Yesterday, the Haywagon was donated to NPR. This went about via a tow truck coming to the
house and (a little more abruptly than I would have preferred) hauled her onto
a flatbed truck and drove away. Probably
to an auction somewhere. Just like that.
She was already stripped of her license plates, of the ‘Fletcher’
sticker on the dash that had been there since I removed it from my high school
senior year basketball locker in 2002, and of the knickknacks that had accumulated
over the last 13 years.
Her odometer was 200 miles shy of 150,000. Since we bought her with about 20k on her, that
means that she and I have traveled 130,000 miles together on this journey.
I remember the feeling when my parents first gave her to me
and I opened the door and sat down. It
was the anticipation of having a ‘new’ (though used) car – the anticipation of
having a car that wasn’t the family car – of knowing that I would take this car
off to college and into whatever the future meant.
She was christened the ‘Haywagon’ (as in.. Haley’s wagon) with
shiny vanity plates that my dad had made, and I LOVED her.
I remember driving her to those last high school days, full
of senioritis and so excited, and taking my friends for a loop around the
parking lot.
In her, I took a last angsty drive around Burley during that
summer post-graduation, nostalgic music blasting, tears running down my face,
realizing that everything would be changing and having no idea what that meant.
It was she who my mom, dad and I filled to the gills with my
every belonging to get ready for the great transition to college. Late at night, we packed and packed the car,
having to slam the doors shut so that belongings wouldn’t pop out, and then
rolling down the windows to push more in.
It was in her that despite having
not slept the night before, I insisted on driving out of town, away from Burley
and into my new future as a college student at the far away Rice University in
Houston (we pulled over after two exits and switched drivers). We drove all the way to Houston, days of
driving with a stuffed car – and I was pulled over for the first time. I rolled down the Haywagon window and gave
such a pitiful story, eyes brimming with teenage sorrow - I got off with a warning.
Not many of us had cars in college, so when we wanted to
make a run for bubble tea or House of Pies or a quick trip to the beach in
Galveston, we would all cross campus to head to the student lot, and pile in
the Haywagon. More than once I lost her
in those lots, after friends had borrowed her or after I had just forgotten
where she was parked. The smells of
humidity, fresh rain, and Houston heat pounding on the pavement all bring back
memories of walking across what seemed like an endless expanse of campus to
reach the parking lot.
It was in her that I drove to my first real job as a teacher
at YES, where I pulled into the parking lot every morning before 6am, and left
after 7pm, commuting across Houston, piles of papers to grade in the seat
beside me, each day growing up more and more into myself as an adult –
realizing what I loved doing. Those long
drives in Houston traffic gave me many hours of thinking and dreaming.
It was in her that Elisa and I escaped Hurricane Rita, and
we lived in her for 22 straight hours and creeping only a few miles, caught in
one of the greatest traffic jams of all time.
We feared for our lives in her as people went into survival mode, gas
ran out, and the temperatures soared above 100 degrees. But then we found our own miracle in her as
well – when we finally found a place to stay at a friend’s farmhouse at around
2am, we parked her in the yard. She had
driven for 22 hours on one tank of gas (albeit at only a mile or two an hour). And the next morning, when we walked outside
to assess any damage (the storm had basically bypassed us), we realized she had
4 completely flat tires. I truly felt
like God had given us a guardian angel in the Haywagon for that storm.
During that era, I drove her back and forth across the
country, from Houston to Idaho and back again, many many times. And then, when I decided to move on from YES,
I drove her to grad school, packed once again with all of my earthly possessions.
Shortly after, I drove her to Burley and parked her – for over
a year – while I went on the great adventure of living in South Africa for a
year, and then Jerusalem, and then Kenya.
My parents graciously kept her during that time, starting her every
couple of months to make sure her battery didn’t fail. And when I got home, exhausted to my core and
worn down by some of the things I had seen and experienced, she was waiting
patiently, parked in my parent’s garage.
I remember turning on the ignition again after all of that time, and the
feeling of freedom of being able to just drive.
I drove all over our county, through the potato and grain fields, and up
and down the buttes, and tried to reconcile everything that I had seen and done
the last several years with the little girl who had grown up in Burley Idaho,
and trying to figure out what was next.
That fall was a healing fall for me, surrounded by my family
and old friends, grappling with what to do next in life, driving the Haywagon
around southern Idaho.
And then suddenly, I got my dream job. All the way across the country on the East
Coast, and so I loaded up the Haywagon once again. Once again there was a late night packing
session and once again she was filled to the gills, and the doors had to be
slammed shut.
I drove from Idaho to the ranch in Arizona, kissing my
Grandma and Da, and then on to pick up a friend and drove from Arizona to his
home in Nashville. Then continued to DC,
picked up another friend and crossed the eastern shore to enter my new home
town of New Haven, Connecticut. The
Haywagon had officially crossed nearly the entire USA.
We pulled up to my new little New England home and unloaded
the car, once again, and I started my new life.
Once again, she was my commuter buddy - she got me to and from the long,
traffic-laden drive to the office each day that I was in the country, and then waited
patiently while I did my fieldwork across the world – Vietnam, Cambodia, India,
Paraguay, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Ethiopia, Swaziland, Lesotho… and on and
on.
She was there when my love moved to New Haven, and was the
sole car between us for our courtship, driving us on adventures near and far where
we slowly fell in love, and to through the life logistics that made us
partners. I added him to the insurance,
and he began driving her as much as I did – I loved those drives, sitting in
the passenger seat, feet on the dash, laughing and falling in love.
She drove us up to the Adirondacks, three times – once with
a big group of friends, where we finally had the fateful conversation that
started our relationship officially, once when he drove me back up to the same
spot to ask me to be his wife, and once when we drove back once again to say
our vows to each other and marry in a private ceremony.
Over the last years, there was some wear and tear of
course. By the end, every engine light
was on, and would stay on – alarming for those who drove her for the first
time, but usual to me – she had never ceased to be reliable. Her body started to break down. There were stains on the carpets from years
of living and roadtrip adventures and coffee spills and who knows what
else. There was rust on the back of her
from being rear ended during the hurricane evacuation, and from when a snow plow
had hit her during a great winter blizzard.
And then, there was that one time that we were driving on the highway
and her entire side panel just flew off of the car……
It was time for her to go.
And concurrently, my life chapter had just happened to have changed.
Tim and I bought our new car a couple of weeks ago. Its bigger and brand new and has headlights
that actually work. It has a lot of
space. Space for us – space for me to
invite another person fully into my life.
Space for our new little family of two that maybe someday down the road
become a family of three or four. Space
for the adventures ahead in our marriage –camping trip, perhaps other epic
moves, building a home and filling it with love and joy and things like tables
for dinner parties.
So it is time.
The Haywagon is being donated for many reasons, but mainly
because I want her to go to a good cause and not to just some profit making
used car company. Plus I’m not so sure
that she is as reliable as she has been, so don’t want a new driver taking her
on.
Its time. I came of age with this car. 13 years – the end of high school, college,
teaching, grad school, living overseas, 5 years of my current career,
courtship, engagement…
So thank you Haywagon, thank you for the reliability, for
being my outlet for adventure, for giving me a sense of independence, a get-away
vehicle, a vehicle to drive both towards and away from the situations that I
needed to experience to build the foundation of my current life. Thank you for 13 years and 130,000 miles –
hard miles. Thank you for waiting all of
those years I was abroad, and always starting up again when I returned. You’ve been the supporting character in my
epic coming of age story.
And thank you to my parents, who invested in getting me a
great, reliable used car to take to college, and ended up investing in the car
that would carry me for 13 years! What a
blessing – both financially and security-wise – to have safe and reliable
source of transportation for over a decade.
Here is to the end of a great, great era. The closing of the chapter on my coming of age
years.
And here is to all that will come ahead. I never, ever could have imagined all that
life would have in store for the next 13 years on that day in my parent’s
driveway when I first opened the Haywagon door- all of the life that would have
been lived, the people that would have come and gone. The mountains and the valleys – both literal
and figurative, that I would have driven over and through. I never could have imagined how rich a used Pontiac
Grand Am could have made me feel.
And wow – what does that mean for the next 13 years? Because I am positive I have no idea where
this new shiny car will take us – what adventures, mountains and valleys lay
ahead. But I am very excited to find
out.
Sweet dreams Haywagon!
