Well, it’s gone. The old blue car is gone. It wasn’t always an old blue car. My first wife and I bought it new when we first moved out of New York City. It was the first, and only time I ever bought a new car. Every other car has been used.

We've been through
Some things together

It was twenty years ago. I was making good money, in fact, I believe I was making more then than I am now. We were saving up a down payment to buy a house.

We bought a small station wagon in suburbia. I could walk to the train station and my wife could take our baby daughter to play dates.

We found things to do
In stormy weather

I don’t remember which trips I took that car on. Did I drive it out to a college reunion? To folk music festivals? Was it the car I drove to Canada, or to my daughter’s college? Was it the car I drove to the therapists as my first marriage ended? The car I drove to Kim’s house when we first started dating? Which political events did I drive to in that car?

I’m not sure. But I do remember the last trip I took in it. It was a few years ago, when we moved out of Stamford to Woodbridge. I packed it up with boxes that didn’t make it into the moving van. I brought the cat in the car, and I carefully drove to our new home.

By then, the car was getting pretty old. Just about everything was starting to fail, the brakes, the transmission, the steering. I’m not sure what. My father-in-law offered to get us a newer car, and much as I didn’t want to say goodbye to the blue car, I knew that it needed a lot of work.

So, we got the black car and the blue car sat in the corner of the driveway. I never even got around to bringing in the final load from the car. We let the registration and insurance lapse.

The car got tied up in our financial issues for a while, and it wasn’t clear what we could or couldn’t do with it. Finally, all of that cleared up, and the car continued to sit in the yard.

Finally, this fall, we arranged to have it taken away, and this morning, a flatbed truck came and took it. Kim sent me a photo of the car on the flatbed truck.

Life continues on. The blue car is gone; the first and only car I ever bought new, the car that carries so many dreams gone askew, the car that I’ve had longer than any other car.

Long may you run.
Long may you run.
Although these changes
Have come