The Crusher!
“Does it start?” he asked.
“Yes,” I say, insulted and even a bit hurt by the question.
“Does it start? Of course it starts. It’s a Volvo,” I think but don’t say while standing on the street just down the hill from where Mary and I live in Brookline. Standing here at the end of an era.
“That’s right, it doesn’t steer,” the man tasked with towing my car away says from inside the cab of his huge flatbed truck.
“It steers a little… like all cars used to,” I say, remembering those first cars some of us learned in, cars without power steering, cars with roll \-down windows and pull-up locks you had to lean over to open. Cars you had to inch forward and back while turning the wheel or forget it.
I bought this Volvo wagon used, trading in my previous used Volvo wagon for it. This one white, that one green, the two collectively owned by me over the last twenty years or so. Cars I didn’t drive much given my love of two wheels instead of four. Still.
The death knell came in the form of a fifteen hundred dollar estimate to replace the power steering line. The last time I drove it, to the Cape and back, I called my local mechanic to ask what to do about the stiffness in steering.
“Will I even make it?” I asked as I made may way down to Route 24.
“I wouldn’t drive it far. Stay in the neighborhood,” he advised.
“Too late,” I say. “Is it safe?”
“Not really. And you can break the rack and pinion, which is a bigger deal to fix.”
“Well, I’m already headed to the Cape,” I say, not thinking for a second about turning back.
He suggests I buy a gallon of steering fluid, which I do, and refill the fluid every time the steering stiffens up, which in this case turns out to be every twenty minutes or so. Clearly not a long term solution.
My first car was the Datsun 610 I bought for six hundred dollars and drove around in Boston when I first arrived in December of 1980. The most notable thing about that car is how many Denver Boots it attracted. Yes, those horrible yellow clamps the police attach to your wheel, so one can no longer avoid paying the twenty back parking tickets you’ve accrued.
Of all the cars I’ve owned, only one did I buy new—a red Toyota Camry with a rockin’ V6 engine. Friends attribute this car to how I attracted my fiancé.
“You bought the car and six months later you were engaged,” one friend famously said. “Can I borrow it?”
Since then, it’s been just the two used Volvos with no apparent thret to the marriage… maybe because Mary’s drives new cars and is now leasing a brand new Toyota hybrid plug-in. On this day, Mary and I mark the end of one era and the beginning of another as I stand on the street literally getting emotional in front of a big burly tow guy wanting to discuss the particulars of the situation.
“Do you know who owns this truck?” He says pointing to a large pick-up parked just a few inches behind my Volvo
“No.”
“Think you can wriggle it out of the space?” he asks. “Might be hard for me to tow it otherwise.”
“Let’s see,” I say, pretty sure I can.
A couple of days ago, I drove Mary’s new EV down our street to pick-up all the detritus from inside my Volvo, and finding nothing of particular value. Jumper cables. Some pens. A couple of dollars in loose change. Some random trash. Now I’m back in earnest—title and keys ready for the hand off.
When I turn the key, the engine purrs with the familiar sound of cars built to last. This a 2004, not quite in its second decade, and whose fate I no longer control. I almost feel guilty in this moment, as if I owe it to the car to find that next owner.
There’s very little room between the car and truck parked in front and behind me. Still, I manage to wriggle out, turning the wheel with enough force to inch my way out. It takes five or six back and forths before I’m clear of the tight spot.
“Maybe I can back it up on to the truck,” the tow guy says, and I now wish I’d asked his name for some reason. “Straighten it out a bit,” he adds.
When we’re aligned and ready, I get out but leave the car running.
“Take some pictures,” Mary had asked, and so I do.
“Is this normal?” I think while clicking away. “I don’t think so.”
“Does my tow guy think I’m a nut?” I ask myself.
“Definitelty,” which has me sneaking a selfie when he’s looking the other way.
Taking pictures again brings on emotions better suited for the departure living beings, not internal combustion engines. And yet here I am, sad to see a car I rarely drive being readied for the trip to the auto parts dealer who handles the WBUR donations. If I thought my Volvo might find a new owner, these interactions with the tow guy and his truck curtail any and all romantic notions.
With the car secured to the back of his truck, the man climbs into his cab and says, “All set.”
“Wait,” I say. “Do I need to remove the license plates?”
“No, it all just goes in the crusher together. The DMV doesn’t want plates anymore.”
“The crusher?!?” I think, myself crushed by the thought of such a violent end to not only the car, but the cassette deck and DVD player it sports. For years, I’ve carried around the music tapes we made while in college and early years living in Boston. Though I rarely played these tapes, having them in the car gave me a level of solace knowing I could if I wanted to.
“I learned to drive in that car,” Ben says when I later tell him of its fate.
“The White Stallion!?!,” Nicole says of a car she’d come to regard as a permanent family fixture, though not her favorite. “Remember BOB Dad?”
“Yes,” I say. ‘B.O.B. for Bucket of Bolts,’ the name we gave our previous Volvo, the one we bought from a friend and and the one Nicole remembers more fondly for the name than for anything else.
“Sounds good,” I say as the truck rolls down the street, title and keys handed over. No fanfare. No parting words. No anthem song to go with closing credits. No one to care but me.
