Back in my day,(yeah, yeah, I sound just like my father) most families had only one car. At least until the sons started getting to driving age. Then a "jalopy" often began to organicaly take shape in the driveway.

I started driving my grandpa's 51 Pontiac when I was 10. Had my own car when I was 14 (until Mom found out and made me sell it). Shortly after I bought Grandad's old 39 Ford coupe and a sedan , giving me a 14 month project to create my own "jalopy" out of the various pieces. At the ripe old age of 15 1/2 I had my permit and the cops stopped bugging me. First in line at the DMV on my 16th birthday. Got my first Ticket that same day.

Back then if you had a car in school, you were either well heeled or well oiled and greasy. There was a manly pride in being responsible for the wheels under your butt. And having the dark grease under your nails to prove it. Along with a paid for title, for the dead carcass you had rescued and made into a war chariot for street contests and a limo for your gal.

A typical highschool student parking lot perhaps had one or two fairly classy new Chevy's amoungst a bevy of fenderless, rusted behemouths. All of them equipped with funky exhausts, coon tails, Primered quarter panels, and hoodless wonders throbbing in the engine bay. All of them works in progress who's owners were carefully scratching notes and dreams during study hall and math class. The dreams of teenage boys.

And amoung that pile of recovering relics, a few completed projects of spectaculer paint and chrome. For a majority of guys back then, participating in this passage defined who you were.

Pass a high school today and you will still see a few of these wonderous works of art and mechanical craftsmanship. But they are rare gems in a field of brand new, cookie cutter, commuter specials.

I don't think the enthusiasm today is any less, but it seems to afflict a smaller percentage of the population. Back then it took alot of hours and patience to work a crappy job so one could pay for a car. I mean actually "pay cash " to get it. Perhaps there is simply less pride in owning a car today because they are all so genericaly similar. And, thanks to easy credit terms and payments, having a new FORD Focus or a fast Hyundi is now so easy.