a eulogy for Stella

Right before my junior year, a woman in our ward called me up and said that she was getting a new car and wondered if I wanted her old Rabbit, free of charge. Heck yes! So began the Stella Saga. I got sweet seat covers for her for my birthday and named her Stella, which I thought was an appropriate name given her awesomeness. She served me well for the rest of my high school years, and just last weekend we sold her.

Stella had her fair share of problems. She needed a new clutch when I first got her, and a man in my stake offered to find the part and install it if I would just take his son from seminary to school everyday--easy peasy, lemon squeezy!! Stella and I were meant to be. The battery would die if it was too cold outside, and sometimes I accidentally left the lights on, killing the battery: these adventures with the battery taught me many lessons, not the least of which being how to use jumper cables. I always kept jumper cables in the back of my car, and I knew how to use them.

Stella also was the car on which I learned how to drive a stick: a miserable experience, but if I can drive Stella, I can drive any car on the face of the planet.

Stella had several idiosyncrasies: the heat would never go completely off and would only come up out of the defrost vents; there was a weird whistling sound connected to the speakers, and when I'd accelerate, the whistling would get more high-pitched; no A/C; a manual convertible; you couldn't shift directly into first gear, but had to rather go into second and wiggle your way into first; the gas gauge didn't work, so everytime I went to the gas station, I had to fill up completely and rely on the odometer to know how much gas I had left; when it rained, Stella let some of the rain into the car, gracing you with a nice, sloshy puddle on the passenger's side; when the car was idle, the battery would sometimes threaten to die, so I had to rev the engine to get the battery back up, and people would think I was trying to be cool when really I was trying to keep my car alive.

I had several adventures with Stella, including running out of gas on the way from seminary at least twice, hitting a pedestrian, getting my first (and so far only) speeding ticket, getting a flat tire after running over the curb on a sharp turn, several mysteriously dead batteries, a faltering alternator, and going the completely wrong way on Colfax Avenue for several miles.

If she would have made it over the mountains, I totally would have taken her to school with me. Alas, she had to stay in our driveway when I left, and when I came back for the summer last year, she didn't work. We managed to get her up and running for about a month, and then a cocky missionary said he could fix her and he killed her. She hasn't moved since.

Last week, some guys came by wondering if Stella was for sale. She was. They took her and planned on fixing her up. Her spot in the driveway is now empty.

Today, Emily saw her on the side of the road with a "For Sale" sign in her window. Who knows what her future holds now . . .

Stella, you were good to me. You had to go, because you didn't work. I still love you. I will miss you. You will always have a special place in my heart as my first--very junky--car.