In 1996, I knew nothing about owning or buying a car. I have no idea how many miles were on it. It was previously owned by a friend of my Mom’s, and I just sort of looked at it and agreed to buy it for $300. In retrospect, it was a pretty low-risk deal: with my job stocking shelves at the local A&P, the car would have cost me about two week’s worth of work after taxes.

That week, I drove everywhere. To my friend Jon’s house. To my friend Lindsay’s house. And, not least of all, to work to pay the thing off. It was August, and school was due to start up again soon. It was also the week my friend “Ryan”:http://flipsidejones.net/ was visiting the States from his home in London. I told him about the car and we hatched a plan to celebrate the end of the summer and my new ride. We would “drive down”:http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&hl=en&saddr=Long+Valley,+NJ&daddr=537+Monmouth+Rd,+Jackson,+NJ&ll=40.472024,-74.597168&spn=1.055121,1.873169&om=1 to “Great Adventure”:http://www.sixflags.com/parks/greatadventure/ all by ourselves, blow a lot of money, hang out all night, and get back late. He was due to catch a flight early the next morning, but he would just catch up on his sleep on the flight. No big deal.

And somehow, at some point — and I’m not really sure how — we got the idea to invite someone else, too. Her name was Erin. She was quiet, a member of the 4H club, and she liked horses. She was also the first girl I ever dated. I don’t think I was carrying a torch, but I wasn’t unhappy when she said yes.

So we went. We climbed into the Skyhawk and meandered down the New Jersey Turnpike. I had never done so much highway driving. We got to the park, we had a great time. The best time, really — Ryan and I were euphoric with the autonomy of a new car, and Erin played deadpan to our giddiness. We stayed at the park until it closed.

Back in the parking lot, we climbed into the Skyhawk and started it up. We drove a few hundred feet. I noticed the pickup wasn’t as good as it had been. Then it stalled.

We drove around some more until I found a security guard and asked for help. He sent over the park mechanic who, after listening to the engine for 10 seconds, delivered the bad news: I’d “thrown a rod”:http://www.epinions.com/auto-review-3388-1887077-3895269F-prod4. Here we were, three seventeen-year-olds, 70 miles from home, at midnight, and our only means of transportation was completely shot. The mechanic gave us two options. We could leave the car and find another way home. Or, we could hope for the best, take the car, and destroy the engine in the process of driving back. We started driving.

That night, the car burned through two tanks of gas — most of it escaping as white vapor through the exhaust pipe — as we drove a top speed of 40 MPH on the Turnpike, hazards flashing. When I’d run out of money at the second rest stop and had to borrow $10 from Erin to cover the second tank, I knew that any chance of rekindling interest was just gone. I called my 20-something friend Jay for help and car advice with what little change I had left, and he suggested that car would never make it up the hills on the Turnpike. Take Route 1 instead, he said, so we did.

Route 1 is all poorly-timed stoplights through sketchy urban neighborhoods (terrifying for teenage suburbanites). Each time we came to a stop, the car would die. The only way to get it moving again was to restart the car with my foot on the gas, rev the engine in park, and slam the gearshift into drive, chirping the tires and progressively destroying the transmission. I flinched every time. After a few miles, and I started slowly coasting through red lights to avoid having to stop. A sign for a familiar local road loomed into view, and I took it: we drove the remainder of the trip up the winding, farm-lined Route 206.

That was 2 AM. Ryan and Erin were asleep as I coaxed the Skyhawk up and down the hills of the country road, alternately praying and cheering it on under my breath. By 3:30 AM, we’d reached the foot of “Schooley’s Mountain”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schooley’s_Mountain, a couple of miles from home. I parked the car in the lot of a local pub and called my mom, who, bless her heart, came to pick us up and drop off my friends.

The next day, a mechanic met us at the pub. The car sat like a hollowed-out shell: the engine and transmission were both completely destroyed, and it wouldn’t even start. He offered to take it off our hands for free.

That senior year, I took the bus to school. I never went out with Erin. And for my senior formal dance, I picked up my date in the Pink Lung.

“But, she didn’t seem to mind”:http://www.flickr.com/photos/kennsarah/160499005/.