Thursday, December 27, 2007

Elegy

Silver Bullet

I pulled the fake fleece-lined gloves out of the glove compartment today. I remember putting them in it for the first time. The winters in Redding were so cold that a pair of gloves was critical for keeping the digits pliable in the freezing mornings. Sport (the long gone VW Golf) was under the car port at the ugly brown apartments (the tragically misnamed Hilltop Garden Apartments) when I crawled into the passenger side one sunny afternoon and slipped them in. Surprisingly, they survived the move to Flip Flop and slid, unnoticed, into the compartment of the Silver Bullet. At least one officer noticed them.
"Wow," he said, "You actually have gloves in your glove compartment." I didn't respond as I pulled out my licenseandvehicleregistration.
Sitting on the table, they look naked and vulnerable outside of the confines of the glove compartment. Like a stillborn metonymy, they stand for a car that no longer...

The writer is overtaken with emotion, please return for part 2 of this post. --ed.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

GASP!
h

John B. said...

I hear you.

My own car, a '93 Toyota, has close to 290,000 miles on it. It still runs pretty well, but. Its time draws nigh. I can't recall a time when it has failed to crank; and yet, soon, I will have no choice but to fail it.

I joke with others that it will never die of its own accord, that I'll have to take it out back and shoot it, but talking about it in those terms will just make it that much harder to part with it, when part we eventually must.

Looking forward to Part II.

Colleen Franklin said...

awww, cam! you always write such CLIFF-HANGERS! Come on!

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