Smoke and (Rearview) Mirrors

Close your eyes and imagine:

You pull up to a stop light after exiting the highway. You're the third car in line, and you're listening to the latest Josh Groban smash hit on the radio. As you wait for the light to change, you notice some smoke filtering out of the sides of your hood and blowing backwards across your car.

That's all we need for imagining right now, thank you. So what do you do? Pull over? Call your mechanic/spouse/parent/friend and ask for help? Flag down another motorist? Walk home?

Those options sound sensible, but only if you are not the third owner of a 1991 Honda Accord with 200,000 miles on it. This is the category into which I fall, so I take a more subtle approach. I just turn off the car. I turn it off and wait for the light to change, then I turn it back on and drive away.

I want to assure the concerned of you that I know that the car is not in danger of exploding or catching fire and that the smoke comes from some oil burnoff that happens when the engine is hot and the car is not moving. I keep a close eye on the oil level and the engine heat. So, in advance, thank you for your concern.

Plus, I don't really have many options. I've poured more maintenence money into the car than I can rightfully justify anymore. The time is obviously right for a new car, but the time would be more right when I'm out of graduate school and have a paying job. So, for now let's avoid the obvious and focus on this car and what it means.

I bought the car for $100 from my brother Mark, who bought it for a lot more from my grandfather John Friswell. I actually remember sitting in Papa's garage when the car was new; I was in the driver's seat and pretending that I was a tv detective driving to solve a caper. It's been in the family for 18 years (I tried to register it to vote in the last election, but I couldn't find a birth certificate) and has served us all in a slightly different capacity.

It's carried my grandparents to the A&P to buy us little apple pies and whatever else was on sale. It took my brother to and from work at Acorn Acres Campground and withstood a smiley-face sticker attack from my neice and nephews (most of these still gaze at you from odd angles around the car). For four years now it's guided me around the streets of Washington, DC and Hampton Roads and everywhere in between.

So now it smokes at stoplights and is clearly nearing that parking garage in the sky. Yet everyday it starts. Everyday it carries me safely home...and sometimes the radio even works. What would life be like if there were more things around us like this car? Beaten and tired, it fights every day to stay at highway speeds; it struggles against inevitability to serve its purpose.

It's been a tough year. We're all beaten and tired and waiting for a chance when we can stop to investigate what's under our own hoods. Jobs are being lost, savings disappearing and hopes are faint. And I don't want to be a downer, but someday we'll all be smoking at the proverbial stoplight. Let's take a moment to think now, not just about how we'll carry ourselves then, but about how we plan on travelling all of the miles in between.

Life is about more than smoke and mirrors, and we've got to keep our engines running.