Hail and Farewell....

Well, I did it….

I have been thinking about it, reading everything I could find about it, and talking about it. And now, I have done it. In the past, I have always been a day late and a dollar short, but not this time.

It’s a done deal…

I have always liked cars. And none for a longer period of time than my beloved 1992 Ford Explorer. It is white with a blue interior. Cargo rack on top. Never-used “Draw Tite” hitch on the back. I have had it since it was brand new….

I have paid for it twice.

I bought a license plate frame for it early on. Everybody laughed when they saw it: “If you can read this, roll me over.” And of course, it was mounted with the words upside down.

For the last four years, it had been relegated to Number Two Car, having been displaced by my Toyota Highlander……my “Yota.” Right after I bought the Yota, the Explorer got taken to the car wash for cleaning, inside and out, and a new coat of wax. It was my way of assuaging my guilt over replacing it.

As I said, I paid for it twice: once when it was brand new, and again when it served as collateral on a very necessary home repair loan. Like most people, I didn’t have $5000.00 at my disposal, and I needed to fix the plumbing. The Explorer made it happen.

And now? It has become a dinosaur. Out of step with more modern, greener, times. Never the most fuel efficient car…and always at risk of rollovers. Not to mention the tire scare and factory recall of original equipment tires. Oh, and a history of transmission failure at >80,000 miles.

Yet, it never failed me. Yes, there was the summer of ’02 when the air conditioning was broken. And the dead battery when I was in another town. Looking back, that was kinda funny: I was at an antiques shop in a nearby town, and when I left, the Explorer wouldn’t start. I walked around the corner to the Ford dealership, and the service manager came back with me to try to jump start it.

No luck.

I had to call the Auto Club and they sent a tow truck, from Podunk, to where I was stranded, ten miles away. Then, the tow truck driver towed the Explorer right around the corner, and less than half a block, to the Ford dealership.

Yesterday, I took everything out of it: the quilt that was always in the back, in case I needed to haul furniture for my antiques business…..maps, deposit envelopes for my bank, napkins in the glove box, a flashlight that didn’t work, and a tire pressure gauge.

I took the garden hose and sprayed a month’s worth of accumulated dirt off of it, and then drove it one last time. Of course, after not being driven for at least a month, it started right up.

I sat in the familiar seat, with my hands on the familiar wheel, now covered in a Hawaiian print steering wheel cover. I turned on the turn signals and heard the familiar click-click, click-click…..and I drove it to the Toyota dealership. I tried not to think about what I was doing, and focus on the future…

For me, the future is a 2010 Toyota Prius……for the Explorer? Scrap metal. It is part of the Cash for Clunkers program: traded in for a more fuel efficient car and sentenced to the scrap heap. It looked hardly used, and only had 88,245 miles on it….

Hail and Farewell, My Friend……thank you for taking care of me for all those years!