Old Betsy
Christian Riley
Nineteen sixty-nine Chevy Chevelle, four-door sedan with an army green factory paint job, and a “three-on-the-tree” standard transmission. She had a deep impression on her left rear fender, as well as a small “Semper Fi” sticker on the adjacent window. The dent, I never questioned. But that sticker was a tricky beast. I used to imagine that it smiled back at me, smug-like, as if it knew all along it had been placed on the wrong car.
We had Betsy when I was a child, growing up in San Diego, California. I don’t remember when my mother got that car, but I’ll never forget that I spent countless hours in the backseat of her. She was nothing but green, inside and out, except for a little bit of chromed steel on the door handles and bumpers and ashtrays.
The sticker had been misplaced, because Betsy was the mildest mannered car you’d ever ride in. Nothing about her resonated Hoorah! She was peace-loving. You could see it on her smile. I know that I’m not the only person who’s observed human features on cars, and trucks, and other vehicles. Headlights for eyes. Front grill for a mouth. Betsy always had a smile on. And from behind, she had the look of a small child who had just fallen fast asleep.
I spent those countless hours inside Betsy because my mother was a single mom, with little or no income. She moved us around from one bad neighborhood to another, almost every year, in search of a safe place to raise her children. But that was always the challenge for a poor family in a large city. Looking back now, I realized I must have shared that same fear that kept my mother spinning her wheels. The same anxiety that prevented her from collecting stuff, knowing that someday soon, very soon, she’d have to get rid of it as we’d be moving on. I know this, because the only safe place I can recall while growing up as a child, was in the backseat of Betsy.
My mother believed in miracles. She was a devoutly religious woman, belonging to no particular denomination but a firm believer in God. We went to church occasionally. We said prayers every night, and sometimes during the day. And we experienced two miracles in the years of my youth, both while homeless, living in our green Chevy Chevelle.
The first one was as simple as pie. Driving south from Riverside, my mother realized that Betsy was running a little hot—sick with a fever, perhaps. She pulled into a gas station two hours later, somewhere in Mira Mesa, and then, just like that, we found out about our “miracle.” Some gas stations still had onsite mechanics back then. Staring from the backseat window, my eyes blew open as one particular mechanic, talking with my mother, suddenly threw a wrench onto the ground, cursing the fellowship of his trade. Somewhere in Los Angeles the previous day, Betsy had had an oil change, and her oil plug had been left loose. Along the stretch of Interstate 5 between Los Angeles and San Diego, five quarts of oil had been painted across the road that afternoon. Yet no one could figure out why or how Old Betsy kept on running.
That nice old mechanic never charged us. He filled our car with fresh oil and smiled as we left the station. Looking at my face in the rear-view mirror, my mother simply announced that the Lord has just provided.
The second miracle was a little more interesting. It had a few more pieces to it. I was fourteen years old, and my older sister, who had just turned eighteen, was living with her boyfriend at the time. So it was just me, my mother, and Old Betsy there on the streets of San Diego. It was the end of October, and our plan was to get into another apartment before winter hit. We needed a deposit, along with first and last month’s rent, which was murder for a family on welfare. Living in our car was the only way my mother could save that kind of money.
Since we had recently moved out of our old place, we were broke as hell, and had just begun the process of saving. Then, on the evening of Halloween, we drove into the parking lot of a Twenty-Nine Cent Hamburger stand, prepared to sleep for the night. Our stomachs growled, and we laughed at the irony of it all: stranded next to a restaurant where hamburgers cost pennies, and even that was more than we could afford. The next morning, my mother would get a welfare check deposited into her bank account, and then the fast would be over. Until then, it was pure endurance.
But then my mother got the idea to send me out to go trick-or-treating. She took an old sheet, cut holes for eyes, then handed me a pillowcase for a bag. I went as a ghost. A pathetic looking ghost, I’m sure. Despite the glow of porch-lights, I believed I was invisible that night. That nobody could see through the sheet and notice the disheveled clothes, or ragged shoes I wore. Nobody could see my face, hungry as it was, from behind the obscurity of a ghost costume. I remember I had fun walking through a strange neighborhood, collecting candy. I was in the perfect disguise, my adolescent mind had thought.
But perhaps I was wrong about the anonymity of being a ghost. When I got back to the car, my mother and I counted out four dollars and sixty cents in change from my collections. Never in all my life as a child had I been given money while trick-or-treating. I’ve never even heard of such a thing.
We ate like royalty that night, there inside Betsy. Hamburgers and fries and a ton of candy. “The Lord always provides,” said my mother.
I can’t say that Betsy was the reason I experienced those miracles. But she was definitely there for them, along with many other events that have burned a permanent fixture into my childhood memory. She was family, driving us from one neighborhood to the other in search of a safe home. Providing shelter for us in those weeks when we didn’t have one. On some nights, I would lie in the backseat and pretend that Betsy was a hidden alcove on the streets of New York City, or Chicago, where thugs, bums, and hookers would walk past, completely oblivious to my secret spot. I’d have a view onto the grimy pavement, hear the shouts and screams that you’d expect from that kind of place, yet none would be the wiser to my hide. And on other nights, I’d just pretend I was lying under a canopy of trees somewhere on a country farm.
When I turned fifteen, finally, we found an apartment that gave us five solid years of relative safety. I was able to finish high school in one place, which was wonderful. I made best friends that I still have to this day. And Betsy was still with us. Yet even now, when I think about the role she had played in my childhood, it was during those last few years of high school that I realize she had slipped into a simple subservient role. It was like I had forgotten that that car was part of the family. She still drove us to the grocery stores, the malls, the movie theatres. But I never slept in her backseat while I was in high school.
Maybe it was me that had changed. Maybe my transformation through teenage puberty cast a permanent shadow over the beautiful innocence of childhood imagination. Or maybe it was just her time. Perhaps she’d completed what it was she had been built for. Hoorah!
I’ll never forget the last time I saw Old Betsy. My mother bought a newer car and sold Betsy to this guy we knew down the street. His name was Ed, a young man who liked to work on cars. Betsy had something wrong with her engine, but he figured it out real quick. He even transferred her shifting column to the floor, drank a beer and laughed in the afternoon shade of the patio in front of his house, and declared that she was no longer a “three-on-the-tree” but a “four-on-the-floor.”
I stood and watched that Friday evening, from the front of our apartment complex, waiting for a friend to pick me up. We had plans to meet some girls at an arcade. I waited and stared at that scene in front of Ed’s house half-a-block away. Ed was having Betsy doing donuts in the vacant lot near his house, and some of his friends were hooting and hollering on the street, beer cans raised to the sky. I caught a glimpse of two things at that moment, watching Betsy spin her wheels for the last time. I saw that Semper Fi sticker catch a ray of the descending sun, and remembered thinking that it had been smiling back at me, as always. And, when I spotted Betsy’s front grill, and her headlights, I thought her face had changed somewhat. It was like her perpetual smile, the one that I’d grown up with, had suddenly fallen into shadow.
The next thing I knew, I was riding in another car; my best friend’s 1968 Grand Prix. The music cranked to Metallica, and he peeled out once I sat and closed the door. We had a good time that evening, capturing memories of a different kind that I’ll never forget. But I was saddened the following morning when I learned that Ed had killed himself the previous night. Driving drunk, he opened Old Betsy up and crashed her straight into a telephone pole on the other side of town.
Originally published in Inwood Indiana Literary Magazine
Christian Riley
Nineteen sixty-nine Chevy Chevelle, four-door sedan with an army green factory paint job, and a “three-on-the-tree” standard transmission. She had a deep impression on her left rear fender, as well as a small “Semper Fi” sticker on the adjacent window. The dent, I never questioned. But that sticker was a tricky beast. I used to imagine that it smiled back at me, smug-like, as if it knew all along it had been placed on the wrong car.
We had Betsy when I was a child, growing up in San Diego, California. I don’t remember when my mother got that car, but I’ll never forget that I spent countless hours in the backseat of her. She was nothing but green, inside and out, except for a little bit of chromed steel on the door handles and bumpers and ashtrays.
The sticker had been misplaced, because Betsy was the mildest mannered car you’d ever ride in. Nothing about her resonated Hoorah! She was peace-loving. You could see it on her smile. I know that I’m not the only person who’s observed human features on cars, and trucks, and other vehicles. Headlights for eyes. Front grill for a mouth. Betsy always had a smile on. And from behind, she had the look of a small child who had just fallen fast asleep.
I spent those countless hours inside Betsy because my mother was a single mom, with little or no income. She moved us around from one bad neighborhood to another, almost every year, in search of a safe place to raise her children. But that was always the challenge for a poor family in a large city. Looking back now, I realized I must have shared that same fear that kept my mother spinning her wheels. The same anxiety that prevented her from collecting stuff, knowing that someday soon, very soon, she’d have to get rid of it as we’d be moving on. I know this, because the only safe place I can recall while growing up as a child, was in the backseat of Betsy.
My mother believed in miracles. She was a devoutly religious woman, belonging to no particular denomination but a firm believer in God. We went to church occasionally. We said prayers every night, and sometimes during the day. And we experienced two miracles in the years of my youth, both while homeless, living in our green Chevy Chevelle.
The first one was as simple as pie. Driving south from Riverside, my mother realized that Betsy was running a little hot—sick with a fever, perhaps. She pulled into a gas station two hours later, somewhere in Mira Mesa, and then, just like that, we found out about our “miracle.” Some gas stations still had onsite mechanics back then. Staring from the backseat window, my eyes blew open as one particular mechanic, talking with my mother, suddenly threw a wrench onto the ground, cursing the fellowship of his trade. Somewhere in Los Angeles the previous day, Betsy had had an oil change, and her oil plug had been left loose. Along the stretch of Interstate 5 between Los Angeles and San Diego, five quarts of oil had been painted across the road that afternoon. Yet no one could figure out why or how Old Betsy kept on running.
That nice old mechanic never charged us. He filled our car with fresh oil and smiled as we left the station. Looking at my face in the rear-view mirror, my mother simply announced that the Lord has just provided.
The second miracle was a little more interesting. It had a few more pieces to it. I was fourteen years old, and my older sister, who had just turned eighteen, was living with her boyfriend at the time. So it was just me, my mother, and Old Betsy there on the streets of San Diego. It was the end of October, and our plan was to get into another apartment before winter hit. We needed a deposit, along with first and last month’s rent, which was murder for a family on welfare. Living in our car was the only way my mother could save that kind of money.
Since we had recently moved out of our old place, we were broke as hell, and had just begun the process of saving. Then, on the evening of Halloween, we drove into the parking lot of a Twenty-Nine Cent Hamburger stand, prepared to sleep for the night. Our stomachs growled, and we laughed at the irony of it all: stranded next to a restaurant where hamburgers cost pennies, and even that was more than we could afford. The next morning, my mother would get a welfare check deposited into her bank account, and then the fast would be over. Until then, it was pure endurance.
But then my mother got the idea to send me out to go trick-or-treating. She took an old sheet, cut holes for eyes, then handed me a pillowcase for a bag. I went as a ghost. A pathetic looking ghost, I’m sure. Despite the glow of porch-lights, I believed I was invisible that night. That nobody could see through the sheet and notice the disheveled clothes, or ragged shoes I wore. Nobody could see my face, hungry as it was, from behind the obscurity of a ghost costume. I remember I had fun walking through a strange neighborhood, collecting candy. I was in the perfect disguise, my adolescent mind had thought.
But perhaps I was wrong about the anonymity of being a ghost. When I got back to the car, my mother and I counted out four dollars and sixty cents in change from my collections. Never in all my life as a child had I been given money while trick-or-treating. I’ve never even heard of such a thing.
We ate like royalty that night, there inside Betsy. Hamburgers and fries and a ton of candy. “The Lord always provides,” said my mother.
I can’t say that Betsy was the reason I experienced those miracles. But she was definitely there for them, along with many other events that have burned a permanent fixture into my childhood memory. She was family, driving us from one neighborhood to the other in search of a safe home. Providing shelter for us in those weeks when we didn’t have one. On some nights, I would lie in the backseat and pretend that Betsy was a hidden alcove on the streets of New York City, or Chicago, where thugs, bums, and hookers would walk past, completely oblivious to my secret spot. I’d have a view onto the grimy pavement, hear the shouts and screams that you’d expect from that kind of place, yet none would be the wiser to my hide. And on other nights, I’d just pretend I was lying under a canopy of trees somewhere on a country farm.
When I turned fifteen, finally, we found an apartment that gave us five solid years of relative safety. I was able to finish high school in one place, which was wonderful. I made best friends that I still have to this day. And Betsy was still with us. Yet even now, when I think about the role she had played in my childhood, it was during those last few years of high school that I realize she had slipped into a simple subservient role. It was like I had forgotten that that car was part of the family. She still drove us to the grocery stores, the malls, the movie theatres. But I never slept in her backseat while I was in high school.
Maybe it was me that had changed. Maybe my transformation through teenage puberty cast a permanent shadow over the beautiful innocence of childhood imagination. Or maybe it was just her time. Perhaps she’d completed what it was she had been built for. Hoorah!
I’ll never forget the last time I saw Old Betsy. My mother bought a newer car and sold Betsy to this guy we knew down the street. His name was Ed, a young man who liked to work on cars. Betsy had something wrong with her engine, but he figured it out real quick. He even transferred her shifting column to the floor, drank a beer and laughed in the afternoon shade of the patio in front of his house, and declared that she was no longer a “three-on-the-tree” but a “four-on-the-floor.”
I stood and watched that Friday evening, from the front of our apartment complex, waiting for a friend to pick me up. We had plans to meet some girls at an arcade. I waited and stared at that scene in front of Ed’s house half-a-block away. Ed was having Betsy doing donuts in the vacant lot near his house, and some of his friends were hooting and hollering on the street, beer cans raised to the sky. I caught a glimpse of two things at that moment, watching Betsy spin her wheels for the last time. I saw that Semper Fi sticker catch a ray of the descending sun, and remembered thinking that it had been smiling back at me, as always. And, when I spotted Betsy’s front grill, and her headlights, I thought her face had changed somewhat. It was like her perpetual smile, the one that I’d grown up with, had suddenly fallen into shadow.
The next thing I knew, I was riding in another car; my best friend’s 1968 Grand Prix. The music cranked to Metallica, and he peeled out once I sat and closed the door. We had a good time that evening, capturing memories of a different kind that I’ll never forget. But I was saddened the following morning when I learned that Ed had killed himself the previous night. Driving drunk, he opened Old Betsy up and crashed her straight into a telephone pole on the other side of town.
Originally published in Inwood Indiana Literary Magazine
