Published October 4, 2024 

Just before I began a life in journalism, I nearly started a job selling insurance. Can you imagine? I’m incapable of selling anything. “Here, just take it,” I’d likely say. “My treat.”

All I had to do was clear the interview, and I had help with that. More on that later. I did well. But there was this one awkward moment.

“Do you own a luxury car?” the hiring manager asked, knowing full well that my Mazda GLC hatchback was occupying an embarrassingly tiny space in the parking lot out front.

No, I said, blushing and on the verge of nervous laughter.

What I didn’t say, but was true, was that beat-up thing was all I could afford, it had been badly wrecked and was barely able to keep adding to its mileage, which was substantial. I did not own a luxury car, nor did I expect I ever would. I wondered: Was this a selling point of the job, that someday I might if I worked hard?

I’d given him the wrong answer

This man who was born 101 years ago and could remember daily life during the Great Depression set the snot-nosed punk in front of him straight.

“Having a car is a luxury,” he said, his nostrils on the edge of flaring, I feared. “That car out there is a luxury.”

But that’s not what you asked, I immediately thought. My future in newspapers and in editing was spilling from my lump-of-clay-waiting-to-be-molded brain. If having a car is a luxury, then the term ‘luxury car’ is redundant, right? Or, a luxurious car would indeed be a luxury, yes? I mean, you used the word as a modifier! 

I can’t remember if I defended my “no” answer or deferred to the gentleman who was seemingly in control of my fate. Probably the latter. He was recording the interview, and I likely didn’t want the home office to see me as a troublemaker. But I thought about it, exasperated, on the drive back to my hometown. (That’s not what he asked!) I’ve thought about it a lot over the years, never more so than today.

Let’s go back to the future

Three years ago, I was well into a future that would have been impossible to predict on the day of that interview when I walked out to take a drive in my 1999 Honda Civic and discovered it was gone. Stolen. It was recovered, and after spending a lot of money to make it drivable again, things were back to normal.

Until it was stolen again less than four months later.

This time, it was picked apart and barely resembled a car. A long, beautiful relationship was over. Unable to replace it, I was facing life without a vehicle I could drive. Then on September 22, 2021, my day off, I woke up, groggy and depressed, to this email.

Hey Carly – Long time no talk. I wanted to run a proposal by you to gauge your interest.

My wife and I are in the process of buying a new to us car, which means we no longer have any use for our old car. We wanted to know if you wanted it free of charge.

I know you no longer have a car and I’m not sure what your plans are going forward in regard to transportation.

Our car is a 2006 Honda Accord with like 250k miles on it. Everything works on it except the power steering, which apparently is like a $2k fix so we’ve never done it. Otherwise, it runs great.

If you don’t want it, no big deal.

Let me know.

Craig

He sent photos. Here’s one.

That email changed my life

I perked up, then began to cry. Who does this? Who gives a car to someone who isn’t family?

Writing back, still not believing my good fortune, I said yes. Three years ago today, on a gorgeous fall morning in the Pacific Northwest, I rode Amtrak up to Tacoma to take possession and to hug and thank my friends.

Returning home, southbound on Interstate 5, I listened to a CD I’d brought with me, knowing it would sing to me words that said the opposite of what I’d been thinking lately.

Drivin’ down I-5
I don’t ever wanna die”

“Down I-5” by the supergroup case/lang/veirs was perfect already, but more so now. I’d discovered Neko Case through Craig years earlier. Perfect, perfect, perfect.

I don’t drive it often

Much like my 1999 Civic in the final three years that I had it, the car sits more than it moves. In 36 months, I’ve driven it 6,569 miles. That includes a pair of long-for-me day trips in June this year.

Wednesday, I took my third-longest drive of the year, 68 miles roundtrip, to an eye appointment on a lovely college campus in Oregon. The leaves were a spectacular sight for my baby blues, which have spent too much time this decade hiding inside the four walls of home.

I don’t want to think about how much a Lyft or Uber ride would have cost. And switching to a closer eye clinic is not an option. I hit the lottery when I moved from Louisiana to Oregon in 2010, unknowingly deciding to move within an hour’s drive of leading experts on the abnormality that afflicts my corneas. They extended my professional life and my will to live.

Why would you want to break a connection with someone who saved you from drowning?

For every one of those 68 miles, I was grateful to have control over how to get there and back.

Driving down I-5

I stopped in Rochester, Washington, on the way home from Tacoma three years ago and bought $40.58 worth of gas. Then I continued down I-5, which I’ve traveled often enough since 2021 to put myself back in mind of my friends to the north of me.

Since accepting their generous gift, I’ve thanked Craig and Veronica several times, but not often enough. Their thoughtfulness and grace in their giving was and is extraordinary. And I’ve thought about their daughter, who is probably nearing the age when it’s time to talk about when she will start to drive. If something happens to me, I’d want them to have the option of welcoming the Accord back into their lives as a starter car for her or to make giving her a different one easier.

Keep that in mind, please, anyone who might be in a position to help with this at such a time. I’ve been gentle with it. And I’ve had to buy gas only 33 times in 36 months.

The gift of possibiliies

The car has made possible every errand and day trip and drive across town for a change of scenery I’ve taken in the last three years.

What price would you put on autonomy?

I often say I have the worst luck and the best luck, both, of anyone I know. Whether that’s possible is up to someone else to rule on, but I do know I have the best support I could ever wake up to from my sleep. I could tell you stories about that every day.

Thank you, Craig and Veronica. I think of you every time I get in the car. You gave me back my autonomy and my life. You made today and tomorrow possible.

Back to that job interview

The person who recommended me for the insurance sales job coached me for the interview. He knew that a 21-year-old might not have the life experience to answer certain questions in a reassuring way.

The job was selling Knights of Columbus life insurance, meaning it had a built-in clientele. The man who prepped me for the interview was changing positions, and he’d established a thriving territory. Not even I could mess up that job, I thought.

I did well in the interview. I made the hiring manager laugh. “Tell me a joke,” he’d said, and so I did.

For career day at school, Sister Mary Catherine asked the students to stand up and tell the class what they wanted to be when they grew up. Sally stood in front of the room and said, “I want to be a prostitute.” 

“WHAT DID YOU SAY?” Sister Mary Catherine bellowed.

“I want to be a prostitute,” Sally said again.

“Oh, thank God,” Sister Mary Catherine said. “I thought you said Protestant.”

I held my breath and waited

Not only did the man laugh, he leaned over and spoke into the mic of the tape recorder. “That’s a good one, Fred,” he said, still chuckling, to the higher-up who would be reviewing the taped interview.

The man who asked the questions and would be my boss had served in the Pacific Theater in World War II and also served in Korea. He’d seen and done a lot. It felt like an honor to make him laugh.

I got the job. But before I could get going, he had a heart attack, and they put things on hold. My start in newspapers began soon after that. I don’t think we ever spoke again, but I know the job was soon back in its previous capable hands and that the man survived his heart attack and went on to live a good number of years more.

Carly the copy editor has thought about his question many times. Overwhelmingly, Carly the copy editor has concluded, Yeah, well, that’s not what you asked, and all of the other things a word person might think to say.

Carly the human being, who crawled through a river of shit in 2021 in so many ways, and who had spent the only three months of her adult life without a car to drive, heard this whisper in her head not long after bringing the car home.

You do drive a luxury car after all.

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