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Front Porch: Cars become like family, Pettit writes

Former family member Jade, a wounded 1999 Subaru, being taken away. Only the memories remain. (Stefanie Pettit / The Spokesman-Review)

While I’m not a gearhead in the traditional sense, I do have my own sentimental thing about cars – my own cars.

For me, a car becomes, in its own way, a part of the family. It shares adventures, is part of the family’s memories and finds its way into family albums just like the family dog, welcomed when it arrives in the fold and mourned when it leaves us. We’ve had some automotive comings and goings of late, and it still surprises me how feelings are stirred in the process.

My very first car was a 1955 Hudson. It had been our family car, and my father held on to it when he got a new car, giving it to me when I turned 16. Freedom! But it was a beast to drive. No power steering, and it consumed gas like a camel going for water after a six-week trek in the desert. But in those days there were plenty of gas wars, when the average price of gas would drop from 25 cents a gallon to 18 cents, and my $3 weekly allowance was more than enough to keep me on the road.

Since then there were Volkswagens, a big boat of a Ford station wagon, my father’s Oldsmobile, a Rambler, a Mazda, a Chevy (a former police car), a perfectly awful Eagle and, in recent decades, a succession of Subarus. Whenever I see one of our cars in the background of a photo of some trip we’ve taken, I usually smile with memories (except for the Eagle, of course).

A lot of people, I have learned, have similar memories, though I do stand out in my own family in the degree to which I speak of our cars in human terms (anthropomorphizing, if you will). Every family has to have an oddball, and I accept the designation with some pride of ownership.

My youngest son has been driving a 1999 Subaru, which he named Jade and which had once been mine. Preferred pronoun is “her” or “she.” Jade, who is dark green, lives in Seattle, and it’s been tough going for her. Seattle traffic and parking lots are not kind. There was the time she was sitting in a lot minding her own business when the brake of a parked front-end loader began slipping just up the hill from her, and when contact was finally made, Jade emerged with a crunch in the left side rear door, which has remained ever since, as has the wound from another mishap to the front of the left side door. One headlamp assembly has been held in place for years with electrical tape, courtesy of some other accident over there.

Sam has kept the car running well, but he’s not all that concerned about cosmetics. A car needs to be reliable and get him to all the places he needs to go to in a day. Besides, if a car looks like a wreck, it’s less likely to get stolen, right? Wrong.

Jade has gone off on some adventures of her own without any of us. Once when Sam came out of a community center, where he had been teaching a theater class, she was gone baby gone. A week later he received a call from a man in Ballard, who had found her outside his home, windows and doors open. Fortunately, the registration was still in the glove box, so he was able to find Sam.

Sam figured some kids had pinched her and ridden around, abandoning her on the spot where she ran out of gas.

About two years later Jade was stolen out of Sam’s parking spot behind his apartment building on Capitol Hill. He swears he locked the car the night before, but in the morning, no car. A month passed, with him taking public transportation, using Seattle’s handy Zipcar option, borrowing cars or biking. And then came the phone call. Lassie was coming home again.

Jade had been found parked illegally in a lot adjacent to an apartment complex somewhere in Seattle, and since she was on the stolen car list, she could be reunited with her owner. It appeared that the person who had boosted her was a tagger. The back end of the car was filled with spray paint cans of assorted colors, and many of the side windows and back window were painted over.

Sam scraped off most of the paint – or at least enough of it so he could see out – but he kind of ran out of energy when he got to the right rear passenger window, which retained a halo of bright yellow paint. Jade was hard to miss as she made her way around Seattle for several years afterward.

I told Sam that when the time came that repairs to keep her rolling exceeded her value, I’d give him my 2007 Subaru and get a new one. I made the offer with a full heart, as it would still keep my car in the family, but I had a touch of sadness, as I really like my car. I like the model and size (newer models have been made larger, not my favorite thing), and my own history with the car is ongoing. Still, it might just be time, and when you come down to it, I like my son more than I like my car. On most days.

This summer was the time. Jade’s engine was still good, but everything underneath and in the wheel wells was pretty much shot. It would take $1,400 to get this 1999 Subaru, with close to 300,000 miles on her and with a body that was, well, less than optimal, on the road again. So he donated her to Seattle Public Radio and came and got my car – now named Ariel.

He sent me a photo of Jade as she was being carted off. “It’s funny,” he said, “but when I saw her going away, I got a catch in my throat. We’ve been through a lot together, and I didn’t know I’d feel that way.”

That’s my boy.

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by e-mail at upwindsailor@comcast.net.

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