I met my husband 45 years ago.
We've been together ever since.
I met him 45 years ago
at a service station.
His car was on one rack,
my car was on the other rack,
and we've had car trouble
together ever since then.
(audience laughing)
When we first got married,
we had a little MG Midget to drive.
Anybody remember MG Midgets?
Well, I mean, they're about that big,
so we had this little MG Midget.
We went on our honeymoon in that.
We had so much fun with that
and then a while later I got pregnant
and my daddy said,
"Here's an important
"lesson for you to learn.
"You don't ever need
"to have more kids
"than you got seats in your car."
So, since we only had two
seats and there was two of us,
we traded that car in
and we got us a brand
new 1978 Monte Carlo,
light blue with a
dark blue landau top.
Anybody know what a landau top is?
Then you are as old as I am.
(audience laughing)
A landau top, it was beautiful.
We lived in a little town
named Leeds, Alabama
and when you lived
in Leeds in that day,
it was a big deal for somebody
to get a brand new car,
and so we were anxious to
show off our brand new car,
so we went after
church on Sunday night,
we went to everybody where
everybody went for church,
after church on Sunday night,
and that was to the Pizza Hut.
So we showed up at the Pizza Hut,
and everybody in town was there,
and we walked in just
so proud of our new car,
and so we were telling everybody,
"We got a new car. We got a new car."
So when we got ready to leave,
all our friends
lined up at the windows,
watching us as we drove
off in our new car.
Well we had happened to
get the front parking place
right next to the windows,
and when we came out,
something amazing happened.
Now I have to back up
and tell you this
because my husband and
I have always been able
to find fun things to do
that were cheap,
'cause we always been poor.
(audience laughing)
Down South, we called it poor,
and so we did things,
like, before there was a
lot of airport security,
we would go to the
airport in Birmingham,
and we'd go down to the gates,
and then I'd pretend
like I was getting off.
I'd get in the line with
people getting off a plane,
and I'd pretend like I
was getting off a plane,
and he would be at the
end and he would see me
and he'd say,
"Hey," and he'd hug me.
He'd run, and we'd hug each other,
and then we'd switch it around,
and he got off the plane
and then I would,
(audience laughing)
so, we—you know,
we've had a long series
of doing this through the years,
so we were into a new
game at that time called
"I Gotta Pull Through,"
and what that is is when
you get a pull through
in a parking lot, that's a big deal.
I'd come home and I'd say,
I got a pull through today.
He'd say, "I got a pull through today."
We counted our pull throughs
and that night, when we
came out of that restaurant,
that car was parked right
in front of the windows
and we had a pull through.
The car in front of us had left,
so not only were they going
to get to see our new car,
they were going to get to see
us go forward in our new car,
so we got in our car,
he'd put it in drive.
I said, we got a pull through.
He'd put that car and
drive and he gunned it,
and we went,
'cause we forgot that there
was one of those curbs
(audience laughing)
right there in front of us
and so everybody kinda laughed
and he said, "Well, what should I do?
"Should I back it up now?"
I said, no, you've
already done it now.
I said, you might as well
just keep it in drive,
and just keep driving,
so he said,
"Okay," so he gunned it again
and we went,
again because we had not
remembered that the park
in front of us would also
have one of those curbs,
so now we are straddled
two of those curbs
(audience laughing)
and he said, "Well what should I do?"
I said, well you've done it now.
We got to bounce twice either way,
so he put it in gear and we went,
and all our friends just
laughed and laughed and laughed.
Well we kept that Monte
Carlo for a few years
and then we had a couple of kids
and we decided
we needed a minivan,
so we got us a Ford Aerostar minivan.
(audience laughing)
Man, that thing was pretty
and so we drove that thing
'til the wheels were coming off of it
and one night we were
driving through town,
and I don't know how to
describe this to you except
to just say that that car
became possessed by demons.
It was the craziest
thing you've ever seen.
All of a sudden though,
we had electric windows,
all of a sudden the windows
started going up and down,
and then the door locks started going
(locks clicking)
just up and down, up and down
(locks clicking)
and then the lumbar support
started inflating and deflating,
and inflating and deflating,
so here we are,
car windows going up and down
(locks clicking)
and inflating and deflating
and all of a sudden my son
from the back seat said,
"Daddy, this car's on fire!"
And we looked and there's
black smoke just billowing
out of the back of it
and I said,
what are we going to do?
And he said, "I'll think of something."
(audience laughing)
Could you think quickly, please?
So he pulled it over to
the edge and he said,
"I'm just going to turn it off."
And I thought, yeah, that'll fix it.
So he turned it off.
Well when he tried to crank it,
of course it did nothing,
but there were a
couple of guys coming by.
They saw us, they stopped,
they jumped us off.
The car started
and we headed home
and he said,
"If I could get this car
"to the dealership tomorrow,
"I'm gonna trade it in."
Okay, now I had to go
work so I followed him
in my beat-up old car,
and followed him,
left him at the dealership,
because he made it there.
I said, you do whatever you
feel like you need to do.
I went on to work.
When I got home that night,
this man had bought a
Ford Ranger pickup truck.
It didn't have an extended cab.
It had two seats in it,
one for him and I guess
the other one was for me
and we had to go on a six hour trip
to my parents the next weekend
and I said,
why did you buy this truck?
He said, "That'd be a
"good work truck for me."
I said, it's our good car,
mine won't make it on trips.
What do you think you're
going to do with our children
when we have to drive
six hours next week?
He said,
"I've been thinking about this."
I said, Oh Lord.
He said,
"Here's what we're going to do."
He said, "It's got a camper shell."
I looked at him and I said,
that's metal, right?
He said, "Yeah."
I said, it's August, right?
He said, "Yeah."
I said, you gonna put our
children in a metal box in August
and drive them for six hours?
He said, "Yeah."
I said, what they gonna sit on?
He said,
"I already figured that out too."
Oh gosh. I said, what?
He said, "I bought some bean bags."
(audience laughter)
I looked at those bean bags
and they were vinyl.
Vinyl bean bags in a metal
box in August for six hours,
but we did it.
We put our kids in the back.
(audience laughing)