Ode To A Warhorse

I did not test drive it, but a nearly identical bright red one. One that had already been sold to someone else, but not yet delivered. With another person's car, once out of eyeshot of the dealership, I floored it, slammed on the brakes, spun the wheel and left ruts. Blasted across railroad tracks in a fashion that made audible contact with the undercarriage. Then after arriving back at the lot, pointed to another car and said "I'll take it."

I passed the dealership a week later and saw the abused red vehicle still on the block, with a sign that proclaimed "Marked Down!" I suppose the former buyer had a change of heart. I wonder why?

There were a few scars on its résumé. A previous rental, it already bore a few bruises and bumps from serving nameless under-the-radar pilots for the first thousand miles of its life. The AM radio was merely a grumbling hiss. The turn signal sometimes chose to take a nap. The dashboard service warning lights refused to cooperate. Souvenirs from battle. I had a few myself, and empathized.

My relationship with the creature was uneventful until we moved to Los Angeles together. Packed to its windows with what mostly became fodder months later, it handled the Grapevine like a barebacked philly. It took on the L.A. snarl with gusto, and hardly a complaint. It sat in miles-long freeway backups merrily playing soft rock ballads to me. It maneuvered around clueless ten-thumbed fish-tailers like a two-ton, four-wheeled gymnast.

I got the feeling that the beast loved touring Magnolia.

We courted potential playmates, gave lifts to important industry insiders, and journeyed to auditions together. Ever faithful was the career support offered by my adopted metal partner.

It slept in a funky underground garage with strangers night after night, and still greeted each morning with a confident roar.

When our luck changed in LaLa-Land, we hightailed it north together. It took the endless grey ribbon in stride, and willingly hung out in rest stops and along side roads. Never a cough. Nor a gurgle.

In Washington it again commuted me to and fro – waited long-suffering in cold parking lots, and at icy curbs. Little did I know it was hiding a worsening war wound.

Still, when time came to sojourn south again, it mastered the road with a secret limp that was never revealed – with no whine, no grimace.

It got up to a 90-mile-an-hour gallop past Mt. Shasta on a rain-slicked highway in the lone, moonlit night. It kept a game face as I released a torrent of stomach flu debris at its dashboard, and kept going.

Back in California, it bore me to odd jobs, on apartment hunts, and a four-hour trip to Fresno to visit family.

Finally, it could bare the burden no longer, and released its feeble grip on its brakes one morning on the way to work. It hobbled on its emergency brake, to the repair shop.

Once well again, we picked up the journey anew. The hills of San Francisco. The mind-numbing circular thinking of the San Jose spaghetti wad. The maddening stop-and-go of Santa Cruz. We sampled it all again.

It went unwashed for weeks at a time. Got service sporadically. And made yet another four-hour trip to visit family with its exhausted tires deteriorating into black mush.

Finally the years were taking their toll. One morning the key was turned and all that would emanate from that battle-weary throat was... silence. Many mechanics explored the inner workings, in attempts to revive the oily soul – and for brief moments, they were able to raise it from the dead. There was no heart in me to use a bullet.

At last a Dr. Frankenstein was called in to administer electrical voodoo. The monster rose to animation, artificially resuscitated and responsive via a patchwork, primitive rewiring of its dead brain.

Its final task, after nine years of adventure, was to ferry me on a search for a replacement. The end chapter is now, as the loyal zombie waits to be pulled away, to serve a charity – marching on aimlessly toward a fate unknown, but in the name of yet another noble purpose.