I don’t know when the switch happened, but somewhere along the way frummies started driving minivans, thats when it all went downhill. But who remembers the days of the true Borough Park car as my father liked to call them? The days when bumpers were held together with fishing wire, duct tape and bungee cords and everyone had some mismatched doors. The days when your frummy status was measured by how many kids you could pack into your navy blue caprice wagon with brown fake wood trim- with those seats facing backward in the trunk. You know, the days before seat belts and the days when the radio was permanently set to 880 news for traffic on the 8’s.
I remember when we got our first car that had a rear brake lights behind the rear window, that was when I started differentiating between new and old cars. All my frummy cousins got rid of their station wagons and bought into the Astro Van craze, the ugliest minivan ever created, if we can ever call minivans pretty.
Nowadays its rare to see a true frummy car, dragging muffler, fabric torn off of the roof, windows not working. I did see a guy in one of those old Monte Carlos last week driving down 16th avenue, he had a white car with one black door and every time he hit a bump his car bounced for about 50 feet, it was awesome, watching this little old guy bouncing with his beard swaying in the wind.
My car is the opposite of frummy, frummies have all but done away with the bumper sticker thing. Back in the day the “put the brakes on loshon harah” was all the craze and nowadays “the shmuz” magnets can be seen in the tri-state area as well as “I love Tov Pizza” in Baltimore and the occasional Chevron sticker on some zionist cars. But my car is all about the bumper stickers, if you ever see a black Subaru (according to my mechanic- no one in Borough Park drives a Subaru) with loads of Jewish bumper stickers combined with Treehugger- be sure to say hello.
Anyway my car has several factors which instantly qualify and disqualify it for frummy status. My antenna was ripped off therefore my radio does not work- besides for 1010 wins- but for some reason it gets static when I need traffic on the ones. Rust is beginning to creep in small spaces, like on the front of the hood and above the windshield. My tires are almost bald, my power locks and alarm have been disconnected, and I just hit 300,000 miles. The problem is that besides for that it drives and looks like a normal car, and I have a roof rack- which I have seen only a small number of times on a Jewish let alone frummy car. Just for my memories I even filmed my car changing to 300,000 miles because- I felt so cool.
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