Cars or dogs don’t define me

June 24--Don't look at my car or my dog to find out who I am. Neither defines me.

I really had nothing to do with acquiring my car or my dog. Both were decisions made by my wife.

Deanna got our dog, a puggle, from the vet. He's a cute little dog we named Eubie, who is more friendly than he is ferocious. When there's a noise in the house he's right behind me.

I really didn't want a mean dog. I have a grandson and small cousins and nephews who I like to come around.

But I see guys walking around with pit bulls, mastiffs and other dogs with mean reputations on leashes as if they were extensions of themselves. It's almost as if they're saying, "This I how I want you to see me. I'm as mean as this pit bull."

And usually it's some scrawny guy who lets his dog do the barking for him. The dog sort of acts like his super power. He becomes bigger, stronger and badder just by owning him. Take away the dog and the guy loses his powers, sort of like when the Hulk shrinks back down to size.

Of course I'm not talking about all guys with mean dogs. Some guys just like big, protective dogs. Some guys are junkyard dog mean and don't need an animal to tell anybody that for them.

The only things Eubie and I have in common is he likes to eat, he's lazy and he enjoys sitting in my recliner. But he's cuter than me and not as grouchy.

For the past several years I've just taken my wife's old car whenever she got a new one. It's sort of a "Driving Miss Daisy" type of arrangement where Hoke gets the car the missus no longer wants.

The Chevy Malibu I drive now and the purple Chrysler I drove before that were never my vehicular statements. They were my wife's defining accessories. All they say about me taking them over is that I'm cheap.

For some reason I never liked letting a car define me. I had a 1966 Ford Galaxie 500 in my younger days that I used to wash and wax almost every week. It had the baddest quadrophonic sound system in it.

But I never felt it spoke for me or who I was. I just wanted a nice car for the ladies to sit in.

If there was ever one car I bought that I thought would define me it was a 1969 Rally Sport Camaro I bought in the late 1970s. It was a powerful beast with a 350 engine and four-barrel carburetor. It growled when it cruised the avenue and roared when I opened it up on the highway.

My automotive defining moment came to an end when I wrecked the Camaro on a drunken Saturday night in south end. I got a DWI and lost my license for a year.

All I could afford after that with the high insurance rate that followed was a 1975 Ford Maverick. It was an old woman's car if there ever was one. It reeked of lavender perfume.

For some guys there's that one car that serves as one of their defining characteristics. It's as defining as where you went to school, if your hair is black or blond or if you have a big nose.

After the wreck, I had a succession of cars: a Plymouth Fords, Chevys, a Buick and a Pontiac. None of them fit. They were just contraptions to get from point A to point B.

I remember an instructor and minister I had while attending school in Nashville several years ago. The guy had money to buy any brand new car he wanted but chose to drive this rusty old Jeep Cherokee.

A woman asked him once why he didn't buy a new car. His answer was: "My car doesn't define me. If anyone is more interested in what I drive than the person driving it then I don't need to know them."

I found that good advice.

Alonzo Weston can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @SJNPWeston.

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