2004-07-11
One week after my great fall, my face is all but healed, and my car is all but new. Not to say that my old car, Old Sticky, had gotten the fix up, but rather that I'm now the proudly reluctant owner of a '99 Chevy Cavalier. Like my face, the Cavalier is modest and bears a few scrapes, but nothing that will really embarrass me when I'm out in public.I knew that I had become emotionally attached to my old car when I pulled up to my apartment in my new car, and I felt my old car looking at me as I parked across from it. I glanced in the rearview mirror at Old Sticky, and noticed in the lower corner of the mirror that my face was begining to flush. Oddly guilt-ridden, I felt like former President Clinton getting caught mid-fellatio in the Oval Office by his wife, a gray 1992 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. "I... I can explain..."
But why shouldn't I hold a small place in my heart for my old car? After all, it had been there like a good friend these last four years. Old Sticky had been an integral element of many lasting memories ranging from making out with Celeste Radosevich on Grandview Drive four years ago, all the way to four thousand miles across twelve states last summer. And soon it'll be a pile of shit in a salvage yard somewhere. I feel like John Steinbeck when he had to put down Charlie, only Old Sticky is a car with no hubcaps, a dented roof, and an ass print in the driver's side door, and Charlie was a dog.
It's unfortunate that I've always been a sentimental person. If I had the capacity for rationality concerning this matter, I would tell myself that my old car is only number two in what is sure to be a long series of cars in my lifetime, and like the Black Panther party, if I had kept up company with it, sooner or later it would have left me in a bloody heap by the side of the road. But let's not forget that I still think fondly of my first car, an '89 Toyota Camry that Jake named after its color - Rusty Pumpkin. I placed the memory of my first car upon the sort affectionate pedestal that most reserve for the memory of their first love, and THAT car didn't even travel out of the midwest. Thus, it's only plain to see that my second car will not soon be unloved, and will not ever be forgotten.
So goodbye, Old Sticky. You've served me well. Soon you'll be little more than a shell of your former self, but I'll always fondly keep you with me, tearing down Interstate 40 without a cop in sight, CB tuned and Pink Floyd blaring, with the sunset-hued highway showing no signs of a dead end.
To Old Sticky, I dedicate the following songs:
"Lonestar: "I'm Already There," Bob Seger: "We've Got Tonight," Janet Jackson: "Again," Bruce Springsteen: "Secret Garden," James Taylor: "Fire and Rain," Dixie Chicks: "Wide Open Spaces," and every song written by Diane Warren.
Thank you.
-Andy