MY FIRST LOVE
I’ll never forget the day my dad said, “C’mon, youse two,” to me and my brother, Maurice. It was summer 1959, a beautiful Saturday morning. “We’re going to Byker,” he said. That was on the other side of Newcastle. We didn’t know why we were going, but it was unusual.
Off we went on the number 66 bus—the Dunston circular, it was called. Then to Marlborough Crescent bus station, and then Newcastle City Transport to Byker. At the top of Byker Road, there was a used-car garage called Northern Motors, and we were heading straight for it.
Now, it couldn’t be he was going to buy a car, not my dad. Maybe he was just gonna buy me another steering wheel. His face was set like stone. My heart was beating fast. Look at these cars all around me! Oh my God, a Nash Metropolitan, yellow-and-white. Dad went straight to a dark green Wolseley 6/90, long hood, six cylinders, beautiful. I couldn’t breathe.
“Can I have a test drive?” he asked the salesman.
“No,” the man replied, “but I’ll turn it over for you.” The engine started on the button. My old man said, “I’ll take it.” We were gonna have a car. Well, I was. You see, in my head, it was mine, all mine. I, little Brian Johnson, was going to be a nonpedestrian, a motorist. I could learn how to work all the buttons and sticklike things and find out what they do, and then I could go to technical college and sit my exams to become a taxi driver. It was written in the stars. Walt Disney was right: “When you wish upon a star, you will get your motorcarrr!”
“Is there something wrong with your lad?” I heard the salesman say.
My father said, “He’s bloody car-daft. C’mon, youse two.” Then, to me, “Not there, in the back. I’ve gotta drive.” The thing was, my dad’s driving license was an army one, and he hadn’t driven anything since the Second World War—and that was a three-ton truck. This car had column-shift gears and an ignition key; the wind-down windows were something of a novelty, too. Every time we tried to talk or ask a question, he would say, “Shurrup! I’m trying to drive.” That didn’t instill much confidence. After about thirty minutes, he had gone mad. He started singing, “I’m lost, I’m lost. I don’t know where I am,” at the top of his voice, just like a demented black-and-white minstrel. It took us one and a half hours to do a half-hour journey. By the time we got home, he was sweating and exhausted and walked one and a half miles to the social club for a beer. The car was parked outside our house, 1 Beech Drive. It was ours! Not the doctor’s, not the banker’s or the landlord’s. Mine!
Dad had left the door open. I climbed in and got behind the wheel. It was twelve forty-five in the afternoon; at six thirty in the evening, they were still trying to pry my fingers from the steering wheel, my eyes glazed wide-open. You see, I was still on the road, somewhere in my imagination. They finally got me in the house, but I just sat on the windowsill looking at the car. As you can see in the photograph, I was in love for the first time in my life. Twelve years old and already spoken for.
Dad took us for drives in the country, and we just loved it—not the countryside, the drives. He’d take us to a beautiful place called “the Meeting of the Waters,” where the North Tyne and South Tyne meet. Once we got there, Mam would put out a blanket and set out a picnic, but I would be behind the wheel, going somewhere else, where there was no school, no foul weather, where the air smelled of leather, gasoline, and wood, and where time was not a thief.
P.S.: The car lived with us for about two years, until my father couldn’t really afford the repairs and the gas. Then, one day, it was gone, just like that. My father never bought another car for the rest of his life, nor did he ever drive one again. If that Wolseley still exists, I’ll buy it. Name your price.