Thursday, July 25, 2013

The Death of a Legend... The Honoring of a Legacy


Throughout my life, I’ve been extraordinarily lucky in terms of keeping loved ones around for a good, long while. In my 27-plus years of hanging around, the only losses I’ve had to endure are a couple of grandparents, a couple of sports idols and maybe a pet or two.

Inanimate objects probably shouldn’t be on the list of lost loved ones, but I just added one to mine. A couple of weeks ago – after 21 years of loyal service to the Anthony family – the Subaru Legacy that has served as my only car finally called it a career.

It really shouldn’t have come as any sort of surprise. That car didn’t have the easiest life. It endured winters in Pennsylvania, summers in South Georgia, a few run-ins with other vehicles, and plenty of band-aids applied to its problems when full-on surgery was probably the right call. The Legacy creaked and moaned. It shimmied and shuddered. It never would have won a beauty contest, but it would make the trip there and back without complaint.

Writing about a hunk of metal (which is probably the best current definition of the car, since I sold it to a salvage yard) seems a little dumb. It seems a bit overly sentimental. But it also seems fitting.

That car was a part of so many of the stories and experiences that I’ve had, the only right thing to do is to recount them now that there won’t be any more.

Starting from the beginning and staying as close as possible to the correct chronological order, that beat-up 1993 Subaru Legacy:

-         Drove me to elementary school
-         Shuttled me to countless Little League games
-         Was the first car I ever operated, getting to back down the driveway before car washes
-         Took me on my first “date” (even if it was me catching a ride to and from those meet-ups at the movie theater)
-         Helped me out on my paper route when things got too rainy or cold
-         Gave me a ride to my first day of high school
-         Was right there for me to lean on when I got my first kiss
-         Helped me pass my driver’s test and was the first car I ever drove solo
-         Got me to and from my first real job
-         **REDACTED DUE TO BLOGGER’S PARENTS/GIRLFRIEND SOMETIMES READING THESE ENTRIES**
-         Drove me to my high school graduation
-         Became a car that was actually all mine once I got to college
-         Served as a great tent for a few tailgates that started the Friday before a big game
-         Somehow found a radio signal coming all the way from Philadelphia, allowing me to listen to my Phillies clinch a division title for the first time in 14 years
-         Got me home safely after being pulled over and put through a sobriety test at 3 a.m. on the way home from a Halloween party (I was sober). Somewhere out there is a police dashboard camera video of the Subaru and me in a Quailman costume walking a line.
-         Always made enough rattling noises and blew enough smoke to keep potential muggers at bay while I delivered pizzas to get through grad school
-         Shuttled me all over GA to cover high school games for my first job after college
-         Saved me untold amounts of gas money by always looking like a death trap and causing friends to always offer to drive

As things turned out, the Legacy met its end in exactly the way that I didn’t want it to. One of its myriad issues finally ballooned to the point where fixing the problem just wasn’t practical thinking.

In its final hour, the Legacy didn’t get that parade through downtown with a champagne toast to send it off right. It never became the converted grill that my buddy John had promised to turn it into when I finally moved on to another car. Instead, it sputtered its way to the Dollar General as I was trying to buy a two-liter of Coke. It was dead in the water. I wouldn’t find that out for sure until the shop told me a week later, but I just knew. You don’t spend two decades with a friend and not realize when something big is happening.

The Legacy was never a looker, but I think that over the years it absorbed a little bit of my pride. Not wanting its last drivable moments to occur in the parking lot of a dollar store, I tried – to no avail – for almost an hour to get her started. Later that night, I gave it one more shot and even though it was just a half-mile of driving… Juuuusst enough to build up some speed and coast into my driveway… the Legacy started moving and got me home one last time.

She rode off into the sunset after that (albeit on the backs of tow trucks), but after all of the ground we covered together, I guess the Legacy deserved to have someone else do the hard work in her final hours.


It was 205,327 miles. And it was a hell of a ride.

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