Farewell to Silver

This past weekend was a bittersweet one for me.

As of five days ago I am the owner of a brand new car.  It's the third Toyota Corolla that I've driven and it's the very first car that I've gotten on my own.  All the others that's have come over the course of my life I've had help with or co-owned.  This new one is all mine.  And when I have time I'm going to properly go through the owner's manual and familiarize myself with all the gizmos and do-dads that are part of a modern automobile.  I regret to say that my father would be mighty upset at me, that I've bought a vehicle so apparently overly-laden with technology.  Dad hated computers and he especially hated computers in cars and trucks.  I can still hear him now: "A car only needs gas, air and electricity, it don't need no stupid computer!"

I tried Dad, I really tried.

So I said hello to a new car.  But it only happened because it was time to retire a vehicle that has seen me through thick and thin for almost twenty years.

This is the 2004 Toyota Camry that I had been driving since December 2007.  It replaced the Corolla that I had been driving from the time I was working as a reporter in Asheville.  That car was totaled on the way to a wedding, it was rear-ended by an off-duty sheriff's detective.  A few weeks later my wife at the time and I got this Camry.  It was still practically new, had very little mileage on it.

It never had a proper name, but I liked to call it "Silver".  After the paint color of course, but also because it was as trusty as the Lone Ranger's horse.

When my wife left me, I wound up with the Camry as she went to another state.  And it and I have been together all this time.  I drove it all around Reidsville and the surrounding area.  When I was dating my girlfriend Kristen I would drive it up to Roanoke, Virginia at least once a week to see her.

Slowly but steadily, the mileage crept up.  It hit 100,000 one night on my way back from getting a sandwich at the Sheetz in Eden.  And still Silver went on.

Then came 2016.

I wrote about it in my book.  About how one night that February, God spoke to my heart and asked me what was I doing?  That I knew Dad wasn't coming back (he had passed away a little over a year earlier).  That I wasn't going to be happy where I was, that I knew these things and I needed to accept them.  Then God put something else on my heart: "Go.  Just pack up the car with Tammy and the essentials and Go!  Let Me lead you to where you are supposed to be.  Don't plan it.  Have faith Chris, as you never have had faith before."

A few months later I filled Silver up with clothes, my Bible, my iPad, my dog Tammy's belongings, as well as a pocket compass and a black cast-iron skillet (you simply do not go onto a journey into the wilderness without a cast-iron skillet) and we headed off into literally God-knew-where.  June 12th, 2016.  It was Sunday morning.  We left the hotel we had been staying and when the car hit US 158 headed out of Reidsville I started playing Lee DeWyze's "Blackbird Song" over the car stereo.

We were headed into the unknown.  Smack toward the edge of the map.

That turned into a year-long odyssey across America, through eighteen states all the way to California.  And though we didn't settle down anywhere out west, we did eventually find a place to be.  It took us a year and more than 10,000 miles but we ended up in South Carolina.

Tammy and I spent over a year staying with friends, giving me time to figure some things out as I never had been able to before.  Eventually I was able to find work and land my own place.  Sometime after that I began my career at the state department of mental health.  A few years after that ended I wound up finishing writing my book and seeing it get published.  I recently began a new job.

And Silver had been with me all along.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end.  My trustworthy Camry began to succumb to age and mileage.  It needed repairs that would have made it more economical to find a newer vehicle.  It had come to a point where going out every time became something to desperately pray for safety.  I knew when a mechanic told me last week that the timing chain was causing the knocking under the hood, that it was time to bid farewell.

But we had some glorious times, Silver and I did.  Over 232,000 miles.  There were only two real significant incidents that she was involved in.  One was when I hit a deer one night on the way back to my parents' home, where I was living for awhile.  The other happened in California, when I shredded a tire and ruined a wheel trying to get to a garage (something that cost me a few hundred bucks).  Other than that, Silver went untouched by anything other than foul weather... and she handled that pretty good.

During our last Christmas together, my wife gave me a Yoda dashboard ornament.  It's the kind of thing that speaks to you when it's turned on.  I only did that a few times before Yoda's voice got too much while I was driving.  But I still kept it on Silver's dash.  I've still got that ornament.  I'm going to get some fresh Velcro and put it in my new car, so that the spirit of Silver can be transferred to the Corolla (I'm trying to come up with a name for it).

And so I took a few last photos of Silver at the Toyota dealership.  And if the meds would have let me, who knows but I might have shed a tear.  It was like saying goodbye to an old friend.  But in the past few days I'm also coming to see that embracing the new can be a good thing, too.  Silver served me during a long stretch of my life.  That time is something that I'm ready to move on from, and come to discover new things and new experiences.  I think I was holding onto the car because there were a lot of good memories that I was still clinging to.  Memories can be good.  But they shouldn't stifle one from making new ones that can be just as wonderful.

And that's what I want, what I need, to do now.

Silver, you were a good car.  The very best of them even.  With a grateful heart, and thankful to God for His provision, I salute you dear friend.

Categories: cars, personal reflection