In the small Florida town where I grew up, there were two kinds of people. Some owned Fords. Some owned Chevys.

In the late 1960s, we debated the merits of both. We also ogled the women in the car parts calendars.

“What does Ford stand for?” my friend, the mechanic, asked. Already, at 15, his hands were black from brake work.

I shrugged.

“Found On Road Dead,” he said. “Fix Or Repair Daily.”

Cars mattered in Fort Meade, a scruffy one-light town where it was hard to buy a book but easy to get a beer. On Saturday nights, we drove our jacked up cars across the pitted asphalt of the A & W hamburger stand and tried to look cool. Later, as seniors, we drove to the 7-11 and bought cheap beer. We didn’t drink and drive — there wasn’t anyplace to go.

My indoctrination came early. On a black and white TV in our living room, Dinah Shore, in a full-skirted gown, threw open her arms and sang, “See the USA, in your Chevrolet.”

“Anywhere but here,” I muttered.

I had a terrible summer job. I worked in a clanging citrus plant on the edge of town. I wore a yellow rain coat, stood on a cat walk and cleaned dangerous juicing machines with a fire hose.

What I really wanted to do was have adventures like Martin Milner and George Maharis, the stars in the old TV show Route 66. The two actors played Tod Stiles and Buz Murdock, restless young men with little money, no agenda and a sleek blue Corvette convertible. For several seasons, they bummed around the country, working in warehouses and crewing on oil rigs. Always, they met beautiful women and got into fights. Me, I wanted to feel the wind on my face.

My first car was a Jeep, an old hunting vehicle. It was not a marvel of “styling elegance.” It had a metal back seat and a black canvas top with plastic side windows. I replaced the old gear shift knob with a shiny black eight ball, but it still looked like an Army surplus vehicle, with hard metal angles. It was a terrible make out car.

Later, I bought a Ford, a Galaxie 500. It wasn’t a rejection of the Chevy brand; my dad sold cars at the local Ford dealership.

It was a cool car, a power boat with a chrome grin. But the engine was a mess. Unlike Tod and Buz, I was lucky if the car, with 110,000 miles, would start. It even caught fire once.

My next car was a Chevy Nova. The color was awful — a deep forest green — but I tricked it out with a quadraphonic sound system and blasted “Magic Carpet Ride” from four speakers.

The Nova — all those Sputnik-era names! — carried me through a few years of college before I dropped out to work for a newspaper. A procession of older-model autos followed: cars with bad brakes, cars with rebuilt transmissions, cars with cracked windshields, cars made in Detroit.

In 1979, I drove a Ford Mustang from Florida to Rhode Island, and never looked back. My last American car — a bronze-colored Dodge with a wide low body — was hobbled by oily sludge at just 63,000 miles. A consumer group in Washington, D.C., helped me get back a few thousand dollars, but a new engine cost much more.

I gave the car to a kid in Hope Valley.

I bailed out of the U.S. car scene after that. If I ever tour what’s left of meandering Route 66, it will be in my Japanese car. With a drab gray coat and a shape like a lozenge, it looks like every other car on the road. But so far — and Dinah Shore would appreciate this — it runs like a dream.

pdavis@projo.com