But the day I had to ride shotgun in a AAA tow truck from Vernon, CT to Boston made me start to wonder if our love fest was coming to an end. After a glorious humid August day in New York, I stopped for gas (that I didn't even really need)about an hour and a half from home and after filling up and buying a bag of Sun Chips and Red Bull, my requisite NYC ‐ BOS car snack, she decided not to restart. This must be some kind of joke, I thought. I mean, I'd just put thirty bucks in the tank and this is how she repaid me? Only moments earlier I was jamming to Carly Simon, my requisite NYC ‐ BOS tunes of choice, and now I was trying in vain to get her to start again. It was about 9:30 at night and I tried to look at the "bright side" ‐ I was grateful that she allowed me to get from New Haven, where she had been garaged, to Vernon. Had I been forced to tow her from there, some sixty plus more miles back to Boston, well, I don't want to entertain those thoughts.... so after a MAJOR Carly Simon‐Sun Chips‐Red Bull buzz kill, and many distressed phone calls to my mom and her husband in Joliet, Il (really, what were they going to be able to do?) and to David in Boston, I decided to have the little bitch towed home. By the time this decision was made and after two AAA trucks had come to try to fix the problem(read: banging on something under the hood) with no success, onto the tow bed she went. And of course they would not accept American Express, but rather only my debit card for the charge of $435, which would later cause an overdraft because being out of work, as I was, I had limited funds and AAA didn't actually charge my account for a full two weeks at the precise moment some outstanding bills decided to clear and caused a minor tsunami in my checking account, but that's another story.... let’s just say only Grey Goose and Bombay Sapphire was getting sold at my tables. Apparently, the yearly AAA fees I had been paying were useless when I really needed the service. My plan only covered something like a tow service within five miles of my home; I could only wish I were five miles from home. By now it was about 11:30 and I endured the most awkwardly silent ninety mile ride home that I have ever had. The driver didn't want to be driving to Boston at that time of night, and I sure didn't want him driving me home. All the while the White Shadow slept peacefully hitched on the back of the truck.
After this episode I really started seeing the White Shadow for what she was, a ten-year old car that was in need of repairs for most everything - to her credit, most of the repairs were the first replacements in her ten year life (go Ford!), but still. I'd had such good times and memories in that car and I started to take it personally that she was betraying me the way she was. When friends suggested I sell her, and when David, bless him, got tired of fixing the things I couldn't afford to, I came to her defense time and time again: She gets the job done! She starts every time! I was delusional.
The White Shadow was given to me by my mom and her husband when I spent my torrid summer in Maine back in '03 (again, another story), and I proudly drove her from Joliet to Camden and she was my best friend in that coastal town. Back then when she did start every time, she allowed me to zip around town without a care, giving me the I-told-you-I'd-come-up-here-with-my-own-wheels-and-wouldn't-need-yours prepared speech I would give should I ever run into the ex I was then trying to get over who lived up there (I told you, another story). What a beautifully glorious summer that was. Me and the White Shadow sunning our buns on Beauchamp Point in Rockport, ME, us on an impromptu 3.5 hour drive down to Boston to see my best friend, Kelly, us in New York on August 14th, 2003 - the day of the Northeast blackout, also, coincidentally the night of my photography exhibit at the Jay Hawkins Gallery in New York that I didn't get to see because of said blackout. I was lucky enough to have won a photography contest where my print would be shown in a gallery in New York for a week, and lucky me, on the night of the event New York experienced the blackout that those of us in the city thought was another terrorist attack. I'd come down from Maine in the White Shadow for this momentous event only to be overshadowed by a major power outage. But, but, but! The White Shadow did save the day, as I was able to drive to Columbia University to search for my friend who was on her way to Chelsea for my exhibit, and after searching in earnest through the sea of nervous anxious New Yorkers on Broadway, I miraculously found my friend. I whisked us away back to Harlem where we sat in a stifling apartment with no fan, AC, or cold drinks - only overpriced beer that we were able to ascertain from the local bodega. I stuck around New York for two days hoping the gallery reception would happen, and naturally when I finally left and was somewhere in mid‐coast Maine, between Portland and Damariscotta, did I receive a call that the reception was happening that night. Me and the White Shadow didn't have it in us to head back to the city.
Very long story short, the White Shadow had been there when I needed her many times, and had served me well. But 2010 being what it was, I couldn't find the type of job I was looking for in Boston and had to expand my search to New York. I loved Boston but I didn't endure two years of graduate school pain and take on crazy student loans where my name might as well be "Trinette Nel Net Sallie Mae Faint" to not explore options that may actually allow me to pay them off one day before I die; so come to New York I did. I'd lived here previously once upon a time when I was fancy and traveled first class (my Matt Damon days, for those of you who don't know), and now returned to a new reality - staying with friends in Brooklyn, no job, bad economy, and a decade older. Good times. But my faith and perseverance paid off and I landed a job about a month later after sleepless nights wondering exactly how I was going to get Amex and Visa to stop calling me. It's not like I didn't know I was behind, and thank you economy, my restaurant job in Boston had not produced the lucrative bucks waitressing once promised - why couldn't they just understand that? Didn't they get that the White Shadow took precedence and she needed to be repaired, oil‐changed, insured, and gassed‐up above all else? Apparently not. But be that as it may, I was suddenly blessed with a gig in Jersey City that not only came with a free apartment, but also allowed me to not drive any more. I was able to keep the White Shadow off the street in our covered parking lot and now had a company car (Mercedes SUV - white, also like my beloved Shadow) at my disposal.
Life was good but I was skating on thin ice. I had Mass plates, living in Jersey, with a New York license - I'd switched it from Mass when I first arrived. Every little drive I took to Target, the grocery store, or to the bank was fraught with fear. OMG what if I get into an accident and I get busted not having the car registered here? What if they force me to get a Jersey license?? Jersey had been good to me but I didn't necessarily want to forgo my new New York license for a New Jersey one. I only changed from Mass to New York because I hated my new Mass photo taken only months earlier. I had makeup on but still managed to take a really bad photo that I was not happy with. Miraculously, I'd managed to nail a great photo at the New York DMV and didn't want to surrender that so easily. I have to live with it, after all. So everywhere I went in the White Shadow would paralyze me with fear. I am only a few minutes from the Holland Tunnel and there are always a number of cops everywhere and the White Shadow being what she was, she would sometimes adhere to her own rules (I think I mentioned before that she was built for speed)and I was petrified that every time I drove her anywhere that the day would end up with me in jail trying to post bail. But the larger issue was that I never had the need
to drive anymore. When I realized I was on the same tank of gas for six weeks I knew it was time for me to let her go. It was bad enough that the post office had taken the liberty to notify my insurance company of my move (where exactly do they get off doing that?), and now I was forced to lie to them and tell them that the car was still in Mass. I'd heard that Jersey has the highest insurance rates in the country and because I was not ready to strip away her Mass identity with Jersey plates and did not want to be forced into a Jersey license, I continued to live on the edge. I guess it wasn't that much on the edge because I hardly drove anymore and my travels extended from my apartment to a two‐block walk to the train to Manhattan for a two‐minute ride into the city. I just really didn't need her anymore.
Eventually, I found the courage to post her for sale. It was heart wrenching but I did it. This was in the midst of all the unrelenting snow of January and I got no takers.
I survived February without getting pulled over and had decided that I would donate her to the Big Sisters of Greater Boston when my inner voice told me to try to sell once more. I posted an ad and was deluded with calls. March was a much bigger difference than January and I couldn't keep all the inquiries straight. It became clear that my love affair with the White Shadow was going to end very soon. Everyone wanted her NOW!
I thought I was emotionally ready for her transition but I was not. While cleaning her out I was disarmed at how all the memories came flooding back...I'd had modeling composite cards from my Denver modeling agency in the armrest which instantly took me back to our old Rocky Mountain high days. There were Seal, Sade, Guy and TLC tapes in the armrest, along with business cards with an outdated email address. The trunk was full of things I had just let live there - old cds, beach towels, dog toys, flashlights, and a blanket randomly bought on a road trip from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. There was also the car's former plates from Illinois and Colorado before she found her home in Massachusetts. In the back seat slot was a Carly Simon songbook that I bought to play guitar to after being inspired by Sheryl Crow and Sarah McLachlan's perfomance at Lilith Fair in Chula Vista, California back in '00, I believe, after which I subsequently bought a guitar in Hawaii encouraged by a paramour (again, yes, another story). There were three university decals on the back window - two from Emerson, my alma mater, and one from the University of Colorado at Boulder, where I took writing courses post‐college and lived as if I were still an undergrad. It's easy to do in Boulder no matter what your age, trust me.
Finally my buyer arrived. Clinical. Financed. Ready to take ownership. Never would I have imagined that the last time I would drive her would be pulling her out of her parking space to display her like a show pony. I was on autopilot as I showed him the numerous service repair records and talked up her attributes like I was working the Detroit auto show. What I was not prepared for was how disconnected the buyer was from my spiel. It was almost as if he didn't care that I'd lovingly taken care of her or recently replaced the gas filter. He didn't even test drive her and showed no interest in the dent I tried to show him on the driver side rear. He lost interest when I explained that I wasn't at fault because a delivery guy backed into her on my narrow street in Somerville. He also showed no interest in looking under the hood. This, I could not understand. I took great offense to it as he coolly counted out the money in hundred dollar notes as it he were buying a loaf of bread. Him and his cousin then methodically sealed the deal and put Jersey plates on her. The one thing I had been trying to prevent for so long was happening right before my eyes, but as he had just signed my homemade bill of sale and given me the money, I no longer had a say. The entire transaction took less than ten minutes. My eyes became engulfed in tears as I watched her officially become a Jersey Girl and I sat on the cloth interior one last time. I stroked the dash and told her I was sorry but it was time for me to let her go. All of our cross‐country adventures came flooding back along with more memories that I can count. Eight years of my life was tied to her and I was more attached than I realized. With all her new sparkly parts acquired in 2010 I felt like this was our second chance and I was now abandoning her prematurely, but also knew that if we ever had another Vernon, CT incident, that she would be left alone on the side of whatever road because I had reached the end of my financial rope. It was a sad occasion and when I saw her new owner zip out of the parking lot the only thing I could recognize were the decals in the back window blurring out of sight. I sobbed from the bottom of my soul at a love lost knowing I would never see her again and realized I foolishly gave the buyer both keys. Had I kept the spare I would be able to steal her back if I ever saw her decals staring back at me on the streets. But perhaps that wouldn't be wise.
I gave her all I had to give and she gave me many years of happy memories. Boston, Maine, Colorado, Vegas, Los Angeles, Joliet, New York, New Jersey, and all the other random excursions, would have never been the same without her, and for that I am eternally grateful.
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