Ode to my old, departed friend

Dear Saturn,

I paid cash for you, to a guy who was selling on behalf of his deceased mother. I picked you up in the southern part of San Jose off of Highway 85. I forget the exit now, but there was an El Pollo Loco right off the freeway.

It was Sept. 1, 2001 and I was 18 years old. I had spent the summer working on a garage for Spanish Tony around the corner, but had started at Chabot in mid August. You had 48,000 miles and a silver windshield sun-blocker that is still in your trunk. On the way home together, I was blaring the radio, and I vividly recall how funny I thought it was that I bought you from a religious person and the first song that played was “Running with the Devil” by Van Halen.

The guy I bought you from had forgotten to sign something, so on September 9, I drove back down. I returned the knitted tissue holder I found in the console, because I thought the son would want to have it. He didn’t, but neither did I. We got you registered on Sept. 10, 2001 (dad towed you back from the garage yesterday, Sept. 10, 2009).

I quickly put on the Metallica sticker, the Disturbed smiley face and the KSJO sticker (never did get flashed for Whip ‘em out Wednesday). The boys teased me about the “performance” switch ("This car couldn't do 135 mph if you pushed it out of a fucking airplane").

I tried to change your oil myself for the first year or so, but you’re so low it was hard to pull off. I needed a jack and two jack stands just to slide under.

In June of ’05 your transmission went out, probably because the guy who checked the fluid level during an oil change left the dipstick sticking out. I was in the Grapevine, on my way back down to LA. It was in the mid 90s, and after you cooled down and got a pint of tranny fluid, I drove you slowly back down the hill. At this point, you’d already been broken into four times, including the time that the guy bent your passenger-side door back to get the stereo. You still leak when it rains.

You had your driver-side window smashed, and your lock jimmied at least 8 times. You gave up three cell phone headsets, two stereos, two toolboxes, a great Gap blazer, sunglasses, my "Bleach" CD, my Mag Light and a can of Diet A&W Root Beer.

We ran out of gas twice. You got a flat on the way back from JoNelle's rehearsal dinner.

Back in San Francisco, you lost your water pump, fuel pump and there was the time your brake caliper came off and stopped my car (literally). I’m sorry about that, I should have tightened it tighter.

There was the hobo inside you that Monday morning, the checks stolen from your trunk, the ticket for running the stop sign by work and the time you got towed on that Thursday morning. You took us to Daily City BART after the concert. It’s been a big year. You became unreliable, but we had some good times.

I’ll probably drive you a few more times, but not like it used to be. We’ll fix your head gasket, but I won’t trust you to make it over any bridge. Probably, I’ll donate you or drive you into a dealership for what I expect will be less than $500 in trade-in value (BlueBook has you at $700 in “good” condition).

But Thanks Car. We had an eventful-ass eight years together.