Gone But Not Forgotten

Well...I finally got rid of my old Pontiac Aztek.

I loved that car, I really did. It was a nice pickle green and it was really comfy. As much as I cursed it when it was over-heating and as much as it embarrassed me when it stopped dead in the center lane of Loop 410 in the middle of rush hour, I'll always remember it as the car that I owned when I met DJ and the car that took my mother, my brother and myself all the way to Nebraska to be with my cousin Renee when she passed.

All that aside, it was time. The starter started grinding about a year after I bought it. Thank God it never went out but I always lived with the fear that one morning, when I most needed to be at work or someplace important, I'd turn the key and get nothing.

The a/c went out about two years after I bought it. I drove around with no a/c for about two and a half years while I saved up enough money to replace the condenser or the compressor or something like that. Finally replaced it and it worked great for about 6 months or so. Thank the good Lord it was working when DJ came down to meet me or she probably never would have come back to Texas to be with me. About two weeks after DJ went back to North Carolina, my cousin Renee got sick and while she was there checking with her specialists in Nebraska, she became fatally ill and passed away. This car drove me and my family straight through to Omaha even though the damned "check engine" light kept blinking on and off the entire way up and back, it got us there.

Shortly after DJ moved to San Antonio, the a/c went out again. I paid out the rear to get the cooling system repaired only to have it go out again about 6 months later. I didn't attempt to fix it again.

My Aztek took me all over South and Central Texas while I was working as a Private Investigator. It was always comfortable to drive long distances. It was my mobile office. It was my living room as I drove between all my jobs. It was a mobile campsite. It was my world and the car I owned the longest of any car I've ever had.

I'm really going to miss it.