Below, the inimitable Dot made a sound reference, and so we are here not to bury the Jetta but to praise it. Or something like that.

For me, the Jetta first came to be, be in my awareness, in a phone call that through cellular towers reached M. in a Macy’s somewhere in the state of Mass. We were a couple then, but the plan was M. was definitely moving to Cali and who knew what that would mean. In fact, on our first date he quite rigorously discussed that his future was in the golden West and his need for a relationship was minimal.

For my part, I thought, thank god. I wasn’t really in the mood to play nice and make a boy like me.

I think we may even have been shopping for something he would need here, when he left there. I don’t remember. But, the phone rang. His buddy Dan was making plans for his return out here. He was getting his old, still running and largely reliable blue 1986 Volkswagen Jetta ready to go as a loaner to a friend who might need a ride.

The first time I came out here to visit the long-distance boyfriend, this car is the one that picked me up at the airport.[newline] [image:4034:l][newline] [image:4035:l][newline] [image:4036:l][newline] [image:4037:l][newline]

In that magical first visit, the man with whom later I would live romantically scooped me off the sidewalk of the airport and whisked me away to the Berkeley Marina. He wanted to share with me one of the main objects of his interest in those days.

Sweetly, he said, “I want to show you where they found Lacie.”

He drove us along the shore, Scott Peterson’s shore, and he had hoped that we might take a ferry ride. (That would be the actual romantic part.)

Instead, we got a bit lost and then discovered the ferry wasn’t running that time of day. While driving around a desolate, remote, little stretch of highway, we were improbably tapped in the Jetta’s backside by a woman not paying attention to the rules of the road.

Imagine this, you have come 3K+ miles to see a guy that you dated a bit in Cambridge and were visiting a bit unsure to test the waters of a long-distance thang. The waters involved wisecracks about a spousal killer. And in this strange place, you’re pulling over in the middle of nowhere to check the damage as a strange woman gets out of her car and walks towards yours.

She looked nothing like Amber Frey.

Through a series of visits, the Jetta took me, took us, to Sonoma and Napa to look at grape vines and taste a bit of the local products. Redwood forests, mountains, the not-so Pacific, From San Jose to SF and back. Fisherman’s Wharf, the Presidio, Pacific Heights, Lombard, Golden Gate Park, the Golden Gate Bridge, fog, sun, rain and more fog. Sausalito, Berkeley, Gilroy, although not the Garlic Festival, and back to SF some more. A walk-on ferry ride, for reals, to “The Rock.”

Sure it had no AC, but it did have windows. While it lasted, it was a good little soldier.

It did what it had to do and like the little train that could, it kept going.

Lately, 20 years and lots and lots of thousands of miles had sucked the reliable into a VW kind of Parkinson’s. A little shaky, maybe with a touch of a leprosy, where parts were starting to drop off.

Better to rust out than fade away, or worse yet, end up in a firey ball of death with M. at the wheel. And, so it goes.

Out with the old and in with the new. For M., like with my selling my place in Cambridge, it’s a commencement. I prefer the glass half empty, the life lived, the moments noted. So to the Jetta and my condo, I will toast a goodbye for yeoman’s service and a job well done.

Indulgent GF that I try to be, here’s the photo gallery of New Car Day, July 16, 2006.