2002-03-22 - 9:55 a.m.
Okay, bear with me folks...this one's gonna be teary and sad...
Sometime today the Kidney foundation will pull up to my driveway and take away my car.
It hasn't run for almost a year, and actually, the last time it was on the road I got a ticket for excessively loud exhaust, and the front window is broken, and two of the tires are flat, and the battery is dead...but still...I weep.
I got this car back in 1993 as a graduation from College present from my parents. I recall it cost them $4250 used. It's a black 1988 Mazda 323 2 door hatchback. Book value today...well...not quite zero, but close.
It wasn't my first car, that place in my life is taken by a 1977 Ford Mustang II that I was given for free by a coworker of my father when he discovered that I was going to college in a town 20 miles from anything. Not so sure that was really a gift, since it averaged about 10 miles to the major repair...and when it died, I didn't feel bad. I just signed the title over to the wrecking company, picked my suitcase out of the trunk (I was coming home from a weekend of work at an amusement park), and walked away.
The Mazda, though, has been special. The very first time I drove it was to leave Eureka Illinois with a diploma in my suitcase and a summer to spend before grad school. The Mazda took me back and forth to my job at Six Flags Great America every day that summer. It was one of the best summers of my life.
Then it was off to graduate school. Really, the Mazda spent most of it's life sitting in the parking lot on campus during the first year...if only because I didn't want to lose the spot.
The second year of grad school was when I learned that Political Science wasn't for me, but I wasn't smart enough to just drop out, I had to simultaneously put in inadequate effort and skip a lot of classes to do other things that were interesting to me.
The Mazda was the car that me and a friend took to a party...in Wilmington, NC. Keep in mind that we lived in Dekalb, IL at the time. The party sucked. The drive however was wonderful.
The Mazda was the car that I drove a (different) friend of mine around the cornfields of Illinois all night after she got dumped by her fiance, trying to let her sob and get it all out.
The Mazda was the car that I outraced a Porsche in. (Yeah, I know, the Porsche threw a rod...but still...I got to the end first...in the two door hatchback Mazda).
The Mazda was the car that somehow went 500 miles on one 10 gallon tank of gas once...I don't know how...it never came close to that mileage again.
Then, when grad school was finally done with me, I packed up all of my worldly goods into the back of the Mazda and headed to Omaha, Nebraska. Heck, I had space left over. You could stuff that car fuller than anything I've ever seen.
The two years in Omaha saw me find a career in IT, find someone who I thought was the love of my life, discover that I abhored the Midwest, lose my grandfather without having a chance to say goodbye because I was too far away, have a knockdown, dragout fight with the then love of my life because I had to leave and she wouldn't, fly east for the funeral, go to a party in DC to forget about everything, and meet (well...sorta...we'd known each other, but we'd never really talked and we certainly weren't in love yet) the woman who I now can't exist without.
Finally, in May of 1997, I was free of my obligations in Omahell, and me, all of my worldly goods, and the Mazda set out on the drive on I-80 east.
This time there wasn't enough space in the Mazda to carry everything, but it was close enough. Everything I wanted out of Nebraska was in the car.
Got across the Missouri River into Iowa, stopped the car, got out, turned around, and flipped off the entire western half of the nation.
Then, since I was in the neighborhood, I stopped by Eureka and flipped it the bird too. Kind of a closure thing on that 8 years of my life.
It was a 23 hour drive, split over two days, to get to Richmond. Have I mentioned yet that the Mazda never had a radio? Nope, not a one. It had speakers, but no radio. I was going to buy one several times, but never had...so I had 23 hours of nothing but the voices in my head and the whir of the engine.
Got here in one piece (although I had a frightening moment in West Virginia when I thought I was about to take a tumble down the side of a mountain and probably never be heard of again). As did the Mazda.
The last five years the Mazda has been kind of like the champion racehorse put out to stud. I drove it when I needed to have a second car. It saved our bacon when Gina's Cavalier burned through two engines in the course of two years.
What finally killed the Mazda was Norfolk. For a period of 3 months I had to drive 110 miles each way every day. And driving on the Navy base wasn't all that good either. Potholes and just generally bad roads took it's toll, as did way too many miles down 460.
One day last May I got pulled over on my way home. The Cop told me my exhaust was way, way too noisy. I hadn't really noticed (it happened gradually, I never really heard it get louder). I looked and there was a large hole in the exhaust pipe.
So the Mazda was parked in my driveway until we could get it fixed.
It never happened.
A tire went flat. No big deal, that happens.
The windshield broke (I presume something fell on it). Okay...maybe this is starting to be more than we want to repair.
Then the starter died. Too much to repair. The Mazda was called dead. Just a question of what to do with the corpse.
That was back in November. We kept meaning to call the kidney folks and have them take it. Finally this week Gina has two days off, so she was able to arrange it and make it happen.
So...sometime today...maybe even already...the car that stood by me through the last 9 years will be pulled up onto a flatbed and go off to another life...or the scrapheap...I don't know what the Kidney Foundation actually does with the cars...guess it doesn't matter really...I've signed the title over...it's their car now.
I guess my youth is over. I now have a truck. It's a good truck, with a radio and everything, but I wouldn't want to drive it 2000 miles for a party with a bunch of people I barely know. Even though it's got a full size bed it can't hold all of my worldly posessions. We're about to buy a house (at least, we hope we are...the loan is pre-approved pending some paperwork issues).
Must be time to become an adult.
And now the guy in the next cube over is probably wondering why I'm crying...time to run reports.
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