a fond farewell

There was something that I was bound and determined to do this year, hell or high water, because I knew that the time had finally come to do it.  While it may be construed as a cheap shot to use a single event as two of my 26 Golden Things, I feel that by splitting it down the middle I can effectively write a fairly massive blog for each side of the equation.  I suppose this could be called part one (and probably the bigger part,) but really it starts and ends here and doesn't move into the next blog too much.  So here it is, the latest in my list of things to do for my Golden Year.

#7 - A Fond Farewell; finally letting go of Bethel the Jeep.

Summer 2001

My family and I moved from Southern California to Wisconsin in March of 1997 because my dad was transferred here for work.  I remember we had a Suburban at the time that my mom was driving, without four-wheel drive of course because why the hell would you need that in the valley?  Regardless, my dad had to buy a new car and in April of that year he purchased a 1997 Jeep Cherokee 4x4 Sport.  She was navy blue with a gray interior, a CD PLAYER! and four-wheel drive, and above all else... she was fun.  I remember my excitement over the Jeep because we had never really had a "fun" car.  A mini-van, a couple sedans, my brother had an ugly white Mustang (sorry Josh,) and my mom had the Suburban.  But the Jeep was brand-spanking new and a beauty.

For the first year or so it was my dad's car, but then it became my sister Megan's once he got a company car.  My brother Josh at one point wanted to drive down to Milwaukee with a couple co-workers for some sort of convention I believe.  Weather was kind of shitty and he wanted to take the Jeep because it had four-wheel drive.  It was October of 1998 and the ONLY accident the Jeep would ever really be involved in.  At least, one that caused damage.  Josh hit a deer (could have happened to anybody) and that bitch CREAMED the Jeep.  (It will be referred to as "the Jeep" until I get to October of 2005, btw.)  These are a couple pictures from when it was at the impound lot.  I like the one on the right more because you can see the obvious blood from the deer, but also the hair stuck in the cracks of the fiberglass, lol.  The Jeep was patched up and ready to roll shortly after, good as new.  Megan was still pissed.

 October 1998

Time goes on and so did the Jeep, several years passing under the ownership of my sister.  She moved out of the house when I was a freshman in high school, taking the Jeep with her when she left; that would be the fall of 2000.  A few years later she and I went up to High Cliff State Park to take pictures and fart around for the day.  It was May of 2002.  Up at the observation deck, after taking in the views, Megan asked me if I wanted to drive the Jeep.  I was ALMOST in Driver's Ed (by which I was enrolled but had not yet taken a single class.)  So I drove the Jeep less than half a mile and then freaked out and pulled over.  I don't think I drove it over 10 miles and hours; really, I just coasted down the road.  Maybe a week later after seeing "Life or Something Like It," Megan let me drive again, this time down Midway Road in Appleton for a couple miles.  It was exhilarating; I still remember jerking the wheel wildly because I thought you had to do that in order to keep it on the road.

At the beginning of March in 2003, Megan got married and moved away to Hawaii which meant, miracle of miracles, that the Jeep was staying behind and my parents were giving it to me to drive.  She had 68,400 miles on her; I don't know why I still remember that.  I wish I had some pictures from those first couple months but I don't.  I only have a picture from the beginning of May 2003 when mom made me stand beside the Jeep for the obligatory "You're going to prom!" pictures.  I was on my way to pick up the lovely @roamingMo because she was taking me to prom (I was only a junior.)

 May 2003

Back then the Jeep was still a really nice car.  No dents or dings, no major problems under the hood (ignoring the deer incident, natch.)  God I look like such a prick in that picture.  Anyway.  So the Jeep was finally mine, I drove her everywhere, and picked anyone up who needed a ride and insisted on driving when in a group.  I LOVED driving her; windows down, blasting Michelle Branch with Kyle, gallivanting around Appleton.  A year later I made the first change to the car that would endure through the end.

 

The first bumper-sticker.  I actually had another one at the same time but eventually got rid of it after I came-out of the closet and put a Human Rights Campaign sticker in its place.  The sticker you see above I collected in New York in May of 2004.  The drama group from my high school took a semi-annual trip to the Big Apple and I was lucky enough to be able to go.  To this date it was the best time of my life... it was a trip that shaped me in a way I never would have anticipated and wouldn't change for anything in the world.  I started becoming comfortable in my skin.  I started realizing that high school was going to be over in a few weeks and that when it was... I would be free.  This sticker symbolizes to me the dawning of a new age.  Nearly every time I look at it, it reminds me of the person I was before school was over.  Because really, the summer of 2004 was the "shaping" summer and I obtained this riiiiiight at the beginning of it.

 August 2005

That summer did eventually come to an end and then I was (somewhat) the person I am now.  Kyle moved to Chicago for school so I went down to visit him a lot, the above picture being a return trip that brought him home with me.  This is one of the things that I take with me... one of the things that began to humanize the Jeep to me.  Memories.  And not just the memories of the people I drove with or the places we would wander to, but of the very existence of the car itself.  It was starting to become a character in the book of my life.

 September 2005

Washing the car with my nephew Brayden; he was about 14 months old.  In September of 2005 I started working at a call center named Convergys, specifically for United Health Group.  It was a miserable, thankless job that involved answering phone calls in regards to the new (at the time) prescription drug plan Medicare was rolling out with.  There were a lot of very angry old people calling, all the time, wanting to know why they were going to have to start paying more for meds and all that.  We didn't have cubicles, just these long rows of desks that had "walls" sitting on top of them.  On the opposite side of my wall was a co-worker who was very large, in her late 60's/early 70's, and had a fuckin' MOUTH on her.  In mid October when the phone lines went live, the following conversation occurred:

"No, I will NOT tell you my name, ma'am!"  

::customer on phone says something::  

"Because it's none of your damn business!  I'm answering your goddamn questions about medicine and that's it!" 

 ::customer on phone says something::  

"FINE!  My name is BETHEL!"

And thus, a star was born through my fits of silent laughter.  Enter stage left; Bethel the Jeep.

Almost in conjunction with Bethel being christened with a name was Edmund.  In October of 2005 our dog Gwyn, an English Mastiff and the sweetest thing in the world, was nearing the end of her run.  It happened too soon in all of our opinions but she ended up getting cancer and it was the only choice.  I was working at the call center and called my mom during my break to ask how Gwyn was doing, only to find out that she had been put down.  I went back to my desk in a bit of a daze and had an interaction with Terri.

Now, let me preface this by saying Terri was this crazy jackass who claimed she had a doctorate in child psychology.  She could also never explain why she was working for $9.10 an hour at a call center with said doctorate.  I digress.

Terri asks what's wrong and I'm trying to hold back my tears when I say that our family pet was put down.  She kinda gives this semi-smile and reaches into her desk and pulls out a rubber ducky.  It's one of those things you squeeze to relieve tension or stress.  Whatever.  Terri hands it over and says "Here Sean, you need this right now.  Just give it back when you're done."  And then she gets up and heads to lunch.  I proceeded without blinking to rip the head off.  I tossed the head on my desk and took a call, absentmindedly drawing red marker around the neck and then in the eyes, etc.  I took long pins from my cork-board and reattached the head.  Because I have a guilty conscience I started feeling like an asshole and realized I couldn't give the duck back to her, so I made up some story about how I would appreciate it if I could just have it.  She obliged, not seeing my handy work, and I ended up sticking him on the dashboard by the steering wheel.

I don't remember entirely why I named him Edmund... it just occurred.  Edmund became a good-luck omen for me because after I put him up I never received another ticket from a police officer.  Knock on wood.  Not that I am some CRAZY driver, but I was able to escape from every ticket or citation, whichever, in the years to follow.  He became the mascot of Bethel, allowing people to identify the Jeep in parking lots, at businesses, etc.  In my head we sort of formed a tri-fecta... not to say of course that I interact verbally with them.  

Okay, so that's a lie.  I tend to yell at Bethel when she makes ugly sounds.  True story.

 August 2006 

Bethel soon adopted a personality that matched my co-worker's.  (Former, actually, because I quit that shit-hole a couple weeks later to go back to Express full-time.)  Things started falling apart around then for the old girl.  The hoses needed to be completely replaced the summer of 2006 (when I went up to Jillybean's cabin and had the time of my life (again).)  That summer I was visiting Kyle in Chicago and someone at some point backed into the rear passenger side and smashed it in.  A rattle appeared in the dashboard that couldn't be fixed.  But I endured, because Bethel was my girl and I would stick with her through thick and thin.

 April 2008

Not much happened after 2006 though... my dating life kinda kicked off, sputtering and starting up again a few times before taking flight around the time the above picture was taken.  That was outside St. James Martini Bar, meeting some friends.  Good thing I was wearing a Rolling Stones t-shirt, didn't want people to think I was classy or anything.

 August 2008

I started taking "multiple" pictures that year, and this was one of the first finished products.  They look complex to make but they really aren't, you just need to have some finesse with Photoshop and the eraser tool.  Basically you set your camera up on a tri-pod (which I didn't have; my camera was taped down to a stack of books on top of the garbage can and set in the middle of the front yard.)  The sitting down pose is a no-brainer, as is the asshole drying the car off.  The one spraying the hose is doing just that... and then mom came in and got to spray me down.  As I said, clever eraser work.

 July 2009

I finally moved out on my own in 2009, buying Bethel from my parents for $1,000.  She was showing her age by that point and somewhat severely.  The entire brake system had to be replaced that spring, along with $900 of random work that fall.  The above picture was taken at the drive-in movie theater in Freedom, WI.  It's one of my favorite places.  The backdoor was having a problem staying open by itself, and on this day in particular we had shoved a piece of wood against the bumper to hold it up.  Kinda ghetto... but so were most people at the drive-in so that was OK.

January 2011

And then that happened.  Driving to work the day after a snow storm, Bethel did a couple 360's on the highway going about 60 mph and spun into the ditch.  I called work first to say I was going to be late, and then I called home and started crying.  In hindsight, I COULD say I was crying because it was the first sign that Bethel really was on her way out.  In reality I was crying because I was afraid it would cost too much to repair her, lol.  Luckily there was no damage, to the car or myself.  But it was the first sign of things to come.

Tires were replaced that summer.  Then the bolts holding the driver's seat down to the floor sheered off and I was forced to use plastic zip-ties and rope to hold it down.  The air-conditioning AND heater made mysterious noises when turned on.  Either it screamed like a strangled cat or rumbled and growled to the point where anytime I came to a stop, I had to turn the air off.  Embarrassing.  In the fall of 2011, she was dead and had to be towed out of the garage to be repaired.  Less than $100 to fix.  In the beginning of February 2012... she was dead and had to be towed out of the garage to be repaired again.  That one was $200.  Last week the driver's side window fell inside the door and to fix it would cost $200... and I decided that was it.

After nine fabulous years, countless memories, enough fits of laughter to fill a book and enough tears to last a  lifetime, it has come to the end.  Tomorrow, April 14th, 2012, Bethel the Jeep is getting traded in.  And it's actually kind of funny how sad I am about it.  I want to say that I'm heartbroken, but to do so seems melodramatic.  Still... it's my blog.  And I am heartbroken.

How do you say goodbye?  At first she started out as just another car, the first of many new things that came out of moving to Wisconsin.  Then she turned into the first car I ever drove, then the first car I ever owned.  Then the first car I traveled with, the first car I grew upset with, the first car I named, the first car I got frisky in (yeah, it happened, so what?)  At what point does a vehicle become more than the sum of its parts and turn into a friend?

Bethel has heard countless personal conversations; she's seen me cry so many times that I don't even want to think about it.  She's heard me sing in amazing key; she's heard me sing horribly FUCKING bad.  She's seen me laugh, lie, scream, joke, banter, flirt and give the silent treatment.  She's been the one thing over the past nine years that was constant for me, that one thing I knew I had that wasn't going to change.  So when the time comes to say goodbye, knowing full well she is going to be torn apart and sold off in pieces to the highest bidder... it is devastating.  I don't know any other word for it.  Tonight I peeled her stickers off, emptied the center console, and chucked most of the contents of the glove compartment.  There was an odd sense of finality about it all.

April 13th, 2012

I suppose I could have put on a black suit with a white shirt and a white tie, trying to mirror myself at age 17 when I first got Bethel.  But that would mean trying to show that I hadn't changed during the course of the near decade that passed between us.  Instead I chose to echo the colors and show myself at 26.  Comfortable in my own skin, pleased with my appearance and the condition of my body, and just... well, I guess just happy.  When I was in high school, I used to wonder what I would be like in five years... 10 years... 15 years.  I don't think I thought I would be the man I have become, for better or for worse.  I will admit, however, that if at 17 years old I saw the above picture I'd probably think "Ooof, shit... take your shirt off!"

I'm sure some of you reading this have memories in Bethel.  You might not remember them to the excruciating detail I do, but you have them.  I'd love for you to leave a comment below with some.  God, this is turning into a funeral!  But really, you don't need to be a member of a board or anything special to leave a comment, and I wish it would happen more often.  Leave your name, too, so I know who the hell you are.

In the end, Bethel wasn't a decent car.  She wasn't a good car.  She was a fantastic car.  She was everything I needed at anytime I needed it, and she drove me forward in life, both figuratively and literally.  Together we drove 111,000 miles, give or take the 20 I will be driving tomorrow to the dealership.  I'll always have a special place in my heart for this old bitch, warts and all.  She lived to be 15... let's see if I can do better next time (c:

#7 - A Fond Farewell; finally letting go of Bethel the Jeep.

I'll leave you with some Michelle Branch; 'ol blue would've wanted it that way.