In the early 1970’s my parents paid three hundred dollars for a 1967 Chevrolet Impala. This “impala” was a great growling beast of a four-door sedan. My father took one look at it and christened it the Warthog, explaining that this was a much more apt description of its basic properties. Among its many physical challenges, it had a paint job that was rapidly succumbing to rust. My mother attempted to rectify this situation by painting it—with a bucket and a brush. This effect added to its colorful distinctiveness.

As a rule, you could hear it coming above all other vehicles. If you stopped and put it into park with the engine still running, it would, as my sister Mary explained, “start dieseling.” I had never heard this phrase before last week when Mary used it to describe a particularly embarrassing moment in her young life, when Mama drove the Warthog to pick her up at her first job. I do, however, recall the sound that it would make in these circumstances. It would rev and slow down, rev and slow down, over and over, getting louder and more ferocious with each cycle. You didn’t want to leave it in park for too long. However, if you left it in drive you had to keep your foot on the brake, because otherwise it would creep forward, growling all the way.

Another exciting moment would come when the battery terminals would get overrun with corrosion, and prevent the car from starting. My mother’s home-grown solution was to keep a hammer in the glove box. When you cranked the starter and got no sound, you knew to grab the hammer, jump out and open the hood, and hit each battery terminal about five good licks. At one time or another, all of us had the privilege of performing this ritual for an audience of admiring strangers.

The Warthog met its demise in the early eighties, when my parents drove it to Washington D.C. to pick me up at the airport.  We were leaving the city, and got rear-ended by a taxi. We spent that night in a hotel, and for the life of me I couldn’t tell you how we got home the next day. Maybe a bus? Anyway, the mechanics gently explained that it would cost a great deal more than three hundred dollars to get the poor thing’s tail pipe out of its drive train, so my parents opted not to fix it.

Goodbye, dear Warthog. Thanks for all the memories.