This is the last installment on alternate means of transportation after the Feb. 20 sale of my old truck. Since then, I’ve tried getting around by every means from walking to public transit.
Do I miss Old Red? Of course. We were inseparable since the day we hooked up 17 years ago. But after 247,891 miles, we were both beat up, cantankerous and illegal.
We smelled like gunpowder and pork rinds, had a mutual tendency to wander aimlessly, and were covered with scars from things that seemed fun at the time but the lasting consequences of which prevented additional fun.
When it came time to let Old Red go, it was emotionally tough. My longtime ride was filled with memories — bullets, knives, assorted medical supplies, handcuff keys, bottle caps, car wash tokens, and a couple of arrowheads Sonny found and left in the ashtray.
But the dings and dents pained me the most, the indelible signs of our mutual association. There was the big dent in the side caused by rolled-up magazines fired out of a cannon.
There was the wrinkle in the hood from an elk I didn’t hit but got mad at me anyway, a mummified mouse in one of the storage compartments, a 9 mm bullet hole patched with wood glue in a back seat floorboard, and a dog-mauled foam headrest.
My wife’s cellphone number was still visible where I wrote it on a sun visor with a Sharpie in 2007. There were half a dozen other numbers and addresses, the reasons for which they were there I’d long since forgotten.
Driving away from Old Red the last time was hard. Humans are creatures of lasting memory. The spaces we occupy leave their marks on us, whether it’s a favorite ride, a garage, a beloved house or even a locker.
Most often it isn’t the place itself but rather the things that happened to us in or near them that establish our connection to them — love, divorce, loss, accomplishment, sudden epiphanies.
The house where my wife and I lived for so many years belongs to someone else now, but one of the rooms will always be where I finished writing my first novel. To the current owners, it’s probably just a room. To me, it’s a place of teeth-grinding frustration and … liberation.
The old Redwood Drive-In Theatre in West Valley City may just be a place for huge swap meets now, but for me it will always be the place where I first kissed my wife during a James Bond movie the night of April 23, 1975.
Note: It wasn’t much of a kiss. I wasn’t sure if she’d punch me, so I leaned in with all the romance of a shoplifter.
It was the follow-up kiss that caused the most damage. When she kissed me back, I lost my heart. Been chasing after it ever since.
Leaving Old Red isn’t the end of my transportation, but it got me thinking about all the memories that traveling brings.
I’m without wheels now. But no matter what you’re driving, the most important mode of transportation is the same for you as it is for me — Earth.
Life’s mileage is racked up by days — roughly 23,725 of them for me so far, or 65 trips around the sun. But that isn’t the sneaky part.
We tell ourselves the sun is setting when the truth is that we’re traveling. Every evening, the Earth temporarily turns its shoulder from the stationary light. When it returns, we’ll all be 12 hours further down the road.
The mileage adds up faster than we think, probably because we’re unconscious for half of it. The trick to this ride is to make good memories while we can. Catching the final bus happens sooner than we think.
Robert Kirby is The Salt Lake Tribune’s humor columnist. Follow Kirby on Facebook.
