In the garage behind the house my parents rented
\nwas a Ford Model T that the owner brought out only for Fourth of July
\nwhen he would put on a suit and a top hat and drive at the front of the parade.
\nMy parents didn\u2019t have a key to the garage, since it was there only for the car,
\nbut since we were so little, my sister and I could pull the double-doors open
\njust wide enough
\nto slip inside the garage where the car was. <\/p>\n
We didn\u2019t do any damage to anything in the garage,
\nwe weren\u2019t trying to be bad. We didn\u2019t even bother
\nlooking in any of the old trunks and boxes piled up on either side of the garage
\nInstead, we\u2019d climb into the front seat of the car, the roof a thin membrane,
\nlike a black bat wing spread overhead,
\npretend we were driving that beautiful machine out of the garage
\nand onto the road into a glorious, magical past. <\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t a bad kid, but one day I found the key to the car under the front floorboard
\nit looked just like a cartoon skeleton key, twice as long as a regular car key
\nthick and solid like it belonged more to a castle door
\nthan to a car. I slipped it into the ignition
\nbut I didn\u2019t turn it because there was nowhere to go
\nexcept to crash into the closed garage door straight ahead. .
\nIt felt good to put that key in, the satisfying clunk of metal against metal.<\/p>\n
When Fourth of July came around, the owner of the house came
\nand got his car out of the garage, unlocked the doors and flung them wide
\nhad to push the car out of the garage because machines don\u2019t like to sit that long.
\nOnce he got it started, he took us for a ride around the block in that noisy old thing
\nthat shuttered and groaned like it was going to fall apart any second
\ntold us most little girls probably never get to sit in a car like this one,
\nnot even once
\nthat this was a truly special car
\nsomething we could tell our husbands about someday. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Holly Day In the garage behind the house my parents rented was a Ford Model T that the owner brought out only for Fourth of July when he would put on a suit and a top hat and drive at the front of the parade. My parents didn\u2019t have a key to the garage, since… <\/p>\n