Car stories ... the American way

This is a fun week on the Mississippi Gulf Coast.
It's Crusin' the Coast - a week-long celebration of some of the finest old cars you'll ever see. Classic cars, vintage cars, tricked-out cars. Very cool.
Cars are just American. Cars were not invented in this country, but the production and development of the automobile was perfected here.
Cars fit the individuality of Americans. Historically, it's all about mobility and individual freedom - the essence of being an American. I also think it's one of the reasons the electric or hybrid cars are having a hard time catching on. American cars are supposed to have "muscle," and until electric cars mimic the throaty roar of a gasoline-powered combustion engine, they won't be accepted.
I realize this isn't particularly profound or new. It's a big country, and the ability of people to move at will - with no one to stop you - was one of the critical appeals of the New World.
Sometimes we forget just how big this country is. Years ago, on a trip to Europe, I was talking to a Belgian in Luxembourg. This was, I think, 1985. He spoke English, French, Italian, Spanish, and I don't know what else; I didn't speak anything but English, and this was his point.
"You Americans are so arrogant,'' he said. "Refusing to learn to communicate with other people around the world, only knowing your own language."
I told him that I'd had two years of French in grammar school, but it didn't stick. I told him that foreign languages were regularly taught in public and private schools, particularly French and Spanish.
"But here's the thing," I told him. "You can drive two hours in any direction from this spot and be in another country where they may speak French or German or Italian, because you're in any number of different countries.
"Where I live, I can drive two days in any direction and never leave the United States, never run into anyone that speaks anything other than American English.
"The truth is that people who live along the border of Mexico often do learn to speak Spanish. But otherwise, you're not going to run into any place where English is not the dominant language" (except perhaps Quebec, but I didn't want to confuse the issue).
To his credit, he admitted he hadn't really though of it like that, and it made sense.
People of other cultures and languages have always come to this country for opportunity. I assume they come to leave their culture behind, which also means leaving their language behind. My father grew up in a house where German was spoken inside the house, but outside they knew to learn English in order to be part of this great idea of being "American."
But I was talking about cars.
My first car was a 1967 Mustang. My best friend drove a big Chrysler Newport, what we used to call a land yacht. Another friend had a Volkswagen; another a Pontiac Bonneville; another a Oldsmobile 442; and so on.
It was a great variety of cars. Of course, gas was 34-cents a gallon (when I started driving). We could afford to be mobile and drive. We didn't even think of the cost of driving ... we just jumped in a drove.
There were stupid things, of course.
Kevil had the Volkswagen, the car with the static-filled AM radio (yes, back then cars only had AM radio), that only clearly picked up stations when it was hilltops. So when, say, Chicago's "25 or 6 to 4" came on, we'd have to pull over at the top of a hill and sit and listen to it if we wanted to be sure to hear it all the way through.
There were also modifications. We bought and installed our own stereos - 8-track players, later cassette players that we mounted either under the dash or in the glove box or, in my Mustang, a floor-mounted model that made it look like a center console.
Cars were simpler then - simply mechanical. We pulled an engine, changed the transmission from automatic to four-speed, cut the hole in the floor board to put in a clutch and a Hurst shifter on the floor. (Not my car; another guy's car - a Chevy Nova, I think it was).
I remember buying four over-sized tires, really cool rims, and air shocks to trick up my Mustang. Mitch and I spent a Saturday under my car in my driveway, taking off the standard shocks and putting in air shocks, running the air hose and pump into the trunk.
Two weeks later I realized the tires were too big and scraped on the fender when I turned, and the air shocks were just too bouncy, so off they all came.
And there was a quarter-mile stretch out in the outskirts of Fulton County, where we'd go to drag race. We never raced for titles (pink slips); we just raced to see whose car was fastest. Or just to race. It was stupid, of course.
Mitch had the land yacht. One night I hid on the floorboard in the back with a blanket over me. He had Lee in the front seat, and all the way back he kept trying to get Lee to talk about me, to say what she didn't like about me or what annoyed her about me. It could have been really stupid, but the funny thing is, I think the more "bad" Mitch talked about me, the more Lee defended me and kept saying, "Mitch, you don't mean that!"
Thanks, Lee. It's one of the reasons I think we're still friends (and Mitch, too).
Her reward? Finally, I got tired of hiding and just jumped up, scaring Lee to death. She banged her head in the windshield.
That reminds me of another stupid trick we tried to pull. We're riding along - I think it was Lee again, but maybe not - and Mitch said, "Oh, crap. We've got a flat tire."
He pulled over, he and I got out, we opened the trunk and started acting like we were changing the tire. It was night, and dark, and in reality what we did was I got in the trunk and left the trunk lid up. He got in and said,  "Ray wants me to back up a little because the jack isn't level."
When he backed up, he ran over a block we'd put behind the car.
"Crap!" Mitch screams. "I think I ran over Ray!" and in a state of panic, he drove off as if he was terrified and didn't know what to do.
I honestly don't remember if that worked or not. I can't remember how that one ended.
All I remember is when Mitch pulled out, the trunk lid slammed down on my head and I was terrified of being locked in the trunk.
In the ice storm of 1972, the roads were completely frozen - rare in East Point, Ga. We were riding along in Kevil's Volkswagen and hit an icy patch on Headland Drive. We were right at an intersection, and the car did a series of 360s, spinning in complete circles. But when the spinning stopped, we were in the other lane, facing in the opposite direction.
In a supreme moment of cool, Kevil simply put the car in first gear and drove off, as if he meant to do that.
In the summer, we used to drive to Callaway Gardens to swim, hang out in the sun, whatever. One day riding down the interstate, we got another stupid idea. Kevil got in the back seat with Mitch or Jimmy (I don't know who), and I was in the passenger seat. There was no center console in the Volkswagon, so I was able to slide my left foot over to work the gas, and steered from the bottom of the steering wheel with my left hand. We drove down the interstate, passing cars, making sure they noticed it was a car with (apparently) no driver!
Stupid, stupid, stupid - but we laughed.
So much of our youth identified with cars.
No point to any of this. Unless you, too, understand the power of the automobile over an American boy.
Some of them never grow out of it - which is the point of Cruisin' the Coast!