Dot Loved Her Cars

Dorothy Frey loved to drive. I'm not sure where her love for driving started, perhaps in her childhood as her dad had one of the first cars in Houston and they often took road trips. She and her sister, Millie, I think, took a road trip when they were young women and she often told the story of how their car got stuck and they got rescued by some cowboys, actual cowboys on horses, then went to a dance with them later. This would be in the 1930's.

After she retired in the mid 1980's, she got a job with Hertz shuttling cars around the southwest. Mostly just for fun.

Apparently she once owned a Buick Wildcat with Pursuit engine! Something like this, I think.

When Kurt and I got married, Dot was 83. She drove to LA for the event from Dallas/Ft. Worth. By herself. For fun! Her former husband, Kurt's dad, used to race cars for fun (amateur events). They had races for the wives and Dot won every time she raced.

When we moved her out to LA, her car came with her: A 2001 Buick Park Avenue, light blue. She didn't drive anymore, really it was getting time for her to stop at 90 years old, so the timing worked out. But we kept her car so that every time we drove her places, she could ride in her car.

(This is not her actual car, but a good facsimile of what it looks like.)

Lately, Harper and I drive in this car all the time. Harper likes it better than the GTI, I think because it's much bigger and has a much better view out the windows. (She'll get schooled in the wonders of six speed manual, grippy, rally pedaled cars in the not too distant future, I promise.) You may recall from an earlier post, that this is how she rolls in the Buick:

Personally, I really don't love this car. It's big, it's floaty, its an automatic, it's big. It's an old lady's car and while I'm no spring chicken, I'm NOT an old lady! I'll admit I live in LA and am sensitive about my car image.

But since Dot died, I have been thinking about her and her cars. I thought about the "last times" - the last times she rode in the Buick which was to the doctor's office in January where she was admitted to the hospital. (She came back to her apartment from the hospital in an ambulance.) Of course we didn't realize it would be the last time, at the time.

And the last time she actually drove the car. That would have been in 2008 when she and Kurt (and her two cats) drove from her home in Texas to her new place here. I doubt there was specific talk about "you'll never drive a car again" when we moved her, but she knew she couldn't drive in LA. So on that road trip out to LA, Kurt let her drive for a while on the big wide freeway. It makes me happy/sad to think about that last bit of driving she had.

Dot wasn't particularly sentimental or expressive with her feelings (she was old school all the way), but I often wonder what she might have been thinking or feeling while driving that dessert highway in a car she loved so much. I hope she was happy.