Oh the places we’ve been
I blame my children.
Since my daughter Elizabeth was young, she has gotten into the habit of naming our various vehicles to match what she perceived as their “personalities.”
Alex has joined her in this and it has become something of a family tradition with extensive discussion and thought going into each vehicle’s name. For years, I have driven Cinnamon Sparkle. Which considering my daughter was nine years old when she named it, was probably the best option for a vehicle whose official colors were cinnamon with a white top.
Many families refer to their vehicles by basic descriptions often just by the Chevy, Ford, Jeep, Dodge, by the model name or other basic description. So the vehicle may become the red Chrysler or the purple Flex.
Vehicles may also get nicknames based often on the personality of those driving them. For example the psychedelic- painted full sized vans with shag carpeting in them driven by that one guy in high school had various locker-room worthy nicknames, none of which are appropriate to share in a family newspaper, let alone be suggested for a responsible, family vehicle.
To my children, generic descriptions for vehicles are the equivalent of a dog owner referring to their canine companion as “Brown Dog,” or “Black Mutt.”
Other families use workarounds when discussing their vehicles such as “Dad’s truck, or the blue SUV, or “Uncle Bob’s Deathtrap Held Together with Baling Wire and Duct Tape.” Much like in the Toy Story movies where the toys come to life when their owners are not around, I imagine old cars sitting around scrapyards reminiscing about what they have seen and where they have been over the years. Some will have boring stories of endless traffi c jams where they see nothing but the bumper of the car in front of them. Others share their adventures of epic cross-country road trips and watching a generation grow from children getting car sick in the back seat to them learning how to drive and that time they ran out of gas three miles from home because they were trying to push just how long they could go before filling the tank.
I was thinking about those stories this weekend as I was cleaning out Cinnamon Sparkle for the last time.
I had gotten word last week from the insurance company that rather than replacing the headlight and fixing the body damage from hitting a deer, they were considering it a total loss.
On Sunday morning, as I checked under the floor mats, in the seat pockets and in various compartments making sure there weren’t any missing treasures squirreled away, I got to thinking about the many memories tied to the vehicle. I thought of the family sing-alongs as we traveled to visit family over the holidays. I thought of the camping trips and of the cross-country treks and of the nerve-wracking trips with my kids learning to drive. I thought of the thousands of miles driven over the past 12 years.
On Tuesday they came and took Cinnamon Sparkle away.
Over the past week, we have been looking at replacement vehicles. If all goes according to plan, by the time this paper arrives in people’s mailboxes we will have a new vehicle, or at least new to us.
With Alex just learning to drive and Beth soon to be heading out into the “real world” only time will tell what new adventures we will have in store for us.
Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.
