Our Little 1972 Honda 600

We have a busy calendar - lots of things to do as our summer continues. Some of it revolves around a little toy in our garage - a 1972 Honda 600 2-door sedan. It's been in the family for years - originally a niece's high school car. After she blew up the engine, she dumped it at her grandfather's house. Aries' dad started fooling around with it - finding another engine to at least get it running again. He gave the car to Aries, and over time he's cleaned and fixed it up a bit more.

A few times a summer, a local car group puts together a Run-what-ya-brung Show-n-Shine and Street Dance in a local casino's downtown parking lot. Since Aries works on Saturday, he's never around for any weekend daytime car show events, but we do like to take the car downtown for the occasional Saturday evening dances.

The car is no showpiece, but since it's still running and pretty much still all original is it a bit of a curiosity. I don't remember them at all. I grew up in Colorado - maybe none of them could make it over the Rocky Mountains. But I guess they were really quite common back in their day on the West Coast.

We set out our lawn chairs, pop the hood and the trunk, sit back to people-watch, and visit with all and sundry. Lots of people stop to tell us stories from their high school days and "a car just like that." Kids just love it - a real car just their size. If there were a prize for "cutest car" we'd win it - that's what women say when they see it. I love seeing the smiles on faces when they see us driving it, out and about for in-town errands. It's a great little "town car." The trunk will hold five bags of groceries; it gets maybe 35 mpg (it is just a 600 cc motorcycle engine after all - you do have to rev it up quite a bit). And it's a great excuse for a little community social time.