Requiem for a Stealth Van

(For the history, see 6/15/2010, and 6/27/2008)

It's true--the red behemoth is no more. She gets traded in Monday for something much less colorful and exciting and (we sincerely hope) unreliable. Poor Emily! She has been in tears over this. She loved that decrepit old thing with an odd passion, and as far as we can tell it was reciprocated.

We got it one summer at an auction, and I was thrilled that it was scarlet and gray like any proper Buckeye van. The love affair lasted only about a year, and then the long string of lemonny problems began, most of them severe, mysterious, and unsolvable. But we kept faith, and kept it running until a week ago, when it just had one expensive failure too many, stranding my daughter--although in a good neighborhood, which I call a considerate death.

But between those two dates was a lovely thick sandwich of adventure. Maxie took us to the beach, the cabin, grandparents' houses, and lower upstate New York. She took a full cargo to school for several years, an even fuller cargo of middle school girls to cell group events every other Friday for three years, and then an equally full cargo of high schoolers to Tuesday night Bible study. I used to refer to them as my 800 pounds of hair dye and hormones.

Besides her really amazing collection of dents and dings, she was missing the right passenger cup holder--a victim of a very small girl dragging her very large backpack over it for a year. So we filled up a square tissue box with popcorn, and shoved cups down into it. All the popcorn got loose one night, and I'm not sure we ever did find it all. But it should have gone well with the full gallon of milk which spilled into the back one day. That was in high summer, and it wasn't very long before the Stealth Van was a smelly Stealth Van. It got stuck in snow twice one weekend on a middle school retreat in the hills, and all the crazy little ladies got out and pushed with everything they had--and she broke free. That was also about the time the hauntings began. The inside lights would randomly flash on and off at night, especially if it had been raining. Unfortunately she pulled that trick one Friday night when I was driving all those tweenaged girls back from a haunted house, and scared the bejeepers out of them. What a good time.

Once I got a new car and turned the van over to Emily, she promptly decorated it with magnets and decals and bumper stickers. She's now just as energetically decorating a hand-me-down Toyota Camry--stodgy, dull, and reliable. Em will make her mark on it, and it will be uniquely and obviously hers, and soon not nearly as dull. But oh, it will never be Madame Maxime, Stealth Van.

Rest in peace, baby.

Love, Spud.