GUEST COLUMNIST: Driving along in my automobile

It started out as a normal homecoming. After finals and the blur of packing I spent days enveloped in the snug cocoon of my bed. But after a solid week of lying around, I graduated to sitting around, then TV watching, then phone calling and finally the time came for me to get out of the house. And since I live in a suburban wonderland where nobody ever walks anywhere (gasp! Heaven forbid!), I went immediately to my car. Now maybe some of my fellow students return home to find swanky automobiles waiting in the garage. But not me. To put it delicately, I am the proud owner of a total piece of crap. I started saving for my car when I was 13 years old, and bought it during my junior year of high school with my life's savings, a conglomerate of birthday and Bat Mitzvah money, and my meager earnings from babysitting. It was waiting for me, patiently, in the driveway where I had left it months ago. Perhaps at this point I should describe my wonder-car. It is a gray, two-door Mazda 626, stick shift, naturally, since I firmly believe that automatic is for weenies. Of course, you have to examine it fairly carefully to discern that it's a 626 because the raised numbers on the rear bumper fell off last year. In a completely unrelated incident, the trunk lock mysteriously broke one day while I was away at school freshman year, requiring my mother to duct tape the trunk shut to keep it from flapping in the breeze. We lazily left the tape on for months, even after I came home for the summer. So now, even though the trunk works, permanent remnants of silvery, dirty, duct-tape residue goo adorn my car's rear end. And the trunk only opens from the outside, with a key, since the gizmo that's supposed to pop the trunk from the inside doesn't work. But these are just the minor annoyances. I faced a more severe problem this winter when my car didn't have any heat. I finally got that repaired, and now that the weather is warm, the heat won't shut off. Therefore both windows must remain down at all times. And that wouldn't be so bad, except for another little problem. When the windows are down, I, and whichever unlucky passenger I happen to be escorting, are serenaded by the sound of an engine only slightly louder and more grating to the ear than a broken-down school bus passing by a construction crew of twenty men with jackhammers. It's as if I had no muffler at all, even though I'm sure I do, in fact, have a muffler and I have the mechanic's bills to prove it. I have quite a collection of mechanic's bills, actually. But after the most recent trip to the garage, my trusty mechanic said, and I quote: "Don't ever bother bringing this thing back here again. It wouldn't pass inspection with the grace of God, and the transmission is gonna go next, unless the clutch goes first. That will be $300. Have a good day." B ut for all its quirks, the putt-putt-mobile works, even if in only the most elementary manner. And I am very attached to it, which is why I am so dismayed at the thought of giving it up. But it makes no sense to maintain and insure a car that only gets use a few months out of the year. Maybe my younger brother would take it? Not a chance. He looked at me with such disgust and utter horror when I suggested he buy my car from me that I quickly apologized and backed out of his room, muttering, "I really didn't mean to insult you like that. I guess I just wasn't thinking." "Sorry again," I called as he slammed the door in my face. But maybe a dealer would take it? Yes, I thought, a used car dealer would certainly pay me some pittance and then sell my car for five times it's worth to some poor unsuspecting high school student like my former self. No such luck. The only car dealer to whom I took putt-putt laughed in my face and suggested I sell my beloved for scrap metal. Scrap metal, the nerve! While musing over my predicament, I started to wonder why the old heap means so much to me anyway. Why don't I just sell it for scrap metal? Doing so would save me tons of money and aggravation. And it occurred to me that getting rid of my car is just one more step in the process of moving away from home. Bit by bit, the objects and people I came into such everyday, regular contact with at home are fading away, like the "red" cloth interior of my Mazda, grown pinkish and mauve in patches, and the lightening strands of my old high school graduation tassel. With the lease on my off-campus house starting in June, I won't be spending the summer at home in suburbia where cars are necessary. It seems I need the trappings of home less and less, but I guess I'm just not ready to give them all away just yet.

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