Car Trouble

Submitted by June:

I met Jerry through work. We had a few mutual interests, one being a love of muscle cars.

At the time, I drove a '66 Chevelle SS 396 and I really understood car speak. So when he finally got up the nerve to ask me out to dinner I went for it, thinking that it would be an interesting evening.

The evening came and I was ready for the date.  When he never came by to pick me up, I felt a bit upset, but then the phone rang. He asked me if I could come to his house, as there was a problem with his car and it wouldn't run.

He only lived about a half-mile away. When I arrived at his house, I found him lying across the hood of his beautifully restored '77 Trans AM,  sobbing. He explained that the transmission blew on his way home from work and that it would cost him a lot of time to repair. I tried to be as understanding as I could... I knew how upset he must have been with all of his hard work now needing repair.

I said that it was okay, and that I would be happy to drive us to the restaurant.

His exact words, I will never forget them, were, "I can't possibly leave my baby at a time like this." He explained that he was too upset to eat.  So ended that date with him.

You would have thought that I had learned my lesson, huh?  No.  A few weeks later, after his car had been repaired, he apologized for that night when his car had broken down. Would I please consider attempting another first date?  He told me that he had bought a another car to restore.  It all was interesting to me, so I said yes.

He picked me up on time in his new baby, a '67 Chevy II Nova. Dinner went well, I enjoyed the conversation, and he told me a few car stories that had me laughing.

After dinner, he took me to a back road (no, not for what you are thinking), to push the new engine.  I really enjoyed that, and he seemed like a great guy.

That is until we started back to my house and the engine sputtered.  We rolled to a stop. I figured that he had overworked the new engine and now we were paying for it.

He admitted that we ran out of gas. Why did we run out of gas? He explained that whenever he bought a car, he always allowed it to run out of gas to see where the needle would be on the gauge when he would actually be out of gas.

I understood his reasoning, but why why try this on a first date? Good thing I wore casual shoes!  We pushed that car, and anyone knowing what cars back then weighed will appreciate the effort that it took.

That was the last date we went on but it has a happy ending. That was about 20 years ago, he and I are married to other people, we are still friends, and he is still the only one I allow to work on my cars.