Volare means “to fly”.

I was in my old neighborhood the other day, a place I rarely have business and never visit for old time’s sake. It was the neighborhood where I lived with my grandparents, right after high school. Something about the bright fall leaves and the pleasure of driving on a sunny day made me think about two quirky characters from that year.

The first character was my Grandpa, a hilariously eccentric gentleman who was dying inch by inch from emphysema. He had lost a finger while helping us build our house, and used to terrify all the little kids by tickling them with the stump and making a creepy cackling laugh. He also liked to smack people on the butt with his cane when they walked away from him. When Grandma wasn’t looking, he’d turn to me and flip his false teeth in and out of his mouth.  

My grandparents had been locked into a cold war for decades, and Grandpa would do anything he could to piss her off. Which is why, when he drove us somewhere, he’d rush right up to the stoplight and then SLAM on the brakes.

“Oh, JIMMMM!” Grandma would snarl, clutching the dashboard.

VOOOH-lar-rayyyy!

He’d look innocent. “People use their brakes too much. You just need to stop all at once, or you’re wearing down the brake pads.”

The other character was my first car, a beat-up ‘78 Plymouth Volare station wagon I bought from my mom. I guess the worst thing about it was that everyone who entered the car felt the urge to belt out, “VOOOH-lar-rayyyy! VOH-OH!”. And that NEVER got old.

 The car had bench seats and could comfortably fit eight of my friends (this was before manadory seatbelt laws). It was a total wreck. The passenger side of the car was one long rusty skidmark from the time my sister ran into the side of a car wash. The radio had a short somewhere, so the music would drift on and off, and eventually I started bringing a boom box with me. The driver’s door stopped closing in the middle of winter, so I took my unused seat belt and tied the door shut while I was driving. The car was also sprinkled with coconut from the time a friend took a WHOLE CASE of shredded coconut to the beach, and people started flinging it at each other inside the car. I never got rid of all the coconut.

These two characters intersected when my Volare had a flat tire. My mom wasn’t one to fling money at preventive maintenance, so the tires had never been rotated, and the bolts were heavily rusted onto the rims.  I was never getting that tire off on my own.

So I called a mechanic. The guy said they could tow it there for ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS and then use their welding torch (or something else mechanical) to cut them off which would cost FIFTY BUCKS and then I could find a tire at a junkyard for an additional THIRTY DOLLARS. And then I promptly passed out. When I awoke and realized that was about a month of tips at Denny’s, and I still had to come up with $200 in rent, I started crying.

The mechanic was kind and said, “I have another idea. But I wouldn’t do it, myself.”

“I’ll do it! I’ll do it!”

“Take your car to an empty parking lot. Take off the nuts. Then–you know how to do a donut, right?”

“Oh yeah.” Because there was that time on the hill with the ice…never mind, that’s another story.

“Well do a donut. The force should pop the tire loose. But you have to STOP IMMEDIATELY when you feel the tire fall off the bolts. Otherwise…” Then he said something vile and terrifying but I didn’t understand other than I MUST NOT under ANY CIRCUMSTANCES go another inch once the tire came loose.

My Grandpa said he’d go with me. And I thought that he was going to actually do the driving, but when we got to the vacant lot, he said, “Just drop me off by the sidewalk.”

“Aren’t you going to help me?”

“Nooooooo. I’m not staying in the car while you’re doing that.”

This did not add to my confidence about this endeavor. But on my first try, I managed to feel the tire pop off and stopped the car. Grandpa walked over slowly, puffing and wheezing, and helped me put the spare tire on the car. It was a sparkling-bright fall day.

The Volare lasted six more months before it went to the Great Junkyard in the Sky. My Grandpa lasted about seven more years. When I passed by that parking lot this week, it was still vacant, as it has been for twenty-five years.