Bonnie Valant Spaight's First Alfa Story and email address

[Bernie Bennett <bennetts77833@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Alfa Digest Members:

I'm resending this message with a new more accurate subject.  Bonnie had 
asked that I include her email address. Somehow it got stripped out of 
the previous version of this not which I'd sent. Her address is 
bvalantspaight@domain.elided .

bjb

I received this note from Bonnie Valant-Spaight last weekend. For those
of you that are new to Alfas, Bonnie is the daughter of the late Gary
Valant, proprietor of VALCO Alfa, Alfa tech, AROC USA tech advisor, &
racer. Bonnie's brother Mike you probably know.

We corresponded back and forth and this Friday went and visited with her
mother Nancy at Bonnie & husband Tracy's home in Houston last night.  I
asked her if I could forward the below  message on to the digest. She
said yes and please include her email address. She also sent me the
original unedited version the newspaper article / contest entry. It is
included in text form at the end or this message.

Best Wishes,
Bernie Bennett
Brenham, TX

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Alfa fun
Date: Thu, 8 May 2003 07:17:02 -0700 (PDT)
From: Bonnie Valant-Spaight <bvalantspaight@domain.elided>
T



Hi everyone -
      The Houston Chronicle had a contest to write a story about your
first car, and my story was one of the winners! To see it, you can go
to

http://houstonchronicle.p2ionline.com/myfirstcar/p12.htm

If you click on the article, you can get a legible version. It is a
happy coincidence that the article is published today, my father's
birthday.

Hope you like it!
Bonnie

  My parents gave me my first car, a 1974 Alfa Romeo Berlina, on my 16th
  birthday. Everybody in my family drove an Alfa Romeo, and getting my
  own was a rite of passage. This passion for Alfas came from my father,
  whose love for these automobiles stretched back to his own teenage
years. In mid-life, he left a promising career as a chemist at Texas 
Instruments to pursue his dream of restoring, building, and racing 
Alfas. He rebuilt and restored my Alfa with his own hands, painting it 
cherry red at my request. Driving this car was a joy. Its many quirks 
and oddities gave it a personality that new cars, no matter how nice, 
just lack. The speedometer went out  - twice - but by that point, I 
could tell how fast I was going by the sound of the engine. My Alfa had 
its own voice; my dog could pick out the sound of my car when I was a 
mile away and would unfailingly greet me at the door. Between the 
engine's roar and the clicks, whirs, and hums of the dashboard, riders 
were always subject to low-level cacophony, so much so that my friend 
once sarcastically nominated my car for "best place to listen to 
classical music in Dallas." The personality wasn't limited to sound; the 
  smell of old Alfa vinyl still reminds me of home.

Alfas are notoriously unpredictable cars, and this one was no
exception. I'll never forget the time that the windshield wiper fell off 
the car while I was driving, or the time on the highway when the muffler 
mount gave out and I ended up dragging my muffler around the "bad" part 
of town. Then there was driving through the Mojave desert in August with 
no air conditioning, or trying to peer through the frost on the rear 
windshield because the wire had fallen off the defroster. But 
surprisingly enough, my car never left me stranded.

Owning this car was also a learning experience. After I moved out of 
state for college, I did everything from routine maintenance on the car, 
like changing the headlights, spark plugs, and oil, to more exotic 
things, such as installing new fuel pumps and windshield wiper motors, 
bleeding the brakes, and repairing the steering box. My dad would send 
me little repair "care packages" with the parts and tools that I needed, 
including instructions written in his own hand. He also made a "show and 
tell" picture book for me, with annotated photos of my car showing the 
important parts. In the back of the book, he included the instructions, 
When in doubt, call Dad."

My father passed away seven years ago from cancer. That first summer 
without him was the hardest, and when I felt low, I went to my car.
Getting in the car was like getting a big hug from him, and hearing the 
engine spring to life was like hearing his voice. My father wasn't big 
on words, but I always knew how much he loved me by how much care he put 
into restoring and repairing my first car. When I think of that car, I 
always think of him.
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