Hearses, Moving Trucks and Scooters. Wanna ride?

Getting a ride home from school can be a sketchy situation at our house.  The first thing you need to know is that my husband Mickey lives to tease, embarrass and torture our kids.  It's like a sport to him.  By the time our kids are grown, they no longer have the capacity to determine when they are being teased, harassed or picked on.  In some ways this is advantageous to them.  It takes a lot to hurt their feelings and they are not easily offended.

So now that you know the background, here's the scoop.  On occasion, when one of our kids needs a ride home from school then they are forced to either call Mickey and I for a ride home or walk.  This is a precarious position for them.  The walk home is a mile and the weather can be nasty but calling us for a ride can be taking a big risk. 

Many times they will opt for the walk home with a foot of snow on the ground in 20 degree weather while wearing flip flops.  In their minds it can be a better option than calling us for a ride.

You see when we get their unexpected and infrequent calls the first thing that comes to mind is "let the games begin."

Whitey called us one day from Roland Hall High school to get a ride home.  Roland Hall is one of the local private schools and it takes some serious cash to attend there.  Whitey got a ski scholarship.  That's why he went there.  Nuff said.  

Mickey and I noticed that many of the kids who attend this school drive cars quite superior to what most adult drive.  These children of affluence arrive at school driving their Range Rovers, Lexus four wheel drive things, BMW's etc.  They park their vehicles and head into school in their designer clothes with their laptops slung over their shoulders.  Now don't misunderstand, this is a wonderful school with very intelligent kids attending but it's not a cheap form of education. 

I'm sure these children are getting a fine education but my son was there to ski and learning was a side note for him.   

So one day when Whitey called for a ride home, Mickey and I were giddy with excitement.  We knew by instinct just what to do.  

 At the time, our daughter Sid owned a 1970's Cadillac hearse.  She purchased this hearse at the tender age of 15 as an investment.

Sid cleaned up the hearse, we drove it a bit, handed Halloween candy out of the back of it that year and then she sold it and made $500.  It was quite the money maker for Sid and the perfect car for a school pick up.

Mickey and I decided we needed to wear the appropriate driving attire so Mickey put on his best wife beater and some spandex shorts. (For those who live on the planet goink and are unaware of what a "wife beater" is, it is a mans tank top.)  I put on my best jorts (jean shorts) and t-shirt with cut off sleeves.  

We hopped into that bad boy hearse and because it had a front bench seat, I got to sit right next to Mickey and his wife beater.  He even put his arm around me and off we went to pick up our young son.   PS. Sid wanted to ride along in her new vehicle so she just opened the single rear door and slid right in.

As we drove down the street that runs along in front of the school, Mickey started honking the horn (just to draw a little more attention to Whitey's ride. Not that the hearse doesn't already draw attention). 

We screeched to a stop right, smack in the front of the school where Whitey was waiting ever so patiently along with the rest of the student body.   Sid mumbled something from the back along the lines of "You are the meanest parents ever and mom and dad why are you wearing that?"

The look on Whitey's face when he heard and saw us was priceless.  He didn't want to walk towards the car because he didn't want to acknowledge that his ride had arrived.  He stood there just stunned (and wishing he had walked the mile and a half home).  

Since Whitey didn't make a move toward the car, Mickey came to the conclusion that maybe he didn't hear the full minute of honking or see the hearse arrive and I'm pretty sure that no one else at Roland Hall owned a cherry hearse like we did.

So Mickey climbed out of the vehicle, walked into full view of the student body and Whitey and hollered in his best red neck, southern type voice, "White trash, you hurry on o'er here and put yo butt in this car.  We need to git back home cause yo mama has some mo cho's to do and she needs to start a fixin me some supper." 

I could see Whitey's wheels churning and could tell he was trying to decide if it was worse to let Mickey keep on hollering at him or just make a mad dash for the hearse.  He chose the latter.

He sprinted full out while trying to hide his face behind his backpack.   At this point, Sid realized Whitey's horror and flung the rear door open just as Whitey dove into the back and slid across the rollers in one smooth and athletic motion.  Sid jumped in behind him and pulled the door and drapes closed.  The handy thing about the hearse was that the back had rollers to roll the caskets into the back and these rollers came in handy when Whitey did his belly dive into the back of the hearse.  He would have gotten a bad rug burn had it not been for those rollers.   This hearse also had lovely draperies that insured Whitey's privacy during the drive home.   

Ahh good times.   

Then there was the time that Rocky was moving some things and just happened to have a gianormous U Haul parked in front of our house when Madisyn called for a ride home from school. 

Fortunately for Madisyn, I not only know how to drive a huge truck but I found the keys too!  I toodled on down to the local high school and pulled right up in front and saw her waiting for me.  I just gave her a few little toots of the horn when I realized that she didn't recognize me yet.  She just sat there staring at the truck so I tooted the horn again.   Finally when she realized that I wasn't going to go away, she came to the door and in her angriest voice asked me why I was so stupid and why I would pick her up in a moving truck just to embarass her.  I told her that she just answered her own question. 

She look like she wants to kill me.

Because of the foot of snow, she decided to climb in and ride home.  I gave one of her friends a ride home too because I'm a nice mom.  Her friend didn't fuss as much as Madisyn but perhaps that was because I'm not related to him.

The truck that I picked up Madisyn from school in looked much like this one shown below except that it wasn't hooked to a tow truck.  The truck below is actually the truck we rented when we moved to San Antonio and Mickey Sr. drove it off the rode which tipped it on it's side so that 2 or 4 tires were up in the air and we had to pay for a tow truck to pull it out.  Mickey is not good at driving a truck.

I had a nice picture of me picking up Madisyn from school in the moving truck but I couldn't locate it on my computer.  Madisyn may have deleted it out of anger.

Surprisingly Madisyn called me for another ride home from school about a year later.  She must have forgotten about the ride home in the moving truck or it could have been that she was wearing new sandles and had a couple of blisters on her toes from them.  Madisyn prefers fashion over comfort, a concept that I will never understand.

So being the good mom that I am, I hopped right on my one seater scooter and headed to the school to get her.  I even brought an extra helmut for her.  Once again I pulled right up in front of the school and started meep, meep, meeping at her with the scooter horn. 

This time she marched right at me and told me she would rather walk.   As she started walking away from me and towards home, I of course followed her because I was concerned about her new shoes blisters.  She kept walking while telling me to quit following her.  When we got to the end of the school drive through, I asked her one last time if she wanted a fun ride home on the scoot.  She turned me down and I drove off. 

Madisyn arrived home about 45 minutes later with a few more blisters.  I will never understand it.

I must say that now that Whitey is grown and has a child of his own, he is appreciating the types of rides he got from us during his high school years.  He is even looking into various ways he can pick up his daughter Sammie from preschool.  Just the other day he drove up in this nice vehicle with his wife by his side.  He was test driving it for future preschool pickups.  I think this is a milk truck but not sure.

Madisyn on the other hand, opted to buy her own vehicle and it looked real nice parked in front of the house.

But after about a month it looked like this parked in front of the house.

                   I never saw it again after this picture was taken. 

 We let Maggey drive our car once.   This is Maggey returning our car and trying to convince us that with a little wash and a little wax, it'll be cherry again. 

The car resembled Mater from the movie Cars . 

What you can't see is that the entire passenger side from the front bumper to the back bumper is missing the fenders that go above the tires, the hubcaps, the paint and the trim not to mention that there is something definitely wrong underneath with the thing that holds the tire onto the car.  

After that wreck Mickey and I took Maggey to a special auction to look at the old Drivers Education cars that her high school was selling. These cars were a steal and even had a special break on the passenger side to aid her in preventing her wrecks.  This is Mickey checking out the interior.  (Are those bullet holes in the dashboard?)

 

We never even had a chance at purchasing one of the unique drivers ed cars.  We learned that you have to go early to these auctions and if you find a car that you want then you open the hood and lean on it or sit on the engine.  If you see someone doing this then they are saying to you, "This is my ride.  Get up off my bidness and outta my grill."  Something like that.  I think they take these cars home and pimp them out.

 

I'm off now to go check out the potential "pick up from school" vehicle that I just spotted out front.  I may need to borrow it. 

Oh my! I've found another potential vehicle............

Do you think it runs?  Do I have a blind spot?