The Saab meets its end...and so does an era

On the side of Alligator Alley, at mile marker 43, I sat in the dry, prickly grass calling Geico roadside assistance. Thirty feet in front of me, she sat, silent and forlorn....perhaps the best looking broken down car I've ever seen, with her clean 3 spoke alloys, armor-alled bumpers, and glistening 12 year old paint testifying to its previous life apart from the Florida sun.

Moments earlier I was driving in serene comfort...sunroof open, sipping on a Cherry Coke Zero, listening to March Madness on Sirius radio, with the cruise set at 82 mph. Suddenly, the car jerked and popped out of 5th gear...the tach needle lay limp, telling me all I needed to know. Turning on my hazard lights, I steered across the rumble strips and into the grass, away from harm. I gave the key one more turn-just to quench my remaining shred of hope. She gave her last half hearted groan and that was it. The Saab met its bitter end in South Florida, due to a seized engine.

After making the necessary calls (Geico for practicality, McClure because he was waiting on my arrival, and Dad because he's the only person who really understood...not to mention, he's Dad, that's who ya call) I moved to a lone patch of shade to escape Florida's wrath. Earlier that day, I had invested a $500 in the car to replace some leaking axle seals, so I was pretty mad about that, knowing that it was essentially $500 wasted. For me, $500 is a considerable amount of money, but oddly, I wasn't all that concerned about it. With nothing on my hands but time (and a fair amount of grease) my mind drifted to the journeys that took place in my Saab: the blissful post-purchase drive from Atlanta, the countless ventures through Tennessee's windy back roads, the long hauls to the beach culminating with the intoxicating aroma of ocean air, the kamikaze journey to Kansas and back in a weekend, dates-good ones and bad ones, the drive to South Florida with my life packed in the trunk, and its final journey to Miami that ended 50 miles too short.

Considering that this was the 5th time the car had been towed (which is 5 times more than either of my previous Saabs), my relationship with this car could be defined as love-hate. But despite the frustration, its untimely end was sad.

I know...a car is just a car...not of any real importance...but for 5 years, my Saab provided the scenery, background, and soundtrack to a variety of meaningful memories. The significance in this isn't that my car physically transported my friends and me on those late night food runs in college, but in the fact that it was simply there for all of those, for the beach trips, for the moves, the dates, and on the long and lonely drives when the illuminated dashboard was my only companion. So for me, my Saab represented an era in my life...2004-2009...a rare constant an era when I moved 6 times, had 7 different jobs, and changed life plans countless others.

Maybe now, this era of transition is over.

Now, I have to sell her to someone else...most likely to be parted out. When that time comes, a constant, insignificant as it may be, will be gone. And many of my memories, some of the fondest and some of the hardest, will be just a little more opaque.