Friday, December 18, 2009
Farewell, Old Car
It sure was easy to donate our aging car to WVPE, using the Car Talk web site. We filled out a simple web form, signed the car title, and mailed it off. In a few days a tow truck came to relieve us of the relic that had been dripping oil all over the driveway. Not to mention the car’s occasional demonic impulse to electronically lock and unlock its doors fifty or sixty times a minute. I was very happy to remove the license plate, cancel the insurance, and send it on its way. What could be simpler, and any proceeds go to our favorite radio station. My apology to WVPE, however, for not donating a posher vehicle. Maybe next time!
I felt a little bad for the old beater, though, seeing it hoisted up by the nose and driven away forever. What an indignity for the little green station wagon that had served us well for 172,000 miles. For old times sake, I snapped one last picture. Farewell, you tin box, you. We’ll always have the memories.
It true – unless the repair bills have been driving you to the poorhouse, you might feel a little tug of nostalgia when you send a car off like that. There are so many stories, for one thing. There were the used car salesmen who inadvertently convinced us to buy a brand new car – one gem of a fellow said he wouldn’t reduce the sticker price because of a cracked windshield. Instead, I should just buy his car as is, then wait six months and report the damage to my insurance company. Then there was the charming new car salesman who told me nobody was making station wagons any more, even though the dealership next door to his had some nice ones right there on the lot. If you’d like to meet these two fine fellows yourself, they can be found at – oh, maybe I better not say where they work.
But the good stories take place after you slip away from the salesmen and start down the road in your shiny new cocoon. We love Weko Beach, and our station wagon was never quite free of Lake Michigan sand. It handled itself equally well on the steep mountain roads of Colorado and the mean streets of Chicago. The kids have memories of books on tape that were so good that we didn’t want to get out of the car, and places we visited from Ontario to Utah that were so cool we didn’t want to get back in. And in mid-December each year, we would drive five miles out of town to a little tree farm. The proprietor would walk out of his house and hand us a saw and wave us back into the field. I’d call one of the kids over to sit on my lap and she’d steer the car down the grassy lane beside the evergreen trees. Once we had the perfect tree bungeed to the roof, the other kid would steer us back up the lane to the house. We’d pay and be on our way, mud on the flaps and pine tar on our hands and Christmas in our heads.
I’ve never figured out how we Americans ended up with so little public transportation and so many cars. You have to guess that some powerful lobbyists were at work in Washington somewhere along the way. But we love our cars and place them near the center of our lives. Maybe we don’t roll the windows down in summer anymore, but we still dig piling up those highway miles, AC chilling and iPod setting the mood as we inspect the broad landscapes that link one French fry-laden rest stop to another all the way across this great land of ours.
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A random pick from more than 460 Michiana Chronicles -- refresh the browser to see another set:
April Lidinsky -- More essays by April
Joe Chaney -- More essays by Joe
Ken Smith -- Farewell, Old Car / More essays by Ken
Jeanette Saddler Taylor -- More essays by Jeanette
Heather Curlee Novak -- More essays by Heather
David James -- More essays by David
Elizabeth Van Jacob -- More essays by Elizabeth
Jeff Nixa -- More essays by Jeff
Louise Collins -- More essays by Louise
Jonathan Nashel -- More essays by Jonathan
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About the series
Michiana Chronicles is a series of radio essays by Jonathan Nashel, Louise Collins, Joe Chaney, Jeanette Saddler Taylor, Jeff Nixa, April Lidinsky, Ken Smith, Heather Curlee Novak, David James, and Elizabeth Van Jacob.
Michiana is the region of north-central Indiana and southern Michigan roughly centered on South Bend, Indiana.
Michiana Chronicles airs on Fridays at 7:35 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on WVPE (88.1 FM), the home of public radio in Elkhart / South Bend, Indiana.
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Recent pieces
Good Eaters -- Reflections on the topic of food, brought about, no doubt, by this time of harvest and Thanksgiving, led to my reading Thomas Keneally’s recent book, “Three Famines.” In it, he gives a general overview of the physical and mental processes of starvation – pretty horrifying and unimaginable from where we sit – then writes specifically about the three hunger-events. Ireland in the 1840’s, Bengal in the 1940’s and Ethiopia in the 1980’s are the “three famines” of the title. Although seemingly unrelated as to world-area and time period, there is a striking commonality and it’s not the traditional “act-of-God” explanation. “Acts of God:” droughts, floods, etc. often begin the privations, but the human hand exacerbates the problems into a cataclysm. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
The Excellence of the Long Distance Runner -- Consider cross country, the sport of choice for our family’s young athlete. That’s a 5000 meter feat of speed and endurance. At practice each day the teams run even farther, so on Saturdays they’re ready to race each other hard for 20 or 25 minutes. Near the end of the course they speed up because that’s the kind of people they have become, and they don’t stop until they have travelled the length of 54 football fields. By Ken Smith.
Bacon Before Husband -- Do you have a daily list? I don’t mean tasks for work or chores for home, I mean a Happy List. I have a Happy List running through my head most of the time. This list tends to be fickle and definitely changes with my mood. It is rare that something gets crossed off of it but I get immense satisfaction from my list just the same. My list makes friends laugh and strangers think I am...stranger. By Heather Curlee Novak.
“A feminist walks into a fraternal lodge …” -- Today’s story begins like a joke: What happens when a feminist walks into a fraternal lodge? The answer isn’t very funny, and it isn’t really about me -- it’s about who runs for office, and who doesn’t. But, yes, in this scenario I am the feminist cheerfully walking into the fraternal lodge, of the kind gently lampooned in The Flintstones as the Royal Order of the Water Buffaloes. By April Lidinsky.
South Bend Spring -- Would I ever think I’d find myself parting from one group of young adults yesterday, and then actually tearing downtown to join another? My knee-jerk reaction would normally be to slip into my hidey-hole on the third floor of Wiekamp Hall on the IU campus, or to run home—only three blocks—to read in solitude and eat Raman noodles. The first group—my first-ever class of college freshman English students—seem bemused at my political positions and ready to describe me as “professor,” but as a hopeless product of another day and time. By David James.
Call Me Bartman -- It’s that time of year when we wait in expectation of another World Series victory by the New York Yankees or the Philadelphia Phillies, while recalling (or trying to forget) another lost season in the sad history of the Chicago Cubs. Anyway, that’s the way Cubs fans talk about it. I don’t see it that way. In my view, the Cubs are the greatest team in the history of sports, and I wouldn’t change a thing about them. By Joe Chaney.
Autumn -- Have you noticed too? Can you feel it? Are you as excited as I am? After the wait of nine months for its rebirth, autumn is back. The real weather for football is here. The heat has abated, there’s a nip in the air, spiders are extruding blankets of webbing, and if you look up into the trees, here and there you see a bit of fall color beginning. Like so many of you, autumn is my favorite season. Time to clean up the detritus of summer – those only semi-successful tomato plants, for example – and to move on to the planting of crocus, bluebells, tulips and daffodils: the dreams of spring. By Jeanette Saddler Taylor.
Casting the Bronze Bust of Dr. Lester Wolfson -- There on the floor was the hand-made barrel-shaped white plaster matrix into which the molten metal would be poured. Near it stood a small furnace with a hole at the top the size of your fist. A stream of yellow flames roared from this hole and had been roaring for a long time. The metal inside was now over 1000 degrees. The sculptor’s wife cautioned us, If anything goes wrong, don’t rush up to help, back away—if it touches you, the bronze will burn right through your body. By Ken Smith.
Complaint Department -- I have struggled to maintain the peace and raise my girls well, but the stress of my days often means by the end of each one I am not the sweetest woman to be around. I often hurl the myriad challenges of my day at my husband as soon as he walks through the door. Sometimes dinner isn't made and the house looks like a toy bomb went off and I feel guilty about it. When I try to explain how the day went down I think it is a lot more like complaining than anything helpful. By Heather Curlee Novak.
Mad Men’s Maddening Style -- Oh, the elegant style of the early 60s. For men: the narrowly tailored suits and knife-thin ties; for women, the pencil skirts with wide cinching belts, the clinging cashmere sweaters punctuated by pearls. Take a look around and it’s clear that this season we are mad about Mad Men – and not just the TV show. Suddenly, in the “ya-gotta-have it” world of merchandizing, the winking vintage sex appeal of the early ’60 is being cranked up to sell upscale mall clothing, batwing eyeliner, and even retro telephone handsets so you can have Bluetooth technology but still look like you’re answering the phone for Don Draper in a red-lipsticked whisper. What the heck is going on? I’m a sucker, myself, for vintage fashion, but I wonder why now – in this political moment – we are hungry for the style of those very conservative “men will be men” and “women will be objects” times. By April Lidinsky.
Mandala -- I remember that year as the spring when my dad roared down the driveway at our home near Emory University in Atlanta in a new Austin Healey, a roadster, the proper name for a British rag-top sports car. This one was red with all the trimmings and served as waterproof glue for the closest period of bonding between a father and son. I say “waterproof” because the top on that car was a tight fit from the start, and had maybe fifty snaps to secure it around the cockpit; and of course after a couple times getting wet it shrunk, so there it stayed, behind the back seat squab—British for the seat’s backrest—for seven years, molding in peace. When it rained we got wet, so we cultivated raincoats and laughing. I didn’t mind a bit. By David James.
Acne Hell -- No one has ever asked me what it was like having a bad case of acne as a teen. It’s a topic that never comes up, partly because the embarrassment never dies. Here I’ll raise the question myself – but don’t worry: I won’t subject you to physical descriptions, except to say that, at seventeen, I would gladly have sacrificed a finger for merely the sort of minor pimple problem of the beautiful girls and boys you see on acne medication commercials. Ah, that embarrassing, isolated red zit! So annoying on an otherwise perfect face! Well, perfection was never a possibility for me, and I had no hope of hiding my condition under a few dabs of makeup. When it came to skin quality, my rival was the full moon. By Joe Chaney.
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