The end of the movie True Grit involves a spirited and dedicated horse called “Little Blackie” running itself to collapse and death against the moonlit sky to save the life of the protagonist, who named it. My first car was a blue two door Pontiac 2000. I never named it, but that car carried me to the homecoming dance, college, from Maine to Georgia, and to the Pacific Ocean. Eventually it took me to Texas where it died in a Walmart. The beginning and end of the story involve little old ladies.

I didn’t want a car. I wasn’t keen on driving; still am not; and only registered for my drivers license test when my dad got frustrated with me eleven months after I’d turned sixteen. This particular car came to me through my Uncle Mike, the nexus of most crazy stories.  He was listening to a coworker gripe about a problem that had landed in his lap. This guy’s elderly aunt had a car with some random electrical problems. After it stalled out and stranded her in a number of intersections, she declared it possessed and swore never to drive it again. Her nephew, not being crazy, took it to a couple repair shops without satisfaction. He told Mike he was willing to dump the whole thing for his sunk costs of $400. Uncle Mike called my mom and asked if I was looking for a car. She said “No I wasn’t”, but the deal seemed compelling enough that my parents decided it was worth looking into. Now the real glory of this tale is that our friend, Mr. Tom Oliver, who lived directly across the street from us, was the senior mechanic manager at a GM dealership.  He blessed the car, told us he could fix the problem, and I had a vehicle that didn’t need pedaling. 

I’d like to stop a moment and once again acknowledge the ridiculous chain of good fortune that this series of events documents. Even at seventeen I understood that this is not the experience most people have in life. Thirty-plus more years has only caused me to be more grateful that the world seems to go out of it’s way to make things easy for me. I understand that optimism is easy when the world keeps walking by to refill your three-quarter-full glass. I pay it forward to the best of my ability.

My expenses were gas, my parking place at the high-school, and maybe part of the insurance. I left the car at home freshman year at Binghamton, on my parents’ insistence, saving me from being the kid in the freshman hall who had the car. That meant poor Dan Rafael had to drive us everywhere. My Pontiac could carry an impressive amount of camping and rock-climbing gear, and one spring break, took three guys, three bikes, and almost a quarter mile of climbing rope to West Virginia to escape a late spring storm. I neglected to tell my parents about the sudden change of plan, and came close getting grounded for the first time in my life as a twenty-one year old. It did ninety mph after I jumped out of a plane. Following college graduation, Jenn Goetz and I loaded it up with six weeks of supplies and road tripped across the country and back. It got the dirt of at least ten national parks in it’s tires, suffering only one flat, outside of Corvallis, Oregon. 

As its last great journey, my mother and I drove it down to Texas, so I could start my life as a teacher. We stopped in New Orleans, got hustled for money, and spent a considerable fraction of the car’s purchase price on breakfast at Brennan’s. Mom and I told stories, and bonded our way across the Southeast before I started life as a responsible adult. I remember crossing the state line into Texas and instantly understanding the lyrics to “Deep in the heart of Texas”. 

The Pontiac 2000 died on Garth Road in Baytown, Texas not long after. I had only been teaching for two or three months when an unobservant older lady pulled out of the Walmart parking lot into oncoming traffic. There was no time to react.  Every person was unhurt. She didn’t have insurance. The car was sufficiently messed up and I wanted to spend some of my newfound teacher money. I donated the Pontiac 2000 to charity, because it wasn’t’ even worth enough cash to trade in. I got a red Isuzu pickup. I put  a cap on the back, and I could stretch out and sleep in it when I went camping. Eventually I named it Chucky.