The Ol’ Car Covered Lots of Ground With Them

I come up out of the water as I finish swimming my laps. I hear my husband’s car start up with a deep rumble and watch it roll down the long driveway, through the open gate and off the property, never to return. A knot of sadness constricts my throat.

Why am I sad? My husband isn’t in the car, he’s standing in the driveway watching the new owner drive it away. I should be elated. For years I’ve been lobbying to get rid of the old heap. It’s a 1971 faded red Mercury Comet. It has two doors, six cylinders, a stick-shift and a bench seat whose protruding springs are covered by a Sunday Times and a beach towel. An ill-fitting bike rack long ago left deep scratches on the back. The driver’s side door doesn’t close completely. The antenna is broken off, and the gearshift knob is loose. The horn doesn’t work. The heater is shot.

But when we bought it in 1970, it was bright red, shiny, curvy, sporty, low-slung and sexy. We were newlyweds then, and the $2,615 price tag seemed high even though it included a heater, lap belts and radio.

For a few years, it was our only car. We drove it up and down the California coast on short vacations, and once we drove it all the way to New York, then back via Canada. We carried our new 10-speed bikes on the back. During the day we would sightsee and ride bikes, and at night we’d sleep in cheap motels in towns with names like Medicine Hat and Moose Jaw. For days we drove past endless wheat fields watching majestic thunderstorms in the distance.

Other memories of the Comet aren’t so pleasant, like the time we found a tarantula on a hike and decided to bring it home in a shoe box in the trunk. By the time we got home, the shoe box was empty. The thought of a tarantula--or thousands of her offspring--crawling out at some future time was strong motivation to find her. It was then we discovered a novel feature of the car: The back seat could be removed. When we took it out we found the wayward spider’s hiding place.

A few years later we could afford a new car and the Comet became our perennial second car, the one my husband drove. It lived up to its name. Like its celestial counterpart, it regularly departed and returned, carrying him in his commuter’s orbit; first to his job at Edison Co., then to Cal Poly Pomona, where he earned his teaching credential. And for 24 years it faithfully ferried him to and from Chaffey High School in Ontario, where he taught science.

We Americans imbue our beloved cars with personality traits--the Comet was mischievous. Once, as my husband walked to the parking lot at Cal Poly, he heard a relentless din, some idiot’s horn is stuck, he thought. As he got closer to the Comet, the noise got louder. With deep chagrin, he snatched open the shiny red hood and yanked the wires off the horn.

I experienced its mischievousness once when my car was in the shop and I had to take the Comet to work. I went partway down the long drive, then stopped to close the gate. I put it in neutral and pulled the emergency brake, which held, momentarily, when I got out. As I bent down to release the gate, I sensed movement behind me. I spun around, wide-eyed, to see the Comet rolling backward. I leaped into the iris bed; luckily, the open door caught against the gatepost and stopped the car. The door was badly sprung, but my husband wasn’t even mad when I told him.

“It’s a good thing the door was open or you might have been hurt,” he said.

It played tricks on other people too. Recently my husband was driving a colleague to a meeting when the heater hose suddenly burst, spewing rusty water onto the poor guy’s clean tennis shoes.

The Comet’s outward deterioration didn’t bother my husband. Whenever I would bring up the idea of selling it, he’d say, “Why? It still runs, and I only have to buy gas once a month! Besides, that’s the car I was driving when I started teaching, and I’d like to finish up my career in it.”

*

When he retired last June, he drove the Comet home from school for the last time and parked it under the walnut tree where it valiantly endured bird droppings and the occasional walnut bonking off the hood. Then one day a friend came over and said, “Hey, do you want to sell that old red car? My wife and I need a second car, but we don’t have much to spend.”

“Well, hell, you can just have it,” my husband said, “but it’s not in great shape.” He reeled off its shortcomings.

Our friend said, “That’s OK, my boys and I will have fun fixing it up.”

Before he changed his mind, I hurried to the bank to get the pink slip from the safe deposit box where it had lain for nearly three decades. I was happy that someone else might get a few more years out of the old clunker. But a little nostalgic, too: It had been our first car, and it had marked many passages of our life together.

I think we even learned a few things from it over the years. The tarantula episode showed us the importance of getting to the root of a problem when it first appears. The stuck horn saga: You shouldn’t be too quick to criticize others, lest you discover you are the guilty one. The car door fiasco showed how much my husband valued me. And the broken heater hose? Well, sometimes life dumps rusty water on your white tennis shoes--what are you going to do?

Now, I watch from the pool as the car pulls away from its spot under the walnut tree. Suddenly, an image streaks across my mind like a comet. I see an adventurous young couple bombing through Canada in a shiny red car with bikes on the back. It’s a hot, sunny day in 1975; her feet are sticking out of the open window and her brown hair is pulled into a pony tail. He’s tan, shirtless. They’re listening to country music blaring from the radio, laughing at the corny lyrics. Beyond golden fields of wheat loom massive thunderstorms, but they are still miles and miles away.

The old car rumbles down the driveway, and its taillights wink out as it turns onto the street. Unexpected tears sting my eyes, but they are not for the Comet that will never return. They are for the couple whose youth, likewise, has departed forever.

*

I duck underwater and swim half a length. When I come up, I see my husband’s sad expression.

“We had some good times in that car,” he says.

“I know,” I reply, smiling. The pool water has washed away all signs of sadness.

Although our outward appearance of youth may be gone, we still feel a strong spirit of adventure. Our days of driving commuter orbits are over, and we are lucky enough to have both time and means to travel down new roads together. A shiny Explorer waits in the garage.