Is My Car Gay?

I'm writing this post (and posting it later) from Pies and Pints in Fayetteville, West Virginia. I was very glad to see that someone had added a big red tongue to the smiley faced satellite deesh in Whipple, WV.



I would put Pies and Pints' Thai Pie, a dazzling confection of curry, fresh shrimp, fresh basil and cilantro, up against any pizza on the planet, and I do include Sally's Apizza in New Haven in that estimation. This photo makes me drool uncontrollably.

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Maybe I've been away from Connecticut too long. But these WV hillbillies have figured out the pizza thing in a huge way. Lest you think I am being patronizing, I will add that my ancestral people, the Zickefooses, find their center of abundance in Buckhannon, West Virginia. I am Hillbilly proud. We figger out stuff real good.

I had dinner with some of my awesome WV friends, the Fabulous Flying Heeter Family. The trip to Fayetteville was all I'd hoped.

Why Fayetteville, home of Opossum Creek Resort, site of the famed Flock confab and the New River Birding and Nature Festival? It's just 15 miles from North Beckley, West Virginia, where I bought my first new car in 14 years from Hometown Subaru. Hometown was the only Subaru dealer within three hours' drive that had a model on the lot that I wanted to buy, and would honor the Cash for Clunkers plan. Since I suspected that the bottom would drop out of this $3 billion program within the next ten days, I decided to get myself the car I wanted without further delay. **

**In fact, the program was revved up, ruined and crushed only eight days later.

I left our old green Ford Explorer on the lot with its colorful bumper stickers, its 178,000 miles and all.


Heeter just sent me some new New River Gorge stickers. And I saved my Cathedral Cafe sticker that Wendy sent. Now I have to scratch up an I Love Mountains sticker.
Me and Mini-Me, in shadow.

I made them promise not to take it to the back lot to execute it until after I drove away in my new Subaru Forester. We share so much history, and I have already bawled long and hard over that Ford three times, and I did not want to bawl again.

Saying goodbye one last time in the driveway at Indigo Hill.



Although it occurred to me to throw myself on its hood and really let 'er rip, right there in front of the three skinny salesmen taking their cigarette breaks, I kept it together.

Truth be told I am too high on new car upholstery fumes to care. To get in a car where everything works! Where both back doors open from the inside! Where the back hatch can be unlocked with a key! Where the key in ignition alarm does not ding incessantly even with the key out! Which does not stink of mouse piss! and has no candy wrappers anywhere at all, no DumDums stuck into the carpet, no slashes in the upholstery, no straw woven into the cargo zone, no horsefly carcasses stuck in the windshield crevice! No nasty stains, no mouse nests in the ceiling liner, no mousenestfluff, Hantavirus or mildew in the air conditioner, and only 32 miles on the odometer! Oh! Oh! It is too rich. No one could deserve such largesse.

A car that goes when you tell it to, with verve and alacrity and speed. A car with all-wheel drive that flies over the washboard abs of our gravel roads like silk. A car that corners instead of careens. A car with a moonroof that takes up the whole top, and makes you feel like you're flying. A car that will take me to town six more times on a fill than the old one would; that gets almost twice the number of miles per gallon that the Ford did. A car with heated front seats and sixteen pre-sets for my favorite radio stations. Little matter it that I can only receive five in Appalachian Ohio that aren't earnest Christian music. I can't use this feature, but I'm glad it's there.

But there is another side to my joy. My husband is looking for a rainbow bumper sticker, and one with a lavender equal sign. Also a Meat is Murder bumper sticker. I know him well enough to know he will apply them in the dark of night and let me drive around for days without knowing they are there. I have been the butt of endless jokes from my friends, male and female, having to do with a possible sudden midlife change in my sexual orientation. I keep checking. Despite his shenanigans, I am still nuts about Bill after 18 years together. I have unrequited crushes on Johnny Depp, John Cusack (see a slight resemblance to Bill? Like, separated at birth?) and Adam Lambert. OK, minus a half point for that last one.



Make that a full point.

OK, scratch that one. You know what I'm sayin'.

Really, I don't feel any different. I wanted all-wheel drive, decent fuel economy, six airbags, a moonroof, and a lot of cargo room. Is that gay? If any bumper stickers go on my new car, I'll make a lavender one with a rainbow on it that says, "I just like the car, OK?"


If you're as baffled as I was, just Google "Subaru Forester Lesbian."

Whatever. If you see a green Subaru rolling along an Ohio highway with a raised fist sticking out of the sunroof, that'll be me, driving out loud, driving proud.

Cash for Clunkers: Zick Takes the Bait

Photo by Phoebe Linnea Thompson. Last caress for the old car. We're on our way to the car abbatoir.



I'll be on National Public Radio's All Things Considered this afternoon, between 5:30 and 6 pm Eastern time, talking about trading in my faithful, 14-year-old, 14 mpg Ford Exploder for a sleek green beauty of a Subaru Forester. Here's the text of the piece:

As of 8 pm tonight, the Cash for Clunkers program will grind to a halt. An estimated 600,000 low-mileage cars will have been traded in; the three billion dollars allocated for owner trade-ins guzzled down like gas in an oversized SUV’s tank.

I was going to buy a used car. Just one not quite as used as mine, a 1995 Ford Explorer with 178,000 miles on it, dicey shocks and transmission, and an insatiable appetite for fuel. Before the Cash for Clunkers program hove onto my radar screen, I had said it again and again: “I’m going to drive this thing until it falls apart under me.” I was sure we’d pass the 200,000 mile mark together. After all, we’d been through a lot.

That Ford carried me to the hospital twice when I was in labor. We strapped our new babies into its back seat, fumbling with the buckles and straps. Both kids grew up in it, and the slow and steady rain of Cheerios gave over to Nerds and bubble gum, and an orange DumDum embedded in the back carpet, stick pointing up. School papers and Matchbox racers and hairbobs accumulated under the seats; stickers appeared on the windows where I wouldn’t have put them myself.

There were bumper stickers from Maine to North Dakota. There was Give Turtles a Brake! There were dog stickers and flower power daisies and Life is Good stickers and during the 2008 election there were some pointed ones that got me more than a few hairy eyeballs from other drivers, maybe even a ticket or two.

Mice lived in it off and on, including one mama mouse who had the bad judgement to make a big fluffy nest and have her babies in the false fabric ceiling, which was a tenable plan until I drove the car and parked it in the sun. It took a month for me to find the nest. You can imagine. The half-gallon of milk that tipped over and leaked one summer day didn’t help. Neither did the chicken that rolled out of a grocery bag and festered quietly in the cargo area for a week until a small flock of vultures circling low told me there was something of interest in my garage. I didn’t drive it very often, just when I needed to.

It broke down on me only once, and that was just a dead fuel pump, in a parking lot only three blocks from my husband’s office. That car took care of me. And so, between the memories and the stickers and the mingled smells and the familiar, dependable roar of its engine, it became part of our family. I would drive it until it fell apart.

Until Cash for Clunkers. Until it hit me that nobody was going to walk up and offer me $4,500 for the MouseMobile, ever. And I began to see the wisdom of starting over with a new car, no, the heady, intoxicating appeal of it. I struck the Cash for Clunkers lure like a hungry bass.

But the thought of having a dealer fill its good heart with goo and rev the engine to death; of crushing its still strong if rusty body, broke my heart. It seemed so unnecessary. Couldn’t they give it to someone who needed a car? Couldn’t we not kill it, and say we did? I felt like a heel, a faithless, thankless creep, and twice I had to pull over and bawl for awhile at the thought of condemning a perfectly good car to such a violent death.

When I finally closed the deal on my new car, I asked the dealer to leave the Ford on the lot for awhile, not to lead it into the back pasture until after I was out of sight. He chuckled. "People get attached. They do!" I sat quietly in it for one last time, breathing its many aromas. I looked at its stickered rump in my fancy new auto-dimming rear view mirror with compass, stepped on the gas and headed home.

Last look at the Explorer, waiting to be junked. Oh, I can't bear it.

The sleek new beauty, a 2010 Subaru Forester. I know, it's the same color as the old one. I''m comfortable with green.

If you would like to hear the commentary, click here.

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