Mourning the Chevy...yet SO not

WOW. My parents' 1989 Chevy Caprice is HISTORY! It's been clunkered for cash.

I knew they were lookin to do this, but the events of the past 72 hours or so have just been too whirlwind to fully process this yet. It occurred to me this week that MAYBE they'd have a new car PRETTY damn soon, within a month maybe. Then I kinda upped the timetable a bit. Then, Thursday night, the AP reported that the Cash for Clunkers deal would likely be shelved THAT NIGHT due to overwhelming turnout...and my mood on the issue went south. THEN, yesterday, everyone involved assured the American public that the program was still a go...at least for this weekend, and hopefully longer. The House even approved 2 billion more dollars. My mood buoyed again. The end COULD be near!

So I get to their house today...and the OTHER car's in the street while the CHEVY is MISSING! Not in the driveway. I spun around and surveyed the entire street. NO sight of it! It was like 6:30pm. I KNEW something was up. Sure enough, I get inside and no one's home. Yup, yup...I started to truly get excited. Then, like a cliched sitcom, the phone rings. The brother. With the news that THEY WENT TO BUY A CAR. !?!?!?!? NEVER did I dream it'd happen this fast. Then again, I've kinda been out of the loop on the whole matter.

This news is more fantastic than I could EVER possibly express. Yet I'm kinda sad and irritated. I didn't get to Say Goodbye. You know me (don't you?)...I'd like to have driven it one last time. Fully inspected it. Taken photos. I say, TAKEN PHOTOS! We got this car in September of 1989! Twenty damn years! That's a long ass time. Vacations. Trips to college. Trips to the shore. SO many things happened with that car. And then it's just brutally SWIPED away from me without notice. Dammit. I'm tempted to seek it out at the dealer's where they traded it in for One Last Gaze. Wouldn't be able to gently stroke it, though. Or sit in it. Ugh. Oh, well. I'm probably being ridiculous, right? Yet not. I never considered myself a Car Guy or someone who attaches emotional meaning to their automobiles, but I guess I am to some extent. Hell, I attach emotion to my underwear. Thank you, 1989 Chevy Caprice that we got when Gloria Estefan's DON'T WANNA LOSE YOU was #1 on the charts...twenty years of (not always glorious) ridership! Rest in clunkered peace.

And now that I've appropriately mourned this gray, 20-year-old monstrous beast with a collapsing ceiling, one stereo speaker that was often static, no CD player, no driver's visor, gears that showed you in the "drive" position even when actually NOT, and so, SO much more (and all that's not even referring to the actual & many DRIVEABILITY issues)...yeah, now that I've mourned all that, I have 3 words.

THANK. FUCKING. CHRIST.