This I Will Not Forget

Hugh Bray has worked every day since he was ten to save up and buy his first car. He's now a sophomore at R.J. Reynolds High school, and the day he turned 16, he drove a Ford F-150 from the dealership. As passionate about cars as Bray says he is, this truck won't be his last. However, he will never forget it:

I love how it's curved at the front, but square at the back…I'm high above the road. I take up whole the lane, and I feel like I can accomplish anything with this truck.

There's something about the “first” that sticks with us. Most of us can probably recall with great detail our first house, our first job…or even our first kiss. They are milestones. They are moments in our lives that let us know that we are moving forward, that we are growing up. While buying a truck would be hard to forget for any high school sophomore, people who have spent their entire lives surrounded by cars can still recall what it was about that first machine that set them on the path they are on today, and, most importantly, how it felt to be in that car.

For NASCAR Lap by Lap analyst and Fox Sports commentator, Mike Joy, it was a roadster sports car his dad brought home when Joy was 11.

[from] that point on I was hooked...it was time with my dad, number one. Number two: wheels, 2 seats with the little jump seat in the back where my brother could sit and the top down wind in our hair.

During his career, Joy has seen and driven hundreds of different cars, but none of those cars can replace what he felt when the wind was blowing in his hair on that roadster sports car. Just like Joy, Doug White has been around many different cars in his life. A car enthusiast himself, White owns several race cars and a couple of Rolls Royces, but even then, his 1957 Porsche speedster is hard to forget.

It looked like an upside-down bathtub, but it was the slick fast-looking car of its day.

As Bray discovered in his conversation with Joy and White, it is not the make or model that makes the car special. It is the memories they made in it that makes it special. There's no way of knowing what memories Bray will make in his new truck, but what we can know is that they will be forever.