Friday, July 22, 2011

In A Good Place

            I just got my long-serving GTO back following two days in the shop having various services performed, and I realized a couple of things:  First, the old girl’s still got it; second, I am in a really comfy place with this car right now, and I’m not sure I’m prepared to leave it just yet.

            At six years old and with 80,000 miles on the odometer, the Goat has been my road partner longer than any car I’ve owned.  We’ve had a lot of fun together, and I still look forward to driving it each day.

Ironically, you’d never have seen that coming if you’d been there when I bought it.  At the time, see, I was in a love-hate relationship with a 2001 Corvette that owned me more than I owned it.  The Vette had been a financial reach.  With a second child on the way, it also was a badly timed decision.  It was so pretty and so glorious and so danged expensive that all I ever did was worry about it.  Commuting was a butt-clenching, white-knuckled nightmare, as I was incessantly fearful that every rotating tire on the road was about to toss up a rock.  I therefore put a mask on the car, which naturally led to washing the car every week, which led to vacuuming out the inside of the mask so the built-up dust wouldn’t chafe the paint.  And heaven help me when I took the car in for service:  Fearful that all the mechanics would conspire to drop tools on my car or open its doors into pillars, I often insisted that I be permitted to watch them work.  They loved that.

Ultimately, I was so scared to use the car as a car that I bought a used vehicle—a Chevy Astro van, no less—to serve as daily transport.  Even at the time, the irony was not lost on me: For the sake of my mental health, I—a car guy—was driving an utterly joyless vehicle while an incredibly rewarding sports car sat unused in my garage.

When the sheer absurdity of this arrangement became too much to bear, I bought the GTO.  Traded in both vehicles and actually made $12 on the deal.

The Goat’s looks didn’t inspire the lust or passion that the Corvette’s did, and it didn’t have the single-minded purpose that a pure sports car has, but it was the only GM product on the market at the time (the old Camaro was out of production, and the new one was still a twinkle in a designer’s eye) that fit my triune affordable-fast-fun requirements.  Besides, it had the same torquey LS2 V8 that Chevrolet was dropping into Corvettes.  My purchase, then, was made in a “This’ll do” frame of mind.

I’m sorry, my friend:  That’s how I thought of you back then.

As time has gone on, though, this car has endeared itself to me.  It’s also taught me a thing or two about what real, sustainable happiness is about.  For instance, isn’t it interesting how passion, for all its pulsating glory, makes such a poor companion over the long haul, but how a decent long-haul companion occasionally surprises you with passion?  And isn’t it enlightening to discover how a subtle form grows more beautiful when its function—its inner nature—proves its worth time and again?  And isn’t just plain being content a deep, deep joy denied to those whose only pursuit is passion?  You have to be in a special place to see these things, I think, and the GTO helps me see them.

Years ago, I read a book on Corvette history in which the author described the waning years of the third-generation Corvette—a model that was around from 1968 all the way to 1982, as “a comfortable senescence.”  I like that term, “senescence.”  It’s a graceful way to say, “The state of being old,” but in a warm, sweet, On Golden Pond kind of way.   I’m in a comfortable senescence with my GTO, and it’s good.

Yeah, I know I’ll replace it one day and begin this whole process anew.  I know I’ll go through that butt-clenching, white-knuckle phase.  And I’ll miss the GTO.  But the proof that I’ve actually learned something from her will come when I realize, I’m at that comfy stage again! 

I just pray it doesn’t take six years.