Jacob Aiello

My first car is a 1968 Volkswagen Baja Bug given to me by my dad and stepmother on the occasion of my seventeenth birthday. It’s painted brick red and has a roll bar on the front, big rear tires, and an upturned metal salad bowl for an air filter cover. Instead of a more reliable car better suited to my personality, my stepmother reasons that its exposed engine and propensity to break down will produce in me a nascent mechanical dexterity. What it provides instead is a means of escape.