The Opel on the day we had our last drive together.
This is a story that I am not sure should be put in writing so I am going to put this disclaimer in before I even get going. The things you are about to read are not to be emulated or tried at home, or anywhere for that matter and if confronted with them we have no knowledge or recollection of any of them…
Growing up I was blessed with a restored candy-apple-red ’67 mustang, which is endowed with many stories all its own, but not quite as colorful as the Opel’s. While at college I was dating a girl named Amanda and were we pretty serious. She was a senior in high school in Cincinnati, Oh and I was attending my first year of college in Columbus, OH. The drive was approximately an hour and half and was too far to drive the Mustang as it would rack up miles on a classic antique car, not good. So to overcome the obstacle of the miles that separated us her grandmother gave me her old car which was no longer being used. That car became the legendary Buick Opel. Sort of a mustard-puke yellow four-door sedan, nothing fancy by any means, but in good shape and ran great. Her family signed the title over to me so I could get insurance on it myself.
Not long after getting the car, Amanda broke up with me. Don’t remember why, we were young so who knows. I just know she kinda screwed me over somehow. So to take out my anger one evening, Jason and I decided to run over a garbage can with the Opel. BAM!! It was loud and wrapped around the side putting a large dent in the door. Hmmm I thought. Oh well, who cares! For whatever reason, I got out a marker and dated the dent. I wrote right on the car. So we next decided to go off-road with it, and it got another dent. We dated it as well. How the next dents happened is a little fuzzy now. I do remember a kick, maybe a baseball, but every one got signed by who did it and when. It became a game so to speak, a way to pass time I suppose for young men.
Sometimes we would go to a shopping center and grab a shopping cart and put it in front of the car. Then push the cart up to a good speed then hit the brakes sending the cart rolling at a high-rate of speed, at which point when it hit a curb the cart would explode into the air tumbling end over end before crashing back to the ground.
I remember one time after picking up Mark from the airport in Columbus we were driving down a back alley and there were huge trash cans. They stood 5 or 6 feet high and just as wide. And something took me over as I swerved square into one and… Whap!! It exploded with trash everywhere. The can flew over the windshield and i just laughed as Mark had a deer-in-the-headlights look to him. I know it was irresponsible and immature, but I was 19, I was young, irresponsible and immature :) It was fun. I let HIM sign and date that one.
In Columbus, Skippy and I lived in a fairly rough neighborhood in a one bedroom apartment. It was not pretty but it was our first place away from home so it was great to us. It was always noisy there and we occasionally heard gunshots. We thought it was exciting.
One morning I woke up and got ready to go to school. I went out to the parking lot and the Opel was almost a whole parking spot over from where I had parked it the night before, and up against another car. Huh?? What? Then i realized someone rammed into that other car and pushed it into the Opel hard enough to move it sideways! Just more damage. Whatever. I dated it, moved on and drove off to school.
It was a few weeks later when I got up for school again, and instead of the Opel just being moved a bit, it was gone. I am known for losing my keys so to combat that I just left them in the Opel thinking there is no way someone would steal the Opel. Wrong. Someone did. I thought at first my friends were playing a trick on me. Eventually after talking to them all, I realized it was no joke, someone stole the Opel!
Now the Opel is a finicky car with an old points system in the distributor. The points have to stay open a certain gap for the car to run and the springs had gotten so worn that they eventually close up and the car stalls, and will not start again until you open the points again. So I figured it was just about time for them to close and thought the thieves would not get far. I called the police and reported it stolen and walked to school.
I was right, the next day the police called and said they found my car abandoned on I-70 just 10 miles outside Columbus. But they told me “We are sorry though, it is pretty beat up, they really did a number on it”. I chuckled and told them, “no, it was like that before they got it.” Now the good thing about all this is, when they stole it the gas tank was almost empty, and now it was FULL!! I was happy, but the experience taught me to no longer leave the keys in it.
During a party at our next house in Columbus, in an area known as South Ghetto, someone went to make a dent on the Opel with a baseball bat and for whatever reason hit the back window and shattered it. This was really the beginning of the downward spiral of that poor car. It was looking really abused now for sure. And it began to stink, for whatever reason everyone decided to throw their empty 9 ounce green Little Kings bottles into the trunk to see if they could eventually fill it. It made awful noises when taking turns as those bottles shifted around, crashing and clanking.
That summer break we got into a phase of doing fireworks wars. Where we would go out to a field or construction area and shoot roman candles, M-80s, and bottle rockets at each for fun. It was a blast and the source of many tales. One war we had was at Trish’s parents farm.
They had a large chuck of farmland in the country about 45 minutes outside Cincinnati. It was perfect for wars, we did not have to worry about police or neighbors. I was on the BBI crew, Ballistic Brothers incorporated. I think Skippy came up with the name with Scooter one night over a King Case (A Case of Little Kings Cream Ale). But anyway, we used decided we needed an assaut vehicle and what better choice than the Opel. But it needed some modifications first, like it need a camo paint job, so we took some brown and green spray paint and went at it, complete with a large G with a circle on the hood. It also needed a “gunner’s hole” which we cut with an axe over the back seat so Scooter could ride standing up out of it shooting roman candles. I warned you this entry was a tale full of stupid acts that should not be done right?
So now it seemed the final transformation had happened for the Opel, but this is just where it really got its identity solidified. I remember one off-road adventure with Trish who had told me she had traversed the trails around the farm her whole life, and she knew them like the back of her hand. So one night we were cruising along on a trail and she told me to go left to take a shortcut. Before I could even ask if she knew where she was going the front of the Opel plummeted down off a small ravine. The car was more than stuck. It was nose down in a creek bed. I remember leaning forward suspended by the seat belts and looking over at her and saying “Dammit Trish!” “I guess the trail got washed out” she said while laughing. If it were any other car and I would have panicked but this was the Opel. We just went and got the tractor from the barn and pulled it out. But the muffler had been ripped almost off and it was loud now.
At my mom’s house where I stayed during summer break I parked the Opel out front on the street. I awoke one day and went to get in the Opel and noticed something wedged between the wiper and windshield. It was a ticket! A ticket for a junk vehicle violation!! They were no longer letting me park it on the street because it was such an eyesore. So what did I do? I just pulled up into the side yard and parked under the large overhanging bushes my mom had growing. They hid it perfectly, it became known as the “Bat Cave.”
It was time for school again and I drove it back up there. i used it for daily use to get back and forth to school. One day while driving it to school, I heard a loud CLANK! Then a dragging metal sound, then nothing. “okay, that was weird, must have not run over something perhaps” I said aloud. Then when I came to the next stop sign, I figured out what happened. I was unable to stop. I had no brakes, my foot just went to the floor when I pushed on the pedal. Luckily there were no cars coming through the intersection and I survived. I used the parking brake for the next one and then when I got to school I found a spot where I could use a chain link fence to stop and park.
What had fallen off was the entire brake system on the front left wheel. Everyone knew when I got home from school as I used the townhouse building to stop the Opel every time. It shook the entire building. To get to school i learned how to time the lights perfectly, occasionally using the parking brake when needed, and using that fence at school to stop. I continued to drive it in that condition for months until I decided I had to retire the Opel to the farm, being used only for wars.
It continued to run for a while but eventually broke down out in the fields, where i just left it be. Put out to pasture so to speak. But eventually Trish’s parents wanted it off the property. So we hatched a scheme to grind off all the VIN numbers and just ditch it on a country road. I took a final picture with it and then tied it to the farm truck with Trish’s brother, Kevin, driving it and I in the Opel. We started down a long rolling country road and then up ahead I saw a stop sign, but Kevin was not slowing down, and then I panicked, I frantically reached for the seat belt and just as I got it latched i looked up and saw brake lights! I prepared for impact. I was a good 10 feet or more behind the truck, so when I slammed into the back end it was pretty hard. I felt the rear end of the Opel pop up in the air and slam back onto the ground with a squeaking thud and crashing glass (the bottles were still in the trunk :) Kevin looked back and I gave him a thumbs up, I was alright and actually laughing at what my face must have looked like in his rear view mirror when I realized I was going to hit the truck.
The long journey with the Opel was over. We quickly untied and got into the truck and drove off.
Kevin said he saw the Opel there for several weeks until one day he drove by and it was gone. I wonder where that old car is. It was like an old friend. I miss that car, it was a lot of fun to say the least. and again, DO NOT try any of the things I described here.
