New Beginnings

My last day with a Legend,

They're here.  I typed.

OK.  Let me know when they have it loaded.  He typed back.

The street we live on is narrow and hard to maneuver.  For a normal car.  For a truck with a trailer that can carry three cars, just about impossible.

 I stood looking at my car and the automobile delivery guy as he approached from a block away.

"We're going to push it over to our truck and load it there."

Ah.  Clever.  If Mohammad won't come to the mountain, the mountain will come to Mohammad.

....I think I have that backwards...

The car they came to fetch was my 2001 VW Beetle TDI. 

The TDI standing for Turbocharged Direct Injection.  Yep, this diesel powered puppy could hit the road and stay humming along for almost 600 miles on one tank of gas.  We're talking close to 45 miles per gallon.  And I was not driving this like "grandpa" drives, leaned over peering ahead going forty miles per hour. 

We're talking screaming down the road at 90-100 miles per hour, blowing the doors off of other cars on the road.  Yeah, it's not a supercharged Dodge Charger that probably could without even a sigh hit well over 140 mph.  But for a small 1900cc turbodiesel, it was impressive.

This car was.... a sleeper in its own way.  And I did everything I could to keep it running.  And it was not easy.

I think I spent more on the car than what I originally paid for it.  If ever there was a Beetle model that seemed to embody all of the problems a car can have, I owned it.  Deteriorating plastic, airbag problems, oil pan issues, bad repair parts, even (gulp!) a bad fuel pump, you name it.  Where other Beetles maybe had one of the problems, my Beetle seemed to have ALL of them.

So here I stood, watching as it was slowly hoisted up the ramp of the trailer.  No longer drivable. The shift cable had messed up again. The A/C had quit working. 

After replacing the spoiler three times, it was damaged yet again, this time by a raccoon who had just crossed the road and inexplicably CHANGED ITS MIND at the last second.  I gave up.  I wasn't going to do it a fourth.

Since then, the windshield cracked from the intense Houston heat.  Someone had whacked the driver's side mirror, cracking it...and then self consciously folded it over so no one would notice.

But the engine.  The engine was SOUND.  It purred like a kitten.  As with most diesels it had that small rattling sound while idling.  But unlike the old diesels from the 80s that vibrated and rattled so bad you felt like you were caught in the middle of a California earthquake , today's diesels are as smooth on startup as any gasoline engine.

They loaded it up and are pulling away. I typed.

OK.  Thanks!  Thanks for everything!  He typed.

Oh, Orlanda, I owe it all to you. Thanks for all you've done.  I typed.

And so the New Beginnings. The person I was texting to was the one man who could make sure this old 18 year old car, on the brink of being a Collectible Antique, would be well taken care of.  Handled with the care this old car deserved.

He was a mechanic in Jackson, Mississippi who was an expert on all things Volkswagen. And just about any other car from what I could tell. He had pulled this car out of so many fires, I lost count.  I was living in Meridian at the time. He would even drive the 90 MILES to check out my car.

It started raining so I didn't get to see them drive away.  But the image is imprinted on my brain almost as if I had seen it.

Goodbye, old friend.  I'll stop in and check on you.