I drove a white 1993 Corsica named Lucille for six years. Car experts say Lucille should have passed on long before I ever got behind the wheel. In fact, they make it sound as if Corsicas have the lifespan of sea-monkeys, but Lucille was a very special car.
Lucille once ran over a boyfriend's foot. I know what you're thinking, and it was completely without my help, thank you very much. He had just finished telling me that despite how much he loved spending time with me, and how my personality was amazing, and how he was so attracted to me it was ridiculous -- I just wasn't up to his standards to be girlfriend material so he was going to keep looking and he hoped we could keep seeing one another while he did so.
He got out of my car, heading to his vehicle parked directly in front of me. I put Lucille into Park. I swear, Lucille was in Park. But then she rolled.
I know it's common for a vehicle to roll a few inches after being parked, but I've never known a car to roll with such...vision. As he stood between our two vehicles, Lucille rolled over his left foot, but somehow stopped short of kissing his bumper.
Naturally I was so horrified by what had happened I resorted to powdering my nose in my driver's side vanity. One can never be too matte in times of crisis.
I didn't see him much after that, but I do remember him yelling about what my stupid car did to his foot, which annoyed me. Obviously Lucille wasn't the stupid one.
Several years later, Lucille was not doing so well. She always had a flair for the dramatic, and if I neglected her care and maintenance in any way she would usually let me know about it by stalling in an intersection during Calgary rush-hour, which actually constitutes about seven hours in the morning and seven hours in the evening. If you want to get anywhere in Calgary, you have a 15 minute window somewhere between 2:07 a.m and 2:52 a.m.
The three different times Lucille stalled in various high-traffic and high-visibility intersections of the city, I know she was just trying to get a message across. The message being she had a sense of humour more twisted than her owners, and that she liked the sound of redneck SUV and F350 drivers all screaming obscenities in unison.
One thing I could never understand was why the rednecks would sit in their mammoth vehicles and honk. Even though it was a ways down, I'm sure they could still see the small white car had it's hood up and a set of lights blinking in the back.
I'm sure that despite having to squint through a 3-martini lunch haze they could see that the bitch inside the vehicle (a word commonly screamed out of a driver's side window and used to describe a female holding up traffic in Calgary, with the second most popular word rhyming with "dunt,") was frantically talking to somebody on a cell-phone so obviously help was on the way.
But why honk? Did they think Lucille would be embarrassed into spontaneously firing her engine? Or perhaps Lucille had just gone to sleep and repetitive honking could serve as some kind of automotive wake-up call?
As some comedian once said, what I should have done was get out of the car, walk to the car immediately behind me and offer to honk while he sat in my vehicle. Perhaps the engine would start if we just took turns.
For all of Calgary's talk about being a friendly, down-home city not once did anybody offer to help me push, take a look at the engine or see if I needed any other assistance in getting out of the intersection. Instead I was always left terrified and shaking, and absurdly grateful that nobody shot me, what with Alberta being a republican state.
Anyhoodle. The time Lucille saved me from having to go camping was different. For weeks, she hadn't been herself. It was as if she didn't have the energy to throw a tantrum, but little things were breaking down.
Her driver's side door no longer opened from the outside, the inside or with a key. To get into the vehicle, I would wait until nobody was around and climb into the passenger seat, hoist myself onto the storage box between the seats, and then flop into the driver's side, slightly out of breath.
Some days her temperature gauge would swing really high, and then be fine for hours, as if she were battling a fever. She kept driving though, and I had run out of excuses to give my boyfriend as to why we couldn't go camping the long weekend in July.
My excuse should have been that I hate camping with every fibre of my being -- and I'm a very fibrous person. Human beings evolved to live indoors for a reason. I have never seen the appeal or the relaxing nature of abandoning every creature comfort known to woman kind, driving several hours and spending 72 hours working 10 times harder to do the things that would take seconds in your own home. Like peeing in privacy and comfort. Or cooking a meal. But mostly peeing in privacy and comfort.
The site we were going to had no running water or bathroom facilities. My boyfriend's father, who had arranged the trip, thought there might be one outhouse for the entire campground, but couldn't be sure. If I ever wanted to experience a complete and sudden shut-down of my central nervous system, using that outhouse in the July heat would certainly be the way to go.
I was dreading this trip the way some dread being buried alive, but my boyfriend had made it clear that by not going I would prove that I hated his family and didn't care at all about his feelings. At all. So there was that.
We left Calgary and had made it almost to the outskirts of the city and with another four hours of travel time left to go, Lucille's engine light came on. And stayed on. We pulled into a service station and added oil. The light still shone like a beacon of hope.
I put on my very best disappointed face and suggested it may not be safe to attempt a four hour trip outside of the city on rural roads where the cows are not known for their mechanical abilities.
I really did feel bad that my boyfriend did not get to go camping with his family, as we only had the one vehicle and he didn't drive. My conscience was convulsing, but my bladder heaved a sigh of relief. Holding it for three days could have been uncomfortable.
That was the beginning of the end for Lucille. The diagnosis was terminal. Transmission. She had only weeks left. The mechanic assured me that I had done all I could, but paying to fix the transmission would be paying more than she was worth. And then he tried to charge me $800 to fix the driver's side door. Bastard.
With a heavy heart, I drove Lucille to an auction. She drove bravely, and her engine light didn't so much as flicker. She was sold to a couple of guys for $300, minus the auction fees. I recall the auctioneer describing the driver's side door as "sticky," as she passed through the sales line.
I bought a new car. It doesn't have a name. That was ten months ago, and I thought it was the last I would hear of Lucille. Until now.
I got a letter from the the Alberta government, and the department responsible for abandoned vehicles. Yes, there really is an Abandoned Vehicle Disposal Program that has it's own government department. Apparently it's a big problem in Alberta. (Recycling anything hasn't really caught on there).
The letter said I had two weeks to pay all of the impound and towing fees dating back to six months ago, when a white 1993 Corsica was found abandoned on a lonely stretch of backwoods highway. My heart broke.
I wanted to believe that I was giving Lucille a better life. I fantasized that a kindly retired mechanic had bought Lucille and taken her home. The kindly mechanic lived in a small town outside of Calgary, where nobody ever honks. His wife had been complaining she had no way to run to the general store to buy flour to bake pies with, and so the kindly mechanic bought Lucille for his wife, and for pie, and for the Canadian way of life.
Now I felt I had sold Lucille into the slave trade. Or a sex-ring. Or worse. She deserved so much better than to be dumped by the side of the road.
There was no way I was going to pay for it though. I faxed my bill of sale to the Alberta government and they've sworn they won't come after me. They'll be going after the bastards who bought and used Lucille and then threw her away like garbage.
Rest in peace Lucille. I love you.
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