My Old Dodge and Me

The 1950 Dodge sedan that I owned many years ago was in terrible shape. It was eight years old. The tires were bald and I could see the street below thanks to a hole in the driver’s side floorboard. It weighed a ton and was falling apart but I didn’t make enough money to trade up, so I scraped up enough to have its motor rebuilt. Eventually, sick of flat tires, I replaced those, but I didn’t even think to have the floorboard patched.

My body is like that old car – parts continually need to be repaired or replaced. I’ve been in the shop more times than I can count, having joints replaced or fused, or ligaments repaired. Like my old Dodge, my body has a waiting list for repairs: a Zenker’s diverticulum, cataracts in both of my eyes, left foot repair, and more. In addition there are things I could have fixed, but I regard them as necessary evils like the floorboard in my old Dodge.

Bless its heart, my old Dodge took a single mom and her toddler son pretty safely where they needed to go. Only once did it leave us in a pinch. We were driving back to Kansas City from my parents’ home in Bates City about eight in the evening on a winter's night. Half way home a tire went flat and I had to stop and get help. I bundled my forty-pound toddler son into my arms and set out walking toward house lights I could see half a mile away. Luckily there were three houses in a row because the first house I stopped at would not let me in to make a phone call and no lights were on in the second. The third house was hospitable and everything turned out just fine, but right after that I found the money for new tires.

I’m at the point of buying new tires for myself, meaning that having throat repair has moved to the top of my priority list. The Zenker’s is causing me to choke on food and cough more and more frequently, several times a day now, so surgery is on my calendar for September.

Now, my old Dodge experience taught me that age and decrepitude don't necessarily stop a body. I particularly remember driving it with my little boy by my side* one January day over ice- and snow-covered Kansas City streets. Traffic crept along, passing occasional cars spinning their wheels fruitlessly. As I drove my old heap at the end of a line of newer cars, we approached a rather steep hill. As we climbed the hill every one of the cars ahead of me slid backward and sideways and ended up off the road. I, driving my trusty old workhorse, heavier than any of the others, plowed by them right to the top and onward without missing a beat.

Who knows? Maybe I, too, have enough strength and stamina to make it up the hill, to get my worst frailties fixed up to go another mile or two.

A few years later I sold the Dodge to a neighbor lady for $35. Eventually it must have ended up as scrap, but still having some worth.

I, too, will have some worth when my life as a human being ends. My body, full of artificial joints, contains a considerable amount of titanium. I’ve instructed my family to retrieve the metal from my ashes to help pay for the cremation.

*This was in the nineteen-fifties. There were no seat belts, much less infant and toddler seats. Mothers put babies and young children beside them in the passenger seat. When we had to brake, we threw our right arms across the child's body for protection. That reaction was so habitual hat I did it even when driving alone and for years after.

Copyright 2016 by Shirley Domer