1969 Firebird

My first car was a ’69 Pontiac Firebird. It was black on black, in beautiful condition, exactly like the one pictured above. Being 16 years old, I basically thrashed it and sold it after a couple years for a mere $800. I think I paid about $1500, so I suppose that is not so bad. Just seeing the photo above made me queasy with nostalgia and regret. God I loved that car. I wish I still had it. For years, and I mean many years, I would periodically have dreams wherein I would suddenly find it somewhere, or remember that I had it somewhere, or otherwise be reunited with it in some totally illogical way, and be SO happy. Then, I would wake up and be SO disappointed.

Well, it looks like I could replace it for about $20,000. I suppose that’s not so bad either. If I had a garage for it, I might consider such a thing.

I’ll admit I’m also sentimental about Pontiac in general and can barely believe it really doesn’t exist anymore. There were a lot of Pontiacs in my youth. My childhood friends Richie and Debbie were a Pontiac family. Their mom drove a silver Bonneville and their dad drove a red ’67 Firebird. Eventually, my cousin Tommy bought the Firebird. By then it was a metallic root beer brown, kinda like the color of my Schwinn Varsity 10-speed bike. In high school my friend Mike had a silver ’76 Trans Am. Another friend had a GTO. The list goes and on. How Pontiac came to the point of building the Aztec (ugliest car ever) and then disappearing from the face of the earth is still beyond me. But so it goes…