After working several summers at a local theme park, riding two buses and a trolley each way, I finally had saved enough money to buy my first car. I was a full time student at a community college, and after books and supplies and all my other expenses I had a whopping $1200 with which to buy the car and insurance. It was just enough to buy a 1990 Ford Festiva with cash from a shady guy named Joe who ran a used car lot that I found while looking through the ads in the Penny Saver. It didn't matter to me that the car was eight years old or that it didn't have air conditioning. It didn't matter it was so small I got teased for having bought "half a car" or that the radio was broken and I could only get one station (AM640). I didn't care that it shook when going uphill or faster than 50MPH.

My best friend also had a Festiva, also in white, and if we parked next to each other the cars looked like a pair of roller skates, which we thought was cool. But the coolest part was driving down the slow lane of the highway on my way to the work with the windows rolled down, and blasting talk radio, knowing that I finally had wheels, and they were all mine.