I was one of the last kids on my block to move up to a bicycle from a three-wheeler. It wasn't from lack of the ability to ride a bike, it's just that for various reasons it took a while for me to get one. The same thing happened when I wanted to graduate from two wheels to four. I got my driver's license when I was 16, but my family had a tradition, handed down from father to son since the days of wooden-spoked wheels: "If you want to drive, by gosh, you get your own car!" I had a job of sorts at a local hobby shop, but the pay came mostly in the privilege of being allowed to run the trains. It didn't occur to me that there were other stores on Plainfield Avenue that would pay me real money to stand behind a cash register and help customers, which was about all I did at the hobby shop when I wasn't playing with the trains. I believed that the paying jobs were all further out "the Avenue," and without a car I couldn't get to them. If I couldn't get to them, I couldn't support a car. It seemed that my lifestyle was doomed to be rather pedestrian.

My big break came when Bob blew his car up. Bob drove a two-tone 1962 Plymouth Valiant with a motor that made a funny sound. The sound grew louder until the day Bob stopped for gas on the way to a baseball game. The gas-station attendant said, "Man, you'd better trade that off quick!" Bob laughed and told the pump jockey that it was a great car. The great car left the station, turned onto the street, and promptly threw a rod, blowing a four-finger-sized hole in the engine block. Bob's dad towed the Valiant home. The forlorn hulk sat in front of their house awaiting its final trip, to a nearby junkyard on Monday morning.

On Sunday night my fellow Batwipe band-member Dale and Bob's brother Brian stopped by our house to tell me about it. We laughed about how Bob never checked the oil, and how the Valiant went slower and slower, bleeding a huge puddle of oil as it rolled to a halt. In the course of the conversation Brian mentioned that the junkyard had offered Bob $10 for the car but he'd sell it to me for five.

Five bucks for a car?? My mind boggled. This was the chance I'd waited for, longed for, for months! Surely I could find another engine to put in it. Bob's misfortune would be my liberation, freeing me from the travel limits of my bike. I had to move fast. If I waited, the car would be gone. Just one little roadblock stood between me and the open highway: I was grounded!

I stayed out too late on Friday night, mostly because certain of my friends with cars also had parents who didn't enforce curfews. Unfortunately, my parents did. The kitchen window glowed above the dark driveway when my friends dropped me off at about 2 AM. I prayed, "Oh please let it be Mom!" It wasn't: Dad sat at the kitchen table, and he was miles past unhappy. "As long as you live in this house," he roared (well, it seemed like roaring!), "don't you ever come home this late again!!" Then he grounded my scrawny butt for two weeks. Two Weeks! I spent Saturday sulking around the house, enduring the indignity of parental highhandedness and suffering the total injustice that 17-year-olds are forced to endure.

Brian and Dale left. I went to the kitchen, where Mom was finishing up some late-evening cleaning. I explained the situation and begged for a parole. All I needed as a short one, I pleaded, just long enough to run down to Bob's house so I could get that car before they hauled it to the junk yard! Dad had already gone to bed, which was good on two counts: He wouldn't have sprung me, and he also would have forbidden me to do such a stupid thing as buy a junk car. Mom, however, was much more accommodating. "Just long enough to get the car," she said, "and you get right back here."

I ran upstairs as quietly as possible and grabbed my wallet. Slipping back downstairs and out of the house, I jumped on my bike and raced the two blocks to Bob's house. Dale, Bri and some other kids hung out on the porch. Bob wasn't home. I explained the deal to his dad. "So, Buddy Ter's gonna fix the Valiant up?" Bob's dad chuckled. "Good luck!" Dale and Bri pushed the car and me the two blocks back to my house. I offered to help but they agreed that I should get my first ride in my new car, so they'd do the pushing. I coasted to a stop in front of our house and put the car, my car, into Reverse to park it. It hadn't occured to me that I never drove a stick before; somehow that would all get worked out. I slipped in the house and went to bed.

I woke up early the next morning. I lay in bed, not planning to go downstairs until Dad left for work. Dad, however, was more observant than I expected. He saw the Valiant in what had been an empty parking spot when he went to bed and came back inside for an explanation.

"Your buddies junked their car in front of our house," Dad began.

"No," I said in a tone that mixed pride with just a little defiance. "That's my car. I bought it last night for five dollars."

The room cooled noticeably. "You're parked too close to the driveway," he said. Then he left, probably to have a chat with my parole officer.

I spent the morning behind the wheel, practicing shifting a three-in-the-tree. Down low for first, up and away for second, down again for high gear. And I listened to the radio. The car didn't have a working motor, but the AM radio was first-class, pouring top-40 rock from the speaker in the middle of the dash. If I turned it up and tuned the radio just right I could pick up all kinds of exotic stations from far-away cities: WLS and Super-CFL in Chicago, and WOKY in Milwaukee. At night it got even better. I could pull in KMOX from St. Louis and CKLW from Windsor, Ontario! The way it sat, my car wasn't so much a vehicle as it was a 2500-pound transistor radio with four doors and seating for six!

Dad came home for lunch. "You have to get that car off the street," he said. He went on about how the cops would tow a car without plates that sat too long on the street. I hadn't worked out how to get a car with a dead motor up the short steep hill at the foot of our driveway. He said we'd figure out how to move it when he got home. And then he went back to work. I went back to searching out more exotic radio stations, staying with the car to make darn sure that if any cops came up the street I could tell them not to tow it away because we were going to move it that evening. Later our neighbor Mr. Boer came and asked me about the car. I told him about our plan to move it. Mr. Boer offered to push it with his car, a nice big Chevy with a V-8. I figured Dad wouldn't mind if I got the car off the street, since he brought up that I had to do it, so I accepted Mr. Boer's kind offer. It slipped my mind that he got uptight when I left a mere bike in the driveway; finding a semi-immovable car blocking the path to his garage shoved yet another burr under his saddle.

After dinner we pushed the Valiant behind the garage, unclogging the driveway and tucking my prize where the whole street didn't have to see it. The next step would be to remove the junk engine so we could put a good one in. I didn't know a connecting rod from a tie rod so Dad showed me what to take apart and what to leave until the very end; unbolting the engine from its mounts at the wrong time could be a painful thing. The next morning I picked up a wrench and went to work. I took off the air cleaner cover, disconnected the battery, fuel line and accelerator connector. I drained what was left in the radiator and took it out, removing the hoses with it. One part after another came off, finding storage on the back-seat floor or in the trunk. I disassembled that engine the way a medical student dissects a cadaver.

Unbolting the exhaust pipe from the manifold was the trickiest part. Over eleven years those bolts had heated up and cooled off thousands of times and collected more than their fair share of rust. Considering the car's general condition, that is quite a statement. I found out later that I couldn't leave anything of value in the trunk, not so much because someone with a screwdriver could pop the trunk open, but because whatever was in there could slide around and fall out the open bottoms of the fenders! With the help of half a can of WD-40, a pair of Vise-Grips and a socket wrench fitted with a length of pipe I managed to snap those buggers off clean; the whole exhaust pipe dropped on the ground.

Dad came around at lunchtime to check my progress. The sight of his only son (a delicate boy who hated to soil his hands) covered in grease from the tips of his fingers to his shoulders, his faced streaked with carbon and oil, must have softened the old man's heart, reminding him of a '32 Chevy from another time in a back yard across town. Later that week he offered to spot me an engine until I found a job.

By the end of the week the only thing connecting the old motor to the car were the motor mounts. Bob and Dale helped me take the hood off; we leaned it against the side of the car. My Uncle Bill, a top-notch mechanic, found a used motor at a nearby junkyard. Since the owner knew uncle Bill, we got it for $65 and he let us use his truck to haul it home.

We planned the engine swap for Saturday. Bob, his dad, Dale, and a few other interested spectators came to watch. We moved an old swing set over the now-topless engine compartment. Bolstering the top bar with a large fence post, Dad hung a come-along on the swing set. He ratcheted the cable up tight, just lifting on the engine. Carefully I unbolted the last of the engine-mount bolts. Dad hoisted the engine as the neighbors backed to the far corners of the yard. Once it dangled clear we pushed the car out of the way and lowered the motor into an old coaster wagon that nearly buckled as we dragged it to the side. We used the truck's winch to install the new engine. Not only was it easier, it was also much safer! The installation was more fun without that potential guillotine hanging above.

The next week ran the opposite direction of the previous one. One part after another came out of hibernation and found its new home on the replacement motor. Dad and Uncle Bill took on the fussy work of getting the new engine tuned and timed. After a few tries the little Slant Six hummed to life; I now had a working car! We all stood around the car, basking in our triumph as wisps of translucent blue smoke blew out the exhaust pipe.

The rebirth of the Valiant, now christened "Junkyard Jenny," brought new responsibilities my way. I had to buy insurance, get plates, and find a job to support my new gasoline habit. I landed a position as a busboy at a local pancake house. I hated the job, but that's another story. I was free to drive wherever I pleased, as long as I made it to work on time and got in before curfew. When September came my old bicycle leaned against the garage wall as I hopped in the little Valiant and drove into my senior year.