A smell can trigger a ton of memories

I was just walking back from our company's kitchen area after heating up my tea and I caught a smell that was like the cheap car freshener that was in the first car I ever had. I don't know what caused the smell but the memories it triggered were intense. The car was a Corvair convertible (and when I'd forget to put up the top and the rain poured in, the resulting musty smell forced me to get the air freshener). The picture at the right isn't a picture of my car but it's the right color (brown) but it is an earlier model than I one I had. The picture is from here.

My parents bought the car for me but I had to pay for the gas and repairs. It really was a pretty bad car but it was a load of fun. All my friends enjoyed piling into it and there always seemed to be enough room to fit one more person in. It didn't last very long. You had to carry lots of spare fan belts because the design had the belt running over the top of the air-cooled engine (where, of course, the belt heated to near melting) and then it had to make a 90 degree turn to run down to the drive pulley. So between the heating and the bending, the fan belt seemed to break every other month. The car's slow speed and slower acceleration probably kept me from getting into trouble.

We started collecting Corvair stories after we sold the car. One of my high school teachers had one and told of her husband driving the car around a bend on a slippery road. The Corvair went into a spin and the front end (the trunk of this rear engine car) tore off and his feet were resting on the road after it came to a stop.

My mother was walking in our town one day and noticed a Corvair parked in front of the store she was going to. The car looked fine at that point. But when she came out of the store, a crowd was gathered around the car and she saw that the engine had fallen out on the street. The owner was trying to figure out what to do and the crowd was offering suggestions.

It was during one of the repairs I was paying for on the car that I heard one of the great quotes of all times. One of my friends' father worked in the garage where I took my car after I'd tightened a bolt too tight and the head just twisted off. I'd never heard of an Easy-Out (a screw extractor) before but my friend's father knew how to get the bolt out. As he was fixing it, I asked him how he ever learned all the things he needed to know to be a mechanic. He said, "It's because I made so many mistakes and learned from each one."

There were a lot more memories about that car but that's enough for now.