Urkel's Car & Others

"What kind of car does Urkel drive?"

Lilly asked that before she left for camp. Lately the girls have been watching Family Matters, a show I'd been entirely ignorant of before. Now I've seen pieces of it, and one episode all the way through, and it has done nothing to change my opinion that post-70s sitcoms are generally one of the larger stretches of erg in the Vast Wasteland.

I hadn't seen the character Steve Urkel drive anything in the show, but Lilly described it as a weirdly small car, so I guessed -- a Yugo? A Trabi? (See BTST May 7-10, 2003) A British bubble car?

Turns out Urkel drove an Isetta, a car I didn't know much about before. See, TV is educational, especially if you read about it.

All of this talk reminded me of a few of the cars I happened to park near on our trip recently. When we checked into our motel in Nashville -- a modest chain motel, nothing special -- there was this in the parking lot:

A '48 Studebaker. One of my Nashville friends later told me that there was "a big car show in town" that weekend.

In Gatlinburg, we parked in a Food City parking lot. Yuriko and Lilly went into the store while I waited in the car with Ann, who was asleep. A jeep pulled up next to me. Not a vehicle of the Jeep brand, but an actual 1960-vintage Army jeep.

It would be in Gatlinburg's Fourth of July parade later, according to the fellow who was driving it.