Woody Cavenaugh

There is something about proximity. We joke about people resembling their dogs all the time. We don't joke so much about married couples beginning to resemble as they age, but we have all seen it happen.

There is just some sort of bond created that is stronger than justice and thicker than blood that joins you to someone in an unexplainable way. It also works with somethings. In 1965 my father bought a brand new Ford Fairlane 500 Sports Coupe. It was the first new car he had ever bought, and my mother cried for a week wondering how they were going to pay for it. Just about the time she got pregnant with what would become me, she totaled the car in a light rain on fresh pavement. The water brought the oil out of the pavement, and she lost traction. When the world stopped spinning she was sitting in the back seat across from the driver's seat, with nerve damage. To this day she can't really feel what's going on in her abdomen. The car was too beautiful a thing to let die so young so the better half of Dad's Fairlane, was welded to the better half of another Fairlane who had suffered similarly. When I was born, I was brought home from the hospital in that car. Dad had bought himself an F100 pickup and the Fairlane became Mom's car. Most of my "first" were in that car. First trip to the doctor, first trip to the emergency room, first trip to the dentist. First trip through a drive through, first trip to a drive in. Christmas eve laying in the back seat on the way home from Grandmother's house looking out through the back glass at the stars above wondering if I would see Rudolph. My first day of school in Kindergarten I went in that car, and my last day of High School, I went in that car. In 1985 my parents bought a car for my mother to replace the Fairlane, which they had deemed too old and too unreliable for mom's daily commute to work. The Fairlane sat in the driveway. They weren't going to sell it. They saw it as the perfect first car for their only son. It was big, heavy, and expendable. The popular wisdom was that teenagers were going to wreck their first car so why buy something new when that would be good enough.

The never counted on two facts. First, while they considered me an only child, I always felt like I had an older sister who just happened to have four wheels and a taste for leaded gas. After all, the car had been in the family longer than I had. In the time before I turned 16 I planned, schemed and saved my pennies. Second she had always been my dream car. By the time I was 17 the car had new paint, new wheels, and a professional tint job. It didn't need much else. Body wise she was nearly flawless, the interior was careworn, but certainly not warn out. It was in the Fairlane that I got my first kiss. It was in the Fairlane that I ever got my first up close and personal look at the real difference between boys and girls. It was the Fairlane who took me to and from work every day and took me cruising the beach every night after work. A Danish foreign exchange student I went to high school named her "Beautie", and it stuck.

Meanwhile in 1997, the car that was suppose to replace Beautie for my mother died suddenly and had to be replaced. In 1992 my father bought me a car to take me away to college in. It was used, but it was newer and better on gas. Beautie sat in the yard at home until I came for her and brought her to college with me. A few years later, she needed $3500 in repairs to the front suspension. Her replacement needed $3500 in repairs to the engine. I drove the replacement car to the junk yard, sold it as scrap and never looked back. Beautie became my one and only once again.

February 29th 2000 I brought another woman into my life on a full time basis. Soon after she grounded Beautie - temporarily. I trusted my wife 100% with the money and she said it would be for the best to take the insurance off of the car that got the worst gas mileage. Besides, she never felt comfortable riding in Beautie, and she feared driving her. It takes more than five senses to drive Beautie. Just to start with if you think of her as a mere "car", a tool to take you from point A to point B you are doomed to failure. Driving with Beautie is a partnership and a compromise. You'll always get to where you are going, but you have to be willing to release some control to get there. You also have to have a sense of humor, but that is a story that Rob Parrish can tell much better than I as I was the butt of one of Beautie's jokes, and he had a front row seat to the jape of the century.

My parents gave me the car they bought in 1997 that was the car that replaced Beautie in 1985. It was practical and pleasant enough as far as conveyances go. My wife approved and Beautie sat in the yard. Over time the air seeped out of her tires. Her paint lost some of its luster. The mice made themselves a home. While this was going on, I put on 110 pounds, I got too tired to mow the grass. My knees ached too much to fence and I taught classes from a chair. I was immobile and falling apart.

But then something happened. I am not sure what or how, but Beautie came to me in my dreams filling me with comfort and hope. I noticed that the chrome started to sparkle and the mice moved out. Grass did not grow up around her and I found myself getting my own health together. The more healthy I became the more "healthy" she looked. Or perhaps it is the other way around. I brought up the subject of putting insurance on her again and my wife was very agreeable. It was like Beautie was a battery that held an energy that sustains both of us and it was suddenly charging. Either I am charging her, or she me, I will never know, but the effect is the same. We are becoming reborn.

Yup. Real beauty, ain't she? Yes sir. Tell you what. You take this ship - treat her proper - she'll be with you for the rest of your life.

-Firefly