The End of an Era

Last Saturday, an era came to an end. One old car had been in the family since somewhere around 1978. It belonged to my grandmother--my short little spunky Mammaw.

Mammaw, who was only about 4' 9", could be seen putt-putting around her little town, sitting atop a thick phone book, so that her head could just barely be seen over the dashboard. Her hands, dutifully placed at "10 and 2 o'clock" gripped the steering wheel with attitude. Her posture said, "Look out, world, Mammaw's comin' to town!"

She drove that car to see us as kids, and it carried her all the way through my adult life until she gave up driving. It took her over Monteagle Mountain more times than I could count to go to her other home in Alabama, where she loved fishing on the Tennessee River. She really never gave up driving. Her body just gave out on her, and she had to move to the nursing home. The car remained sheltered in her garage.

Mammaw used to go sit in the car sometimes, down in her basement, especially when bad weather came. Every so often, she would have some sort of incident involving the car. One of the last ones was when she ran over a soda bottle backing out of the garage, and the next thing I knew, a police officer was taking a report about a "possible bomb placed in her driveway." Yes, those soda bottles do sound loud when you run over them. It was a good old car, and she somehow managed to keep it running all those years.

My Daniel was born one day before her birthday. It was he who ended up inheriting the car from my brother, who had taken it and kept it after Mammaw passed away. Daniel needed it as he launched out on his own, and it served him well during the time he possessed it. His friends will remember with a smile the boy from Tennessee who showed up in Lexington in that old car, and somehow made it through a winter there purely by the grace of God and the love of friends.

Last Saturday, after a few months of half-hearted attempts to sell the car, a couple with a brand new baby came by and wanted it. It was time for the car to pass to a new family.

It is a bittersweet thing to let this car go. It never has seemed right that Mammaw was not behind the wheel. Riding in the car brought memories of times together with her. It is all still too close.

When I signed the title over to the new owners, the actual mileage on the car was just over 75,000 miles. I would have thought that there were at least a million miles on that old odometer. Ironically (or not), the date of sale was the same day that we laid Mammaw to rest two years ago.

Maybe we will catch a passing glance of the new family tooling around town in a "classic." I hope they paint it and treat it well. I can tell you that, as much of a personality as that old car had, it had nothing on Mammaw. She would have been 85 next Wednesday. It's an understatement to say, "I miss her."