Car Keys

Car Keys

I don’t think Larry ever kept a car long enough to recognize his car key at just a glance. I’m not sure what you call it when spring comes and a man just has to buy a car, but “spring fever” or “sap rising,” whatever, Larry had it. Mostly he traded one car in on another, but not always. Twice he bought an old car from a friend when their car dealer was only going to give them $50 for it and he said, jokingly, he’d give $100.

That’s how he got Tankety-Tank, a gigantic ‘60’s era Ford that spent most of its time with us being lent out to friends who were temporarily without transportation. That’s why Tankety-Tank was parked at the curb on a very wide city street when the little blue-haired lady side-swiped it. We got $900 from the insurance company for the damage. Larry then sold the slightly dented car to a junk dealer for $50, making that the best car deal he ever brokered.

But before that we used to drive Tankety to places where we could use it for reverse snob appeal. Like to the Tanglewood Steeplechase where tradition has it that elegant cars filled with lovely overdressed people park by the track and serve up gourmet lunches before the horse races are run. You see Bentleys and Jags and Rollses with orchids on the hood and hired waitresses in French maid outfits pouring champagne into classy fluted glasses.

We took Tankety-Tank and four friends, adorned the hood with a Grolsch beer bottle holding a single yellow daffodil, the guys wore shorts and undershirts, and we women pretended to wait on them.

But that wasn’t the only one of Larry’s memorable cars. There was the Audi he bought from a friend which, of course, soon need work done on the transmission. It would start, but when you put it in gear, the motor would die. Larry took it to a small repair shop and left the Audi with them.

The next day he got a call from them. “Dr. Camp, I’ve got some good news and some bad news.”

“Such as?”

“The bad news is that your car was stolen from outside our shop before we had a chance to work on it. The good news is we found it about a block away. I guess the jerk who took it got mad when it wouldn’t keep running so when he abandoned it he locked the keys inside. Do you, by chance, have another set of car keys?”