There are some memorable milestones in life that, when reflected on, present themselves in vivid, emotional detail. For me, one of those milestones was my first car. I remember the moment I took possession of her, the smell of the interior, the bright fall day, sitting in the driver’s seat holding the wheel, and imagining all of the places I would go.

The car, a VW Beetle, was not much to look at, a beige brownish color, its paint weathered to a point where it would never shine again. The dashboard’s round speedometer and other controls looked to me as instruments of a new freedom. The year was 1974, and I don’t believe I ever knew the exact age of the Beetle, but suffice it to say, she had a couple of decades of use on her.

I paid 200.00 dollars for the car and remembered thinking it was a bargain. Cars that spent any time on the roads in Minnesota had a propensity for rust, and the Beetle was no exception. Salt was liberally spread on roads during the winter to combat ice and snow. The rust on the Beetle was especially prevalent around the wheel wells, and the panels closest to the roads surface. The most noticeable issue was a softball size hole in the driver side floorboards that went clean through to the street. My first thought upon seeing the hole was to dismiss it as a cosmetic problem that did not affect the operation of the car.

It was hard to find anything negative about the car to compete with things like a four-speed stick shift with a shiny plastic ball, the shifting pattern debossed into its top. I had not driven a car with a manual transmission before, but I did own a dirt bike, so I was familiar with the concept of a clutch. It took a few excursions to get the hang of shifting, and the only precarious moments remaining involved stopping on a hill and trying to get going without hitting the car behind me.

The Beetle did not have much power, but cornered well and was fun to drive. One quality of a car people looked for in that region of the country was how well the heater worked. In my excitement of ownership, this important step somehow slipped my mind, and I discovered as fall turned to winter, that the heating system was nearly non-existent. The same pesky rust that was eating the car from the ground up had destroyed the conduits in which warm air was supposed to flow from the engine. Adjusting to this reality, I dressed like a polar explorer whenever driving the car.

There was a funny moment while driving in a fall rainstorm and going through large puddles of water. The hole in the driver’s side floorboards, which I had believed to be purely cosmetic, suddenly turned into a geyser of water between my legs. The solution based on available materials at my parent’s home consisted of cutting a piece of plywood to a reasonable semblance of the floor. The wood did not exactly create a seal, and during a subsequent winter snowstorm, blowing snow found its way through the hole creating a miniature four-inch snowdrift inside the car.

The first thing to go wrong mechanically with the car was the starter, but since it was a manual transmission, I was able to start it with a little forward momentum. It was a small feat of coordination involving pushing the car from the driver’s side to gain momentum, jumping into the driver’s seat, shoving the stick into first gear, and popping the clutch to get the engine to turn over. Soon I was looking for every incline in the city for parking to have an assist in restarting the car. That same winter, the brake lines developed a leak causing the master cylinder to lose pressure for applying the brakes. With a little practice, I mastered the art of braking through downshifting, and when I needed a full stop, I employed the emergency brake.

Life seldom follows the road-maps our minds conjure up, and the places I imagined I would travel on that first glorious day never came to fruition. My first car had left me stranded on lonely rural stretches; in winter, it was like driving a freezer on wheels, and the car challenged the very meaning of work-around. Looking back on that day where I sat in the driver’s seat, my hands on the wheel, I realize the value of the experience, and would never trade that away.