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In Person by Alice Holstein

Golden Oldies

A car radio is like a time machine, taking you back to those lazy days of carefree youth

t was the first time I wheeled my mother's "inlet blue" Park Lane onto the open road. I checked the rearview mirror for cops and my lipstick, and then I stepped on the gas and turned up the volume. A song came on that pulled me out of myself: "You've lost that lovin' feelin' -- now it's gone, gone, gone."

All those heartaches I'd endured in my 16 years spread out before me, and I suffered. There in the car I sang it to the world. No more perky poise: "I don't care if he asked Nancy. I have other plans for the prom!" I let it out, and the Righteous Brothers sustained me. They blew that lummox who dumped me right out the window of the big Merc.

I dabbed away the not-quite tears and checked my mascara in the rearview. A Grand Prix was eating up the road behind me. The driver looked over; I looked over. Oh, my goodness, this boy was way too bad for me. I kept my eyes on the road and my speed steady; he kept his speed steady. We were grille to grille up the hill. And I would have been fine except for James Brown: "I fee-el good, like I knew that I would, now." So there I was, on a beautiful summer day, a V-8 engine and 310 horses under the hood, a gorgeous guy in a black T-shirt in the next lane, and James Brown spurring me on. What would any red-blooded girl do? She would pray the song would never end.

I'm still driving, but usually with a bunch of kids -- mine among them -- doomed by age or by lack of their own wheels to ride in carpools. For them, seating arrangement is everything: if you can't drive, you ride shotgun, avoiding the hinterlands of the back seat, far from the radio controls. They argue endlessly about the radio.

"Go to 'ZLX."

"No! That's so lame!" The Shotgun adjusts the dial according to her preference.

"Stop. I love that."

"Too bad, you loser."

Suddenly, rapprochement: "Oh, my God, Annie, listen . . ." Then, in unison with Dave Matthews or Jimi Hendrix, they sing along. No longer adolescent girls surrounded by backpacks and cleats, tired, grubby, being ferried down the Mass. Pike by someone's mother; they're suddenly hip. They're women whose shoulders sway and eyelids almost close, whose lips purse into a sweet pout. They're out of here -- standing in the front row, in tight Diesel jeans, hipchecking some bad guy, having their eardrums blown out in front of a supersonic sound system. They're someplace where calculus and US history and mothers can't touch them.

Look around the next time you're driving; you'll see them, other car singers. A black BMW Z4 roadster pulls into parallel position; the sunroof is open. He's "goin' to Graceland, Graceland in Memphis, Tennessee," holding the wheel with his left hand and strumming along with Paul and his band. Believe me, this guy will never go to Graceland. The farthest south he'll get is maybe his office at Ropes & Gray. Within his car and without his car, this guy is two different dudes. Or watch the men in the lawn trucks, especially the young guys with head rags and cutoffs. Their music is blaring out the truck windows, and they are right there with Metallica; when they jump off the truck, they're landing in a party, dancing up to the blond-haired girl.

Today has been long and hot, traffic is jammed, and I feel slightly melancholy, watching my life drift away in exhaust fumes. Suddenly, God bless him, Eric Clapton starts in with "Alberta." The bluesy beat, his sultry voice, "ain't had no lovin' since you been gone," and even in the front seat of my '94 Volvo wagon, I begin to feel sultry and sexy myself. The DJ announces, "one more from Eric Clapton: Unplugged." I roll down my window and drive an extra block just to be, just to hear "Layla" before I'm home and have to start dinner.ufdot

Alice Holstein is an English teacher who lives in Newton.