Old Blue...

So, my sister keeps asking when we are going to get a new car.  Why would we get a new car, I say, this one is only eleven years old with 172,000 miles on it.  And she just shakes her head.

It seems clear that my sister is more like my dad, who would get a new car every year if he could.  Or it just might be that my sister, who is super organized and keeps her house immaculate, despite running a business and volunteering at her girls’ school, lets the inside of her car look like a bomb has detonated.

I, on the other hand, clearly take after my mother on this one.

In the course of my 43 years, my mother has only had three cars, although she did just get her fourth one last year. It wouldn’t have even been that many if she hadn’t decided to give me one of them when I was in high school—although I know she only did it so she wouldn’t have to drive us into another state for school each day!

The first car was Old Blue. I don’t even know what kind of car it was, just that it was giant and blue, and had black vinyl seats and was the car of my early childhood. How many times did we drive to the beach on a Friday night after my dad came home from work in Old Blue, with a cot spread out in the back for my sister and me to sleep on, straining to eavesdrop on my parents’ murmured conversations through the strains of “Me and My Bobby McGee.”

That car was like a tank and in it I felt protected as if I were in a cocoon.

And when Old Blue had finally had it, with the side mirror cracked, a beautiful rainbow of melted crayons in the back window, and the horn refusing to go off, even when it was supposedly “disconnected,” we knew that we would have to put Old Blue down.

And, just like with Old Yeller, there wasn’t a dry eye in the place.