A Cavalier Goodbye

Just short of 20 years and 200,000 miles we bid farewell to our old green 1997 Chevy Cavalier. This past Saturday, April 1, 2017, we donated it to the Make A Wish foundation's related charity Wheels for Wishes. This is one final contribution the Chevy Cavalier has made to our family

The day before, I had Frank pose with his long time friend and I photographed the two of them from several angles. From the driver front side

and from the passenger front side.

I even took a rear view photo of them both

and one last shot of a goodbye hug.

The morning of the pickup Frank signed over the pink slip.

He also relinquished the manual for the car, still un-crinkled, un-smudged, and in good shape after nearly two decades.

On one of my solo visits to Oklahoma, Frank surreptitiously had the car repainted while I was gone. Truly, I did not notice a difference when the two of them picked me up from the airport; but Frank did and that is what was important. The Cavalier was not as old as this muscle car being repainting in the photo but Frank had it repainted just as green.

Actually, a year or so ago, Frank asked me if I wanted my red Pontiac repainted. I said frankly, no. I would rather put the money toward a new Mac computer. Obviously, my love for my car does not reach the level of his for that Cavalier. As we sent the Cavalier off to that big parts repository in the sky, I recalled memories from that car.

When Robin and Dan were grade school age we would camp for a weekend, once a month three times during the summer, with four or five other families. On one particular trip, Frank was driving Robin and Dan in the 1980 Oldsmobile, our roomier, air-conditioned car with the larger trunk, to Lake Tahoe. I was staying home with Alex. One third of the way there, outside of Stockton, the Oldsmobile threw a piston and the entire engine needed to be replaced. If I drove out to rescue them and return them home, the time for Alex and me in the car to Stockton and back was pretty much the same as the time to continue the journey to the campground. Also, Robin and Dan would have been bummed to miss the fun time with their friends. I threw some clothes in a bag for Alex and me and decided to pick them up and all five of us would continue to the campground together. I cannot explain how we got the contents of the larger car into the Chevy Cavalier along with two extra bodies but we did. I think there were not a lot of empty laps on that trip. But that 1997 Cavalier proved to be more reliable and worthy than its car mate, the 1980 Oldsmobile Delta 88. The Cavalier to the rescue!

One time our neighbor had leg surgery and could not drive his car because it had a clutch. We loaned the Cavalier to him since it had an automatic transmission. The car earned us a lemon meringue pie as a thank you for the few week loan. The Cavalier was his savior at that time.

Parts of the rear seat of the car still bore small brown splotches on the grey cloth. When Dan was in high school he or one of his school buddies left a can of Pepsi in the car one summer day with the windows rolled up. The heat caused the can to explode distributing sticky brown liquid on the rear seat, ceiling, windows, and backside of the front seats. The chain of blame was never truly established; the spotted legacy never faded from view.

But peppered pops of Pepsi were not the worst indignity the Cavalier endured. It was eleven months after our son Dan had gotten his driver's license, a time the police describe as when a teenager's confidence exceeds his driving skills. Our son Dan overcorrected his steering on a curve driving on an overpass in town, ricocheted off the median strip, and jumped the curb on the right. He plunged the car over a steeply slanted embankment, down what at that time had been a rugged, rubbled terrain of eye level weeds opening out onto a gravelly uneven field. The unplanned detour ripped out the undercarriage, causing enough damage that the car just barely escaped being totaled. Dan was unhurt. The Cavalier had protected him.

Memories not withstanding, 7:00 am on Saturday morning the flat bed arrived to take the Cavalier. We watched as it was winched up onto the truck bed. Frank had driven it one last time earlier in the week, but being conveyed, not driven away, was standard procedure.

Frank gave the Cavalier one last pat goodbye. I shed a few tears; silly, I know, to anthropomorphize a car, but that is me.

We stood across the street and watched as the Cavalier was about to leave our cul-de-sac.

Down at the corner we took one last look at the front hood, the "face" of the Cavalier staring back at us.

Then the flat bed with the Cavalier rounded the corner and faded off into the morning light. The irony of the STOP stenciled on the pavement gave my heart one last twinge but we know it was the right thing to do. Donating it rather than selling it made the separation a bit more bearable. Much like a human donates his organs upon death, the Cavalier that had served us so well would live on as parts in other vehicles. Goodbye, old friend.