The Spaceship has been with me since I was 20. I drove it back and forth to Williams a thousand times, back and forth to the cape over the Bourne Bridge and the Sagamore Bridge, and finally across the country. I parked its cute little squareish backside all over Boston, Cambridge, Somerville, and later Berkeley, and later in the wastelands of Orange County strip malls. It busted a tire in the Fresh Pond rotary, and left its horn in Sacramento. It has seen the Badlands, and Yellowstone, and has even been to Seattle, my future home. It has transported numerous bicycles, cellos, the makings of Emily G's original furniture, and people, people, people. Most people I've loved in the past seven years have ridden in the Spaceship.
I remember soon after I first got it, taking it to Central Square with Emily P, Katie, and, I think, Jon Russell (who I just heard play in a bass clarinet quartet). I don't know what we were doing in Central Square. Probably getting coffee; we didn't go to bars yet. I remember the exciting feeling of getting to drive my friends around in my own car. As I drove, Katie kept pressing the big red hazard-light button, and I pretended to be annoyed but really it heightened the fun of it--but a couple of days later, I still labeled the button "self-destruct."
Spacey is going to the best possible home, but I'm still a little sad. The end of an era. Cheers, Spaceship.
2 comments:
May he go on to greener pastures. He will be sorely missed. Especially his very shiny, red, tempting hazard button.
It's been an amazing life for the Spaceship, quietly chewing his cud among the octos for many years, then, suddenly, becoming a coming-of-age vehicle, ultimately realizing every car's dream of retirement to a no-winter zone. Both his cargo of love and experience, and his rich lore (nightime bleating, emergency hornectomy, self-destruct button, etc) will confer immortality on him.
But what about Spacey's successor, still warmly remembered in the nice-as-ice land, now travelling incognito in the Golden West? Here's hoping he'll find a cozy place in the parking lot of your heart.
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