If ever I was thunderstruck in my life it was a night in the spring of 1987. I had gone back to the radio station after hours and a blonde, tanned, statuesque and worst of all friendly as hell young woman was training on how to operate our studio equipment. Our eyes met through the studio glass and she smiled at me. With my heart racing and having been reduced to a shivering, stammering, sweating mess, I could barely utter a word as I was introduced to her. Somehow I managed to squeak out a confident sounding "hi, nice to meet you". She shook my hand firmly and with a flirtatious twinkle in her eye said back to me, "nice to meet, you". I don't think I breathed a word for the next ten minutes or so as I did whatever it was I went back to the station to do. Jill, as it turned out, was our new over night producer and despite the fact that we'd be working completely opposite hours, all of a sudden the job I had, which had deteriorated into a situation that I did not want to be in, improved to the point where I thought I could actually fathom coming to work each day and not be totally miserable. Leaving the station that night I noticed that she was driving a 1967 Pontiac Executive. The car sealed the deal. I was madly in love.
It wasn't so much that I liked her big old Pontiac, I've always thought GM's 1966 and 1967 full size cars ugly, although she looked adorable driving it, but it was so much different than just about anything else anyone was driving at the time. That, and the fact it was a coupe, said to me that she was a person who had discriminating taste and was a stickler for particular details; both attributes I find very alluring. The fact she was driving the car being happenstance since it was a hand-me-down made no difference to me because when you're all of 23 years old and over the moon infatuated, your inner monologue tells you a love story that you not only can't get enough of but it's one that makes complete sense.
Jill and I became very fast friends and despite my affection for her, I never conjured up the guts to officially ask her out. Even though she teased me constantly. What's more, women in the office could see that I was infatuated with her and they hen pecked me. "What do you see in her?", they'd say. "She's a tramp and you could do a lot better,".
If women in the office had issues with Jill, Jill had issues with her big old Pontiac. She said it was too big, unreliable and got terrible gas mileage. She let me drive it a couple of times and I found it akin to driving an empty barn. The driving position hearkened back to the days before power steering with the steering wheel, no tilt by the way, almost bolt upright like in the days before power steering. The car's power steering was so over boosted that it made the handling of my 1975 Cordoba I had at the time feel nimble by comparison.
You're not alone if you've never heard of the Pontiac Executive. It was Pontiac's mid level model slotted between top of the line Bonneville and the Catalina and was only made between 1967 and 1970. Less than 35,000 of them were made each year as most people opted for either the tonier, poor man's Cadillac that was the Bonneville or the stripper Catalina that had a tad more flair than an Impala. I found it's 400 cubic inch V-8 engine, a Pontiac exclusive, responsive but hardly provided "fast" acceleration. The worst thing about the car were the brakes. The pedal travel was alarmingly long and even when you felt as though the brakes were actually doing something, you had to stand on them so hard it felt as though you were going to go straight through the floor boards. That combined with single digit fuel economy and hideous sheet metal and Jill's Pontiac was a car that I could certainly do without.
Jill, on the other hand, I felt I could certainly not do without. In retrospect, she laid more hints at my feet that she wanted to get to know me better than perhaps any other woman ever has in my entire life. And I did nothing about it. I blame my being somewhat shy and also that I knew that I wasn't the only guy she had the kind of relationship with her that I had. Relationships with women like Jill are fleeting at best and in many ways, I'm thankful for being chaste. I know she was a heartbreak just ready to happen. At the end of the day, I felt I couldn't trust her. Despite loving her madly.
Not long after I left that station I asked someone how Jill was doing. They said she was doing just fine and that she was having a torrid fling with my replacement. They said she had gotten rid of the big old car she was driving too.
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