Wanting What We Had Before It’s Gone

Wanting the heart to want what the heart wants while the heart has it.

Oh, what I’d give to have my late grandfather’s car once again.

Not his actual car, and this is an ‘86, but still looked identical.

This was a one-owner (him) 1987 (the year I was born) Plymouth Horizon.

If you’re having trouble picturing it, just imagine a Dodge Omni with Plymouth badges and you’ve got it. If you can’t picture that, picture what seems like the most practical car ever designed.

Four doors, hatchback (wooden dowel rod for propping the hatch open sold separately), and barely the shadow of a dashboard—which meant enough leg room to dance a seated Irish jig (in the front seat, at least).

Absolutely nothing power, nothing digital, not even a tape deck. It was one of the last eras of cars with more metal than plastic interior pieces and skinny doors that closed with a satisfying “shunk.”

It had the acceleration of shooed sloth, the suspension of a waterbed, and steering that could turn on a house.

I loved accompanying my grandfather on errands—his lanky knees bumping into his elbows around the pale blue vinyl steering wheel. When he stopped driving, I inherited it. Now, my lanky knees would bang into the sides of the steering wheel as I’d whip my friends around suburban back roads, the cartoonish suspension giving us the illusion of catching air while on the ground. Despite already having a car, I loved driving it, and not only because it could—unlike my car—accommodate a sousaphone in the back.

When it eventually became fairly unreliable, I gave it to a less fortunate family we knew who were skilled with wrenches.

If it were presented to me today, however, I’d feel like a Make-a-Wish kid.

If this was all someone could afford today, however, they’d likely be a bag of bickers.

Instead, I drive a white 2009 Chevy HHR “semi-panel.”

Actual car. Actual honor. Actual behavior.

It has a slightly cannibalistic clutch, a constipated throttle, and if it has rained recently, the stereo sounds like a payphone earpiece. Instead of trunk side windows, it has commercial-grade panels, and a grill only a mother could love.

When I first bought it in 2013, everyone said, “that car is so you!” And I’m not quite sure if I should take that as a compliment or poke them in the eye.

I drove my HHR—sometimes called “The Milk Truck” or “Etco-2”—into a grocery store parking space to pick up an order for a work lunch. The attendant was all grins as she looked my car over.

“You like your HHR?”

“Well, enough, I guess.”

Then she paused for a beat.

“I sure do miss mine. It felt like it could carry anything and still swing into any spot I wanted. My trusty little tank. Somebody hit it, so now it’s gone. Oh, well. Anyways, have a nice day.”

I thanked her, closed the hatch, and hopped into the driver’s seat. Before I turned the key in the ignition (yep, still got that going for it), I pondered a bit about how, for how much I occasionally complained about my semi-beater car, I did miss it when it was in the shop—no matter what new loaner a dealership had tried to get me to fall for.

Then I thought about how I’ll probably feel the same way the grocery store attendant did once this car is out of my life. Sure, it’s not pretty or exciting, but it’s my steed. It has taken my family from Oklahoma to upstate New York, Georgia, and back. It is the car my wife and I drove away from our wedding and, three years later, used to bring our son home for the first time.

It is easy to wonder how nice it would be to have something that you don’t, it feels like a superpower to appreciate what you’ve had for years while you still have it.

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