'73 Vega, Baddest Wagon in the Whole Damn Town

We knew it was past time to replace our family station wagon, a Ford, when we could see the street passing below us. The crack in the floor beneath the front passenger seat was not a good thing, but a family of five with a single mother's income meant ignoring the problem as long as possible. Besides, the state of Kansas, in the early 1970s, didn't worry about such things as vehicle inspections.

          The car my mother eventually picked out was a Vega station wagon. It was bright blue, her favorite color, and had a stick shift. That made it more fun to drive for my 17-year-old brother. With the stick in his hand and a revved engine, albeit an aluminum one, he could think Bullitt instead of Leave it to Beaver when cruising Main Street on Saturday night.

          One weekend my mother reluctantly allowed him to drive the car with friends to the Five State Raceway in Liberal, Kansas, which featured drag racing and other competitions about an hour south of our hometown. Her suspicions about her oldest son were well founded--he returned with a trophy for first place.

          As her face showed something far deeper than disapproval, he said: "Now, don't get mad. Only one other car was in our class. All I had to do was take off the hub caps and race a quarter mile straightaway." With no apparent damage to the car, other than loosened hubcaps, Mom let the matter rest.

          The next day at school, a friend came up to me. "Saw your brother down at Five State," he said. "Man, he did pretty well in those four races."

          My mother never seemed to appreciate that, every day she went to work, she drove an award-winning car, the baddest Vega in town.-- Doug Daniel, Washington, DC