the economy was fairly stable and we knew neither devaluation nor inflation.
By '77, I was twenty-three years old, I was already married, my first child was about to arrive and I had an apartment in a popular housing complex.
To make things easier with the child on the way, we decided to buy a car, which was no problem because I had saved enough money to make a down payment that allowed me to pay it off in only ten installments.
I decided on a four-door Dodge Dart, with a gigantic trunk and a super powerful eight-cylinder engine.
This model had the advantage that it was part of a program of regulated cars that the government had at the time and that made the vehicles in that program up to twenty percent cheaper. I estimate that for the prices at the time the vehicle would cost about four thousand dollars.
Before buying the car I took a driving course at a driving school that handled the license. So when I finished the course I had my third class license, the one that allowed me to drive light vehicles.
But I didn't feel safe at all. So I arranged with a friend to go with me to pick up the car from the agency. That friend was the first one to drive my first car zero kilometers.
A few days later I was already an expert, actually Maracay was at that time a city with very little traffic.
I had my first trial by fire when I went to Caracas to take the child to my parents' house. Driving the hundred and ten kilometers from Maracay to Caracas was intimidating. And although the highway was quite lonely, I was afraid because of the high speed of the cars. During the whole trip I drove on the right channel, the slow one, at an average speed of seventy kilometers per hour.
When I arrived in Caracas I felt more confident. I remember that before going to my parents' house I spent about three hours walking around the city with my wife and son. I went to places I had never been to before. The car gave me great freedom.
When my parents saw the car they were impressed, it seemed unbelievable that I had bought it. Perhaps they never imagined that any of their children could have a zero kilometer car.
To celebrate the birth of the child and the purchase of the car, I took my parents to the beach, about twenty kilometers from Caracas. On the way back I gave them a long tour of the city. My parents and I were happy.
On the way back to Maracay I was a different person, I felt like a fish in water. On that return my average speed reached one hundred and twenty kilometers per hour, and I almost never left the left channel.
With that first car I got to travel all over the East and West of the country. Every time there were school vacations we would go out with the car. During that time I was able to take my mother and my wife's grandmother on many trips, to places where they had never been.
By the eighties we needed an additional car, I bought a Jeep CJ7, also from a dealer. My wife drove most of the time in the Dart with the child, and I in the Jeep.
The Jeep gave me another freedom, it allowed me to get to places that were inaccessible to the conventional car. There were many times when I went camping with my wife and kids to lonely beaches that could only be reached by Jeep. I loved that CJ7 very much, I kept it for more than twenty years.
At present I have a Fiat Siena, I was also able to buy it from a dealer in 2007, when I was paid my social benefits for the twenty-five years of service I worked as a high school teacher.
Now the economy of my country is going through many difficulties, very few people can buy a car and it is very difficult to maintain the one you have. It is common to see cars abandoned in the backyards of homes. We hope that soon things will change for the better...
I am publishing this post motivated by the initiative proposed by my friend @ericvancewalton, Memoir Monday, in the week thirty-nine. For more information click on the link.
Thank you for your time.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version).
Logo creado por @themanualbot
Posted Using InLeo Alpha