End of an Era

This weekend, I drove my failing, ailing, broken-down 1995, 200,000 mile silver-blue hand-me-down Mercury Grand Marquis upstate to retire her.

I loved that car. Her gigantitude. Her seats like two parallel couches. Her V8 engine, her 0-60 in 1.5 seconds pick up. The way she smelled--snacks and Febreze. The way I got flagged for a gypsy cab on the Brooklyn streets. The way I was mistaken for a cop. How she taught me to parallel park like a savant (ever parked a Grand Marquis between two Mini Coopers with an inch to spare on either end? Without touching bumpers, not even once? No, I didn't think so. But I have). The terrible gas mileage. The rear-wheel-drive bad traction. The road trips, blazing down the highway, engine purring. The local trips, blazing up 4th Avenue smoking out the window. She gravitated naturally to 75 mph, that was her sweet spot, where she was at her very best. I really was cool in that car. Whoever expected to see a young lady behind the wheel of an old lady's Florida-retirement-complex-behemoth?

It all began to go downhill a few years ago, around the time of the first breakdown. She stopped running in traffic on the Long Island Expressway. And then proceeded to break down every few months from then on. In a car wash (yes, in a car wash). On the highway. On the local roads. Six breakdowns in two years.

I tended to her, spent thousands of dollars trying to save her. But she just won't make it any longer. In a couple of weeks, I'll join the drab masses in a new compact silver Toyota. She'll get good gas mileage, and she won't break down. But in this new car, I'll be somehow a little less Leah...

Goodbye, Grand Marquis, you were one grand lady.


*Photo: "Frosty Mercury" by Boozysmurf, Flickr Creative Commons

Packing the Car

The classic summer story: mid-June 1979, a turquoise Pontiac Catalina with white vinyl interior waiting patiently, quietly overheating in the hot sun, trunk open to be filled, at the fire hydrant on a corner in Brooklyn.

Father sweating and shouting and banging luggage down the stairs, mother standing guard against ever-advancing meter maids wielding ticket pads, two little girls flittering, racketing, and generally getting in the way.

Finally, the car is packed. It is packed. To the gunwales, the trunk filled to bursting, and besides that every last nook and cranny crammed full. Of what? Children; various pets; a cello, two violins, a flute; art supplies; clothes; toys; journals; books to be read; for several summers my mother's dissertation notes, her typewriter, her manuscript; special pillows; an elaborate lunch of fried chicken, or egg-and-caviar sandwiches, or cold hamburgers.

We did not travel light.

When I think of all those summer vacations in the Adirondacks, I always think first of the packing and unpacking of the car. The dread, the heat, the horror. The anticipation, the fussing, the aching muscles. Things forgotten and turned-around-for. The unnecessary things packed and transported but left, all summer long, in a dark corner of the cavernous trunk.

Arriving and unpacking. Already thinking two months ahead to the end of summer and the inevitable re-packing.

Summer vacation, as a little girl, was framed by these packing episodes. We were seized with a madness of Mustn't Leave Behind. A desperate shoring-up of familiar objects against change. Every eventuality, seen and unforeseen, must be provided for.

There would be no badminton game without a birdy, no quiet moment without a comic book, no summer cold endured without the grape-flavored Dimetap, no scenic view confronted without pastels and sketch pad. Never would we be caught unprepared!

*"Pontiac Muscle" by Mike Mertz, from Flickr Creative Commons