It's Not the End of the Road, It May Just Be a Transfer

My 2007 VW Passat coasted to a quiet (but definite end) with 178,699 miles on the odometer this weekend. Cause of death: Loss of compression in three of four cylinders as a result of a handful of mechanical issues that I probably should have taken more seriously. As someone with an overactive sentimentality gland in my brain, I have a hard time letting go of lots of things. That problem is only made worse when the thing in question is a car.

The VW was my "divorce car" purchased (and briefly hated) because it was the vehicle I needed to buy to replace an aging Dodge Durango while the joint account was still up, running and uncontested. I needed something with better fuel economy and (in the quiet back area of my mind) would fit more easily into the street parking spots of Chicago's neighborhoods. I hoped that I'd visit friends, crash on couches, see concerts and date exciting women in the months to come. In reality, I saw more concerts than exciting lady apartments - I'm OK with that outcome.

There's something to be said for buying a car (or renting an apartment for that matter) in the short term to heap misery into it before you cut it loose and make a clean break. To be able to say, "This is the car that drove me to my lawyer's office, was a quiet place to mourn and then took me to court that morning... And now it's gone." I've unintentionally done this before with rental spaces that when I pass now all I can muster is a, "Jesus... that place..."

I wish I could tell you what song I first played in the VW when I wheeled it off the lot, but I honestly have no idea. It had to be on the radio, but I was more preoccupied with the sudden downsizing from the SUV while grumbling about the lack of features and being so low to the ground.

I do remember trying to hammer the gas out of a red light and the car shuddering and stalling out for a moment. It was not love at first sight.

The car did begin to grow on me, though. My sons loved that it was quicker than anything else in their small world of vehicles (all SUV's). They could climb into the back more easily. The stereo was loud and for reasons lost to family history, they named her Bubbles.

Like anything in this world, that car was present for a range of days. It was the car that took me to a host of meetings and court dates I'd rather not ever repeat in the future. It was the car where I took a selfie with a nondescript reusable bag that held my Dad's ashes in the parking lot of the crematorium and texted my sister that I was going to lunch with the old guy. Good and bad. Dark and light and dark things I made light of.

Bubbles hauled us north for trips to Minnesota and Michigan. A drive as far south as Arkansas to visit friends and explore caves. She waited patiently in parking lots for us to fly and return from Boston and LA and a handful of work trips I needed to take. There were even a few of the city dates that I'd hoped for as well as a run of about 18 months together with someone who lived in one of the tougher neighborhoods to park in.

There was moderate shouting to "behave" or "Dude!?!" when the two kids got out of line in the back. There was the long ride home from Arkansas which prompted my then 5-year-old to comment that Bubbles smelled like "farts and shouting." We found some Ozium for that when we got home.

Mostly though, the car was something that just ran without too much trouble. It played music loudly when I was happy, quietly when I wasn't and podcasts when my morning commute stretched on for 90 minutes or more. I think that setting aside the influence of America's car culture, I bond with cars because they are the first and last leg of anything notable that happens in the lives of my family - good or bad. Get in. Drive to wherever you're headed. Enjoy the time. Drive home. Park and sometimes wait for a great song to end before you head inside.

For me, Bubbles will be a car I remember for the mix of good and bad, great to terrible and moments where one extreme swung to the other. Self-selected pep talks pumped through the speakers of that sedan to help me face whatever monster was stalking me that day. Quiet breaks at midday when I'd grab someone at work and discretely tell them I just needed to go sit in my car for 30 minutes because I just couldn't keep working at the moment. The "first" first date I went on in over a decade that ended without either of us bothering to lie and say we a) Had a good time or b) Would call later. A great trip this summer where a beautiful woman sat beside me as we laughed and held hands on the way there and rode in silence on the way back, trying to figure out how we were supposed to communicate through the rough spots after two marriages that never featured that pretty basic function. The stereo may be the only reason neither of us dove from a moving vehicle.

The take away for me is that the car is obviously neither good nor bad and I'm not superstitious enough to think a collection of metal, plastic and glass can change my life with good or bad fortune. The car is simply "there" as I ride out the lows and enjoy the highs. It just helps to have a beefy subwoofer to drown out the chatter on the days I need it.

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Without too much thought, here's a mini playlist in honor of Bubbles. While I hope you find resurrection at the hands of a careful mechanic with time on their hands and a functional engine at their disposal, if this is the end for you I'd like to say thanks. I couldn't have gotten here without you. (Well, not here here... Because you left us on the side of the highway this weekend, but in a metaphorical sense, you got me here. Good car.)

* Keeping with the theme of the grey area is this song. I have a clear memory of sitting in a parking lot, wondering just what was going to happen next (which is to undersell just how lost I was at the moment). The McDonald's just off the highway in Oak Brook is steps away from the corporate headquarters and I suspect that the constant stream of corporate executives who can no-so-secretly shop keeps this location on their toes. I swung through the drive through to get something to eat and sat quietly for a while, trying to sift through the changing landscape of what I thought the years ahead would look like.

I was intentionally cautious to not dream up too many perfect women that would be waiting with open arms post-divorce because I felt that was a short-term, simplistic fix. Trading one flawed relationship for a newer, equally flawed one didn't make sense. And then this song came on.

It's a catchy song. Elbow are a band I like in general and appreciate for their grumpy undertones and darker themes (even the name of the album references a track about a kid who is ignored until the days he starts coming to the bar where his absentee parent can be found). This track though hit me squarely in that middle ground between a groggy hangover and pleasant recognition that the person waking up next to you is extraordinary.

It picks up bonus points for the use of strings (which I theorize make any song cooler) and because it echoes my girlfriend's assertion that I wake up most mornings by keeping one eye closed, squinting with the other and growling a slightly pissed off, "What?" She thinks it's cute. I'm not going to correct her.

The best part, though is when singer Guy Garvey sounds genuinely overjoyed leading in the upswings of the verses ("Holy cow / I love your eyes!") like it was recorded as he was discovering that very specific emotion anew at that moment. I'm not ashamed to admit that on my own, at highway speeds I totally go for the accent when I sing that line. "Holy cow / I looof yer eyes..."

One Day Like This was a private anthem for months, but even its title speaks to that need to look forward to a better time.

* Jason Isbell is an artist I connect with on both musical and personal levels. There are a few songs I've thought about featuring here but are just too on the nose to work with right now. From struggles with sobriety to his similarly twisted sense of humor I really enjoy being a fan of someone who reaches me in specific but uttery unique ways. There are parts of his music that speak to me in ways that nothing else ever has.

It's interesting that Isbell and I have so much overlap when I listen. He is very much a Southern man and I am decidedly Northern, but apparently pine trees are the great equalizer for this song. When it popped up in a shuffled playlist this summer, I was in Michigan's Upper Peninsula and while I could feign shock that there were, in fact, pine trees lining the road... well, anyone who has spent time there knows that's pretty much the case for most of the area.

I've never been so rooted to the area that I've received mail in the UP, but my dad was born there and brought home to the same house my grandfather grew up in. They're now side by side in the small cemetery just outside of town. A few family members and friends who are like family have returned or never left and even now as my visits grow more infrequent, I feel I'm home when I make the drive.

That trip would prove to be the last one of any distance for Bubbles and I joked that I wouldn't have been surprised if I had to replace her mid-trip, picking something mobile from a lot in a small town with two bars, a post office and a grocery store. It was also the first trip back since we buried my dad there (though no one seemed to notice and thought I'd been back once or twice since that long weekend two years ago).

That's where the beauty of the song punched through for me as it played. While there's a lot to love about this song, it's never needy. He's admitting faults and mistakes and is startlingly honest as a recovering addict when he sings, "It’s the only open liquor store north / I can’t stand the pain of being by myself, without a little help, on a Sunday afternoon." However, the literal refrain he keeps coming back to is a longing to return home.

While the song is about a physical space for a protagonist who is living out of run down motel rooms, the idea is obviously bigger than that. As I drove from one of those roadside motels where I'd stopped for the night, it was the perfect song for the moment as I drove through the morning drizzle on a two-lane highway slashed through a National Forest.

You'd be so proud that I didn't change the lyrics to "Michigan pines." Not that it fits the rhyme scheme anyways... but still.

* Last thing's, last. I've mentioned the "Clean Enough" playlist that is slowly drifting from my control to my 8-year-old son's domain. A few weeks ago, he excitedly explained that he'd added Imagine Dragons and that I should listen as soon as the sound waves could reach my ear drums. I was standing in my boxers pouring coffee at 6:15 a.m. on a Saturday morning. I think my silent blinking and sipping from the mug conveyed my intense desire to do just that, right that second.

He played Thunder and Believer for me and in the course of that excitedly told me that these were songs... recommended... by a girl. He's in third grade, so this isn't a shock. The idea that my 8-year-old will be using music to say things he can't get a proper grip on is by no means a surprise. I'm 39 and I'm still in that phase.

With those songs in the rotation, they obviously pop up quite a bit. When riding in my old car (so old it doesn't have a radio and we make it work with an iPhone, a short audio cable and a repurposed speaker) he is generally the DJ because of the two kids, he's the one who can read track names to find the songs they want.

In Bubbles, we needed to stay tethered to AUX input, making me the DJ and official scorekeeper of whose turn it was to request a song (and complain when we didn't listen to it on repeat for the duration of the trip). The new car has Bluetooth, so once that's figured out I'm sure my phone will be migrating to the back seat more and more often.

They'll play things they like, 30 second snippets at a time until there's a near brawl or attention spans drift. They'll scream "Heyyyyy" instead of "Paiiiiin" during Believer because they're kids and I'm not going to correct that any time soon. With any luck, the new car will die like the old one - 100,000 miles richer for the experience and with a fatal blow that kills the engine, but keeps the electrical system in tact so we can listen to something while we wait for a tow.