The other day my car Jamie Rose was in a dark parking lot and she was nudged by a dark pole. It got her tire axel just right to warrant a $400 repair (you’ll see below why it wasn’t financially worth it to repair). And somehow I knew right away, this was goodbye.
Jamie Rose has been the perfect first car. Red and sparkly black and too cool to believe. There’s something so liberating and exciting about buying getting the first one. I’ve always felt that your first car has got to be quirky out the wazoo, and Jamie certainly fit the bill. She:
-Doesn’t start with the key. I had to get it hotwired and push a switch by my knee to start it.
-Sometimes turns completely off when I turned left. Added a bit of excitement to the driving experience.
-Clicks whenever the steering wheel is turned.
-Leaks air out of her tires pretty bad, but never got a flat!
-Has a trunk that slams, and sometimes breaks the taillights when she does.
-Doesn’t lock. At all. Well, that’s not true. She locks, but doesn’t unlock. So, I never locked her ☺.
-Has a right windshield wiper that stopped working.
-Sometimes scrapes the road when going over bumps.
-Floods the floor of the back seat if the AC goes too long. That is, when the AC worked.
Jamie Rose was also full of stories. I remember when:
-I had 24 hours to make a 22 hour drive from Ogden, Utah to San Antonio, Texas. Jamie and I did a great job and made it! We got a ticket in New Mexico (it was a cheap-shot), and she flooded (see AC issue above), but we had quite a time.
-Her muffler went out in Arkansas. That was a loud journey ☺.
-At 3 in the morning in the middle of Illinois I opened her door after getting gas and her ALARM started going off. My first thought, “this thing has an ALARM SYSTEM?!” Eventually the police came, the alarm stopped, I slept in Jamie since she wouldn’t start, and I got her fixed in the morning.
-She sputtered to a stop right off an exit to American Fork with Eliza on my birthday. We tried jumping her and we set the cables on fire!
-One winter day the driver door stopped opening. So I had to climb out the passenger side. Then the next day it worked again. Silly Jamie playing tricks.
Yesterday I called several junkyards and used car places to find the best deal. Eventually I landed on a nice guy from Orem who fixes up cars. He offered me $300, which is a lot more than I was expecting, considering I bought it for $1000, had put almost two years in it, and it had some major replacements to be done. The Orem man was a really solid gent, and the thing I like most about it is that he’s going to try to fix Jamie up and re-sell her. Most of the other places were just going to use her for parts. I’m glad that Jamie is maybe going to get another chance and give some other young college guy the time of his life.
After the man buying the car told me he would pick it up in the morning and I pulled my stuff out of the trunk and the CDs out of the front, I had a few minutes alone with Jamie. It was sad. It felt very similar to the time I buried one of my good friends Xela, our parakeet. I told Jamie how much I loved her, and I ended up crying pretty bad. I know that cars are inanimate objects, but with how much we had seen together, I really felt like I was saying goodbye to a friend. A friend who had defied the odds and the laughter and shaped a big part of my college experience.
I’ll miss you Jamie Rose. Thanks for the memories!
