In the summer of 1997, I scraped most of my passenger side along a concrete block. Body damage was sustained, but the car had no enduring problems.
In the spring of 1998, one of the pastors who used to be a counselor at the Lutheran bible camp I went to as a kid backed in to me in a parking lot at UAA. He was going 10 MPH. More dents were added to the passenger side, this time on the fender. One solid pull on the fender solved the problem. I didn't take this step until after the insurance appraisal. My baby won me $1200 in insurance settlement money that I desperately needed by the time I got it.
In the fall of 1998, I sideswiped a Schwann's ice cream truck. I maintain that he switched lanes while I was merging. There was negligible damage to his truck. The front bumper fell off my car and my baby now sports large black scrape marks all along the front passenger side fender. My front bumper was held on with a McDonald's apron for weeks before I could get it fixed. The Shadow perservered.
In the winter of 1999, I was t-boned near my home by a man who was violently opposed to calling the cops. I didn't really want to call the cops, either, since I was doing an illegal U-Turn at the time and I was 2 hours late for a road trip to South Dakota. So I pushed my car back together once again and took off. I drove all the way to South Dakota and back with no problems. When I got back, I needed new tires and a front end alignment, but my baby kept going.
The list goes on, but you can imagine what this car looks like now. It runs like a dream, but it looks like a shit heap. The whole point of this is as follows:
I am now looking at new cars. I have my heart set on a Saturn. And tomorrow, I think I might be making the final round into the dealership to put the last touches on a deal involving a silver 1999 SL1 with 27,000 miles, power locks, air conditioning and a CD player. The asking price is $8995. The Saturn is awful pretty. She gets 38 highway miles on a gallon of gas and when you drive, all you hear is a low hum.
The Shadow gets about 25 highway miles to the gallon. Sometimes less. The steering column on my car is fitted wrong, so when it gets cold, the rubber expands and until it warms up, every turn I make is accompanied by a low moaning of rubber against rubber. The driver's seat doesn't adjust. The hatchback doesn't always stay up when you lock it into position. My passenger side door doesn't open from the outside. The horn doesn't work. The odometer reads 150,000. The trunk is full of shit I can't even describe. There's a burn mark on the ceiling from where Amanda seared my interior with a lighter. There's at least one cigarette burn in the upholstery of the back seat. But can you see her? Can you see the gashes and battle scars and CHARACTER? In your mind, can you see it?
The Shadow has driven through the fire and survived. She is my baby. I've had her for five years. I drove her down from Alaska. She's been to Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Missouri, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts. She was my step up from the full size 1983 Chevy Van. I love her dearly.
I can't say any of those things about the new Saturn. I haven't built the rapport yet. She's not my baby. And she will be the first car I've ever driven that hasn't come with CHARACTER. When we test drove the Shadow, my Dad accidentally broke one of the locks by pushing it inside the door. I should have known then. The Saturn doesn't have much character. It reeks of new and synthesized.
But in the grand tradition, I have to trade in the old for the new. And I just don't know how I'm going to deal with it all.