My wife and I got a 2003 Chevrolet Malibu, used, around 2010, and we added maybe 100,000 miles to. Two of the dents are hers. Two of the dents are mine. Nobody’s to blame for the rust.
It was the last vehicle Stephanie drove, until one day she couldn’t drive any more so she handed me the keys. With me behind the wheel, our Chevy took us to hundreds of doctor’s appointments, and then it took me to the crematorium to pick up my wife’s ashes.It took us on joyous rides, too — low-priced weekend excursions, minor league ball games in Beloit, movies at the drive-in outside of Jefferson WI, and trips to her parents’ house for visits that always left Steph smiling. Sometimes our Chevrolet took us on drives to nowhere, with Stephanie reading the map and telling me where to turn, and then telling me how to find our way back when I’d missed the turn.When was gone and I’d decided to move to Seattle, I took our Chevy to a mechanic and put a thousand or so dollars into it, making it more likely to make it across six states of freeways without any gaskets exploding. And indeed, it made it all the way, with no troubles.Since arriving a year and a half ago, I haven’t driven our old Chevy much, and as trouble-free as it was on the long drive, it’s been nothing but trouble on the short drives here.Three times I’ve taken it in for repairs, and several months back it made a frightful noise on a left turn, then made that noise all the way home.It sounded like money. Sounded like another couple of hundred dollars, and I’m not made of hundreds of dollars, so our Chevy’s been parked across the street, ever since.I haven’t put a hundred miles on that car this year, but I’ve put some serious money into it. Then came an email reminder I’d set up to nudge me every six months: “Time for an oil change,” it said.No it’s not, I said in response. No more of any of that for me.I don’t like the hassle and risk of driving. Behind the wheel, a sneeze at the wrong moment could kill someone. A cop could pull you over at any time.I don’t like who I become when I’m driving. I get impatient at long stop lights, and flip a finger when another driver does something, anything, that offends my motorist sensibilities.Usually I take the bus, and I prefer the bus, but in most of America you need a car. I haven’t been free of owning a car since our time in San Francisco, where streetcars and trains and buses go everywhere every six minutes.Seattle’s transit isn’t as good as Frisco’s, but a car isn’t a necessity to live here. So instead of an oil change, I cleared away the maps and hamburger wrappers, junked the junk in the trunk, and filled out a form to give our car to Habitat for Humanity. They’ll get some but not much money from selling it for parts.I didn’t tell them that a few ounces of my wife’s ashes are in the fabric of the front passenger seat.At mid-day today, a very nice man parked a tow truck across the street, in front of our Chevy. I came out and signed the title over to H4H, then came back into the house, where through the window I watched the man attach whatever he attached, then hoist our car’s front end a few feet into the air. Then he drove away with our Chevy behind him, and a hundred thousand miles of memories.7/5/2023
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