Goodbye, Old Friend

Liz and I must bid a tearful goodbye to the red Honda Civic, which has given us so many great memories, from the road trip to Yellowstone to the time I side-swiped our garage on Second Avenue in Wausau. It carried me and much of my stuff to Poughkeepsie in October 2005. It carried our canoe everywhere we went canoeing. For a few weeks it carried me 45 minutes to the train station each day, back when we lived in Glastonbury and I had to commute to work from there to Manhattan. And it carried us to Bayfield many times, including, if I'm not mistaken, the weekend I proposed to Liz.

Purchased in October 2003 for about $5,000 from Sixth Street Motors in Wausau with just under 130,000 miles on it, we sold the car this morning at 195,000 miles for $1,800 to a nice older guy named Lee, who was buying it for his sister. He's picking it up this afternoon while we're gone, better for us lest we embarrass ourselves with an uncomfortable outpouring of emotion.

Is it odd to get misty over something as ordinary as a car? But we are Americans, dammit, and sentimental attachment to our vehicles is in our blood. I feel like a cowboy without a horse now that I am without my own car for the first time since college, though we still have Liz's car for the time being.

Completely unrelated final note: After our Cabin Weekend 2008, spent among the vast countryside of northern Minnesota and its lakes and farms, I found myself humming one of my favorite Talking Heads songs, "(Nothing But) Flowers," a kind of ironic fantasy of progress played in reverse, with urban real estate sacrificed for farmland and parkland. The song doesn't promote a "return to Eden" message so much as a contrary perspective on the "evolution" of modern society, that one day we might find ourselves nostalgic for skyscrapers and interstate highways and Honda Civics.

"There was a factory, now there are mountains and rivers.
We caught a rattlesnake, now we got something for dinner.
There was a shopping mall, now it's all covered with flowers.
If this is paradise, I wish I had a lawnmower. ...

"Once there were parking lots, now it's a peaceful oasis.
This was a Pizza Hut, now it's all covered with daisies.
I miss the honky tonks, Diary Queens and 7-Elevens.
And as things fell apart nobody paid much attention."