I remember A Gremlin rather than THE Gremlin as a bright yellow bit of four wheeled hope in my life. Just after my parent's divorce in 1975, my Mother had to learn to drive and bought her first car so she could ferry herself to work, my brother and I to daycare and school, and do all the things that working single mothers did.

The squatty little yellow car that we all thought looked like a high top sneaker ushered her into a new world of possibilities and lone responsibilities. Every time its pokey little four cylinder engine started, it took her across town to a better job than she could work just riding the public transit system. It trundled my brother and I to public assistance provided day care so she wouldn't worry about where we were. And, it took her to grocery stores in better parts of town than our shabby apartment so she could buy better food with the pennies she so ardently pinched.

The little yellow sneaker also gave all of us a lesson in auto mechanics that I still remember. Pressing the gas while she ran into a store for a gallon of milk taught me that cars did something called "flooding," and they wouldn't start until you sat there until you were late for something. Carburetors were something alchemical and finicky under the hood that you had to curse and strike to make them work properly. Transmissions were apt to simply fall out of the car. And, tires went flat sometimes and had to be changed.

But, the yellow sneaker gave me a lesson or two in human generosity. Snow storms always made the little AMC spin out on the highway. We never sat long, half on the median and half on the pavement, until some 2 or 3 men would pull over and shove us back onto the streets of Charlotte and we'd be on our way. And, when the Gremlim's mysterious carburetor would act up in parking lots, there always seemed to be someone who wanted to lift the hood and roll up his sleeves so that Mom would not have to swear at and strike the offending cast aluminum portal to hell.

The Gremlin was a regular troublemaker with its carburetor, poorly tuned smog era engine, and cotton-in-the-ears interior roar as it rolled down the road, but it was always there when we needed it. While I fondly remember the days of riding in the back with the seatback down in full repose yammering on about dinosaurs and peanut butter sandwiches, I also remember the time that my mother narrowly escaped being run off the road by two strangers who saw a pretty young woman in a little yellow car with her two children and wanted to do who knows what with her.

That night, the Gremlin saved all three of our lives, I'd wager. So, when I remember the Gremlin these days, I still laugh about the infernally possessed carburetor and the coolant system that vomited antifreeze so often, the ridiculously ill-proportioned body, and the gaudy striping, but I fall short of cursing the car as a complete pile of junk.

It was always there for us when we needed it whether we required groceries, day care, a doctor's visit, or saving from the cruelty of the world.

Learn more about this author, Andrew White.
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