Eulogy for an Oldsmobile

Tomorrow morning I say goodbye to The Beast. I say goodbye to the only car I’ve ever known, the longest relationship I’ve ever had.

He’s a fucking boat, and his nose takes up at least one-third of his length. He’s so wide you can fit four high school-aged kids in the backseat and three up front, all with seatbelts and ample thigh room. He makes a lot of choking and wheezing noises. He screeches when he has to slow down, and he shakes violently when it’s raining. He hates it when it rains.

I remember driving The Beast around Sebastian when I first got him and noticing how loud he purred. It really sounded like a beast roaring when I’d slam the pedal to the floor on two-lane highways, inching the needle closer to the end of the rectangle-shaped speedometer. I wondered what would happen when the needle reached the end of the line, 85 miles per hour. Would the needle helplessly tap at the side of the gauge, trying to break on thru to the other side?

I loved chauffeuring around a load of friends. I was so proud of the ashtray in the backseat. But then there was the issue of the back windows not opening or closing right, so it ended up being a hot, smoky kind of ride. I loved taking the car to the river and lounging in that massive backseat. It was big enough to perform an extensive operation in, trust me.

The Beast took so much abuse, from my particular set of driving skills to the evil-hearted actions of strangers and thieves. I ran my front bumper into countless cars trying to wheel that thing into a tiny-ass parking space on UF campus or in Target’s lot.

After high school one afternoon, I ran over a cement parking stump trying to beat my classmates out. I had friends lift my car in the air as best as they could to scrape my car back out over the stump. One time when I was going to work at 5:30 a.m. (Thank God I quit that job), a car tried to pass me from behind while I was turning left. I let the driver go in my early morning stupor, but there was serious damage.

Then there were the two times that joy riders stole The Beast from me. In both cases, he was returned in a state of disarray a few hours later. In both cases, it was a gray, rainy day. Just like today, the last day our lives will intersect.

The first time, he was hot-wired and stolen from the mall parking lot while I watched a Harry Potter movie. He was taken through Wendy’s and dumped at the Target down the road. The second time was spookier because he was taken from my driveway while I slept, with the front windows open. For a person with insomnia issues like me, that’s fuel for the anxiety fire. Keepin’ that one eye open from now on!

And now, because of The Second Theft, he’s in bad shape. Near his final days perhaps; at the least, a cavernous money pit. So it’s time to say goodbye. For his last ride, my friend Denean and I got some ice cream and then, on a whim, drove to the UF campus for a nostalgia tour. We showed each other our old spots and marveled at how much some things changed and how other things were just how we remembered them.

Having the same car for 10 years gave me a sense of continuity, the illusion of some permanent identity. I drove the 200 miles in between Gainesville to Sebastian frequently during my UF years – I had more friends home than I did up here, and I couldn’t find my social groove. So, The Beast became my getaway car, my ticket to paradise. And it was paradise: I’d load up the trunk with my beach chairs and inflatable tubes and pick up all the homies, because who gave a shit about filling my old car up with sand from all the feet available?

Holding onto memories and this feeling of home, living in a current state of nostalgia within that car, really appealed to me. I would find random scraps of paper or pieces of cutlery and get sent on a trip. Remember that ride to work when Amy ate a yogurt in my front seat and just left the spoon in my glove compartment? Or the night when we played Telephone Pictionary and I kept some of the scraps? One in particular, just text reading “Edward Scissorhands takes a dick to the forehead,” remains. On another, my friend Jeff has written a list of curse words he’d prefer I didn’t use in restaurants.

Saying goodbye to this car feels like a break with the last ten years of my life. In this second car of mine, a Honda Accord, still silver, I won’t find bits of my past. At least not until I live some life with it. And that scares me for some reason. It almost feels like I’m breaking with who I was and the life I had the last ten years. I know as Americans we’re supposed to want new, shiny things all the time now, now, now, but I just love my old shit. You should see the laptop I’m typing on right now; its battery life will astound you with its brevity.

Maybe it’s hard to say goodbye because change can breed uncertainty. If everything remains within our routine, we may not check in with ourselves as often or ask questions like, What do I want? and How can I better my situation? What am I prattling on about?

Rest in power, Oldsmobile Delta 88 Royale “The Beast” Francischine. You were loved.