Last night at around 11:30pm my phone rang. It wasn’t a breaking news story or anything very exciting, but a tow truck driver looking for my car.
When I first got back from living in Israel I bought, from a good friend, a car. Another friend, Jenny, named her Miss Jackson and it stuck. The car was a white 1988 Chevy Celebrity Eurosport. It was an incredible machine. Big bench seats, an automatic shifter on the column and a roaring 2.8 Liter V6. I drove her everywhere. Sometimes the AC would act up, the Intermittent windshield wipers worked intermittently, the weather stripping around the doors was falling off, and the doors didn’t lock, but I loved her still.
I have so many fond memories of Miss Jackson. The time Boyd and Julian and I drove her to Atlantic City, the trunk full of cheap beer cans, and our famed score of “Black Gold”, or the time Kendra and I drove to NYC for a gallery opening we barely went to. Miss Jackson was in every way the piece that made the destination worthy of the Journey.
But alas, sometimes you have to let things go and move on. So, after a time of trying to sell her, I decided to donate her to NPR. They picked her up last night, and now she is gone. She is off to continue to rule the road. They kept asking me if she was operable, and I kept saying, she runs perfectly. I don’t think they believed me. Just wait until they fire her up for the first time!
Godspeed Miss Jackson!