- Posted on Friday, August 4th, 2006 at 10:23 am
The Summer of My Potential
By Karen Johnson
Flint Metal Center
It was the summer of 1970, the summer before I went away to college. I lived in southeast Pennsylvania — on the map look for where Route 202 crosses US 1. I remember hot August nights driving home from work at 2:00 in the morning, listening to Neil Diamond on the AM radio singing Crackling Rosie.
That same summer, a newly finished section of I-95 opened, all brand-new unmarked pavement with banked curves. I remember blasting down the highway listening to Born to be Wild. I’ll never admit to breaking the speed limit, but I do remember that the speed topped out at 140.
I remember driving out to where a new subdivision was being built. The road wasn’t open yet, but we got pretty good at moving barriers and driving on that black ribbon of new asphalt. We weren’t hurting anything, just goofing around.
I remember feeling like my life was so full of opportunity, so full of potential, those hot summer nights that I could hardly hold it all in. (Teenage hormones may have played a part in this.) But the emotional postcards I carry from that summer all center around cars and rock ‘n’ roll. It was the summer of my potential, and it felt good.
It’s summer again, and I’m several decades older, though no smarter. I still like to drive as fast as the speed limit will allow (no officer, I would never go faster than the posted limit), and I still listen to rock and& roll, though I’ve expanded my music collection.
This summer feels a whole lot like another summer of potential, but this time I think it’s GM’s summer.
I’ve seen the new Sierra pickup, and it is drool-worthy. The G6 coupe is stellar, and the Solstice is turning heads the way an MG did in the ’70s.
I wouldn’t want to live through my 20s again on a bet, but I wouldn’t mind being 18 again, for just one summer night, driving a new Sky down a deserted stretch of highway (obeying the speed limit, of course.) And I’m willing to bet that I’m not alone.
I think 2006 is the summer of GM’s potential, and it feels good.
2 Comments
BRE
Well written Karen and it brings back some great memories. I too remember a summer or even two in the mid-sixty’s, before I went off to the service, driving my 61 vette convertible down those streches of highways and bi-ways listening to the Grassroots/Buckinghams,etc. on (WLS)a chi-town radio station in the late of the night with the fresh air and stars above me and of course cruising the speed limit.
Dennis Gallagher
Thank you Karen,
My summer was ‘66-just a couple of years earlier
Car radio being played too loud, different songs, but I’m sure the pleasure of the music was the same. I lived just over the Delaware in Jersey, an unused stretch of I-95, used as a place to compare cars (not drag racing, just an unbiased comparison. Thank you for your piece, it allowed me to spend a few moments reliving some great memories.
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