This one’s for the Scandia Girls

.. because over the last 10 years, they have endured even more whining about this matter than Tommy has. I know they will share in the joy of this moment. ;-)



Behold, I have truck plates. I may also have my name permanently flagged as Crazy in the TXDOT computer, but I don’t care. They’re mine now. I have always wanted truck plates, and have been complaining about not having them for so long that I don't even remember why I cared in the first place, but it might have been triggered the time I parked my Explorer next to a wimpy Suzuki Samurai that had truck plates. That's just not right.

See, we got a new car right before Christmas. Tommy explained to the salesman that his wife would really, really like truck plates. No problem, said the salesman. Should happen automatically, he said. The plates came yesterday, but they were not truck plates. Oh, the disappointment. Oh, the dread and fear in Tommy's voice when he asked what I wanted to do about it. ;-)

So today I loaded up both children and drove to the county tax office. I smiled and tried to keep from sounding too insane while explaining what I wanted. Never hurts to ask, right? A few minutes later I left with my truck plates.

I haven’t written about any of this before now because I was still mourning the old car. But thanks to the passage of time and that lovely new car smell, I feel like I can finally share the trusty old Explorer’s swan song.

We really did intend to drive it until the day it died. But things were getting a little tight in the sedan. And I worried constantly about Tommy driving the Explorer, death trap that it threatened to be. So we traded it in. (I use “traded” in the most generous sense of the word, because it was a shock that the dealer didn’t laugh out loud at the prospect of giving us actual money for it.)

But before it was bound for the junkyard, it was mine, and it was loved. There are so many great memories of that truck, from a magical time when car payments and insurance and registration were just words that I heard my dad say every now and then. (Thanks, Dad. :-)) I remember the day he told me that it was paid off – I really wish I had understood the magnitude of what he was saying, because I’m pretty sure that I did not respond with an appropriate amount of gratitude.

It was my college car, my beloved black truck. There were all those sunny afternoons at the coin operated car wash on Texas Avenue, where Natalie and I would enjoy our fountain cokes and lovingly wash and clean our cars. And the early morning drives to Navasota and back with Lucy, just to listen to the radio and maybe have another fountain coke. It lived to tell the tale of cross-country trips to Minnesota and Florida in addition to countless treks to Dallas and Houston. Once we were married, it was our shared car for a few months, testing the limits of newlywed patience and goodwill. And then we got a sedan. The Explorer became Tommy’s, and for nearly five years he graciously endured all of its "charm."

And yeah, I have a bright shiny new car which I love, and Tommy, no longer forced to drive around in the clunky old one, is enjoying the sedan. Things for which we are very grateful-- but it’s still a huge 10 year chunk of my (driving) life, probably being sold for scrap at this very minute.

It was my Old Blue.

So I’ll try to focus on the bad stuff. It had hundreds of thousands of miles on it and a Frankenstein engine, the result of days and weeks and months in the shop trying to fix the original engine before we finally bought a rebuilt one. Then there were the squeaky brakes and a driver-side door that occasionally refused to unlock, and the short in the passenger door that caused the speaker to cut on and off when I hit a bump. Let’s not forget the turn signal, which only occasionally worked on the first try, or all of the scratches and scrapes, or the remnants of the gallon of paint I spilled in the back during a misguided attempt to paint our living room a color called Pith.

And, most importantly – it didn’t have truck plates.