Arts & Culture

Sometime in 1975, in the first few months after my family moved from Athens, Greece, to Rapid City, S.D., my father bought a junky, gigantic gold Oldsmobile that cost $200.

My sister and I called the car Old Goldie, a name meant to evoke a tough old broad with a glamorous past. My father loved her. It was behind her oversized wheel that he learned — at 40 — to drive.

Transcript

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

There are a lot of things that get a bad rap and then will never shake said bad rap no matter what: canned beanie-weanies come to mind, for example. They're never going to be thought of as high cuisine, let's face it. The song "Escape" by Rupert Holmes - though it has a kicking chorus - probably will not become a better song with time.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ESCAPE")

Alexander Nazaryan is a writer living in Brooklyn.