Published June 21, 2021

What should I tell you about? How, all things considered, I was lucky to get almost 22 years out of my 1999 Honda Civic? About the time it was broken into in the parking space above, with a half-smoked cigarette left on the floorboard, or the other time when someone left a set of shaved car keys? How one of the theories was that someone was turning tricks in our cars, and that this time, keys fell out of a john’s pockets? Or whether it was a homeless person who usually slept across the road who needed a break from the cold, and whether it would be a good idea to offer to let them sleep in it regularly, thus becoming an anti-theft teammate of mine?

How much should I say about when it was stolen on Feb. 28 and found that night? About when it was stolen yesterday and found a few hours later, stripped of almost everything that makes a car run?

I’m going to be without a car for now, and maybe for the rest of my life. Considering that there’s no guarantee I’ll wake up tomorrow from a medical procedure that’s been on the books for a few weeks, the rest of my life might not be a lot of time. However that turns out, I wanted to write one last love letter to my car, this time setting out to do so from the start.

In August 2020, I wrote about the 10th anniversary of my drive from Louisiana to Oregon to begin a new life, and that long, winding blog post wrote its way into being a love letter to the car. This time, I’m taking the direct route.

This story will jump around in time

I’m going to start with the car’s final chapter and then work my way through plot points from the past. Luckily, I have some photos that skew heavily toward these past few months, so they will help me with the storytelling.

I woke up feeling good on Saturday, Feb. 27, and I put on my favorite leggings, a lot of purple and walked to my car on a gorgeous morning.

I had realized that it had been a long time since I’d taken my car for a drive (pandemic, snow, other reasons), and it was time to go somewhere, if only for a short time.

Yes. Where shall we go? To get cold-brew coffee, we decided, and we headed out hours before the start of my night shift. The coffee was great, as were the scones, and my night of work was productive and satisfying. I felt content.

The moon and my heart were indeed full.

I woke up the next day, another work day, and looked out the window to see what kind of day it was. My brain had difficulty coming to grips with what it saw, or what it didn’t see: my car.

It was gone.

In parking space 2, where my car had slept every night since mid-April 2018, there was nothing but the memory of a car. It was clear: My car was stolen.

Portland police found it that night, in Portland, and had it towed to a towing company’s lot. I was told how I could claim it the next morning. I took Lyft, then found out the car had big problems. The ignition had been messed with, so I couldn’t put my key in it to start her up. The gas had been siphoned out of the tank, so there was no way to know how far the car would go before being on empty. The trunk and interior smelled like gas after they left the hose in the trunk.

There was mud everywhere on the inside. The coin box was taken. So were both license plates, my iPhone charger, my portable tire inflator, an umbrella, an ice scraper, some personal papers, a stereo remote and a favorite pair of sunglasses. My stereo and CDs were left behind, as were my speakers. My Washington plates were replaced with stolen Oregon plates, which were sloppily placed on the car. The thieves had plans for my Honda Civic, but they had to abandon them. More on that in a bit.

Because it wasn’t drivable, I couldn’t bring it back home. I had difficulty arranging a tow for several reasons but finally convinced someone through AAA to tow it to my mechanic’s shop back across the river. My mechanic agreed to look it over thoroughly and let me know if it could be put back in good condition, as well as how much that would cost.

I watched as the tow truck pulled away with my car, not knowing if I had driven her for the last time or if we’d have more time together.

More than 24 hours later, I got the word: It was fixable, and I was lucky. How so? I’m glad you asked.

About a month before it was stolen, I’d had trouble starting it. I figured it was because the battery was old (I’d bought it in summer 2015). I made a note to buy a new one soon, but after that, it started perfectly every time, so I bookmarked that thought for later. Don’t wait too long, I told myself.

Well, if I had taken it in, I might have learned that my distributor was going bad, and I might have replaced it all: battery, plugs, distributor cap, rotor and so forth. But I didn’t. And that’s how my car saved itself.

At some point after taking it, the car thieves must have stopped it to strip it and siphon the gas, then were unable to restart it. “The distributor died,” the mechanic said. “You got lucky. Otherwise, I doubt you’d have ever seen your car again.”

So, the next day, I got it back. My car and I were reunited. The ordeal set me back a bit financially, though. New distributor: $588. New battery: $141. Original tow: $219. Lyft rides to sort it all out: $89.55. New license plates and registration: $134.50.

A police officer met me at my mechanic’s shop and gave me a Club, the steering-wheel lock meant to prevent car thefts. A federal grant provided money for the department to give them to people whose cars had been stolen.

I drove to the nearest gas station to fill the tank, then pulled into a nearby parking lot to reminisce with my car.

We remembered how it all began back in September 1999 many miles from here.

I had a lot of cleaning to do. There were saw blades in the back, trash strewn about and, as I’d said earlier, mud and the smell of gas. I spent a couple of days working on the latter after giving the inside a good cleaning.

My mother taught me about using sliced apples to absorb odors, and these spent the night inside my closed trunk. Then I let sunshine do its own kind of disinfecting.

Do you see that my car is not parked where it had been before? I wanted to find a way to park it closer to the building instead of near the road, thinking it would be less vulnerable, and a resident who’s a former co-worker made a trade with me for parking spaces. He doesn’t drive or own a car, and he only needs a parking space when a friend visits, so he agreed. The parking spaces on this row are not as wide as the ones on the other side, so I had to learn how to back it in on days when that was the better option if I wanted to be able to open my door more than a few inches.

I got pretty good at it, as you can see.

Soon after, we enjoyed a sunset together.

I also thought that having my car obscured by the white van from the point of view of the access road would be another safeguard to help thwart would-be thieves. For a couple of months, I believed that to be true.

But then about a month ago, someone smashed the back windows of the van, stole its contents and left a lot of shattered glass on the parking lot surface. Soon after, I stopped seeing the van. A car came a few times, and that space has remained empty since then.

One Saturday, I went out there and picked up all of the shattered glass because no one else had done it.

Now there’s shattered glass again, this time because the thieves that stole my car yesterday smashed the rear driver’s-side window to get into the car.

The car was found a few hours after it was taken. The thieves drove it, stripped it of important parts, then abandoned it in a popular part of Portland for dumping stolen vehicles. That photo was taken and sent to me by the Portland Airport Police officer who discovered it and found me via the local police.

His initial report to me was that the battery had been cut out, the muffler and exhaust system and, probably, the catalytic converter. Oh, and the stereo. And all but one of my CDs. The lone survivor: One that was a big part of my drive from Louisiana to Oregon, and one that I wrote about in this blog post about a particular song that I like, “September Fifteenth.”

“Those tires are in great shape,” he said. “Maybe you can get some money for them.”

The update from a friend who went to the car to retrieve personal items for me while I’m homebound preparing for surgery: They also stole the headlights, wiper blades, my registration papers, a few other personal items and my other stereo remote.

One thing they left, perhaps to send a message: The Club.

The car cannot be saved. My friend grabbed the floor mats, which I bought in March to replace the ones muddied and sliced up by the carjackers, so maybe I can sell them for a few dollars, too.

Oh, I forgot to mention the license plates. They took those as well, which meant that I’ll never see this beautiful sight in person again.

After my car and I were reunited in March, I bought her a gift, some bling for being such a smart car and saving herself. It was fun to get on the ground and attach the license plate frames and new plates to the car.

It’s proving to be a logistical nightmare to try to get the car towed or sold for scrap. That story isn’t one I want to bore you with, but trust me when I tell you that I’d been better off had the car never been found.

People have been great. Some lovely friends sent me money to try to ease the blow. When one of their transfers hit my Venmo account, the cash-register sound took me by surprise. It was a lovely gesture and will be so helpful to me as I piece together a life without a car and absorb whatever costs await me in walking away from this one. That cha-ching sound was just as great to hear as the meow from the Parking Kitty, an experience I won’t have anytime soon, either.

When you don’t have a car to park, you don’t have to worry about downtown parking meters, which I suppose is a silver lining. And I needed to do more walking around downtown anyway, so maybe this was the universe’s way of nudging me in that direction.

February tears

I didn’t cry when my car was stolen on the last day of the second month of the year. I cried a few weeks earlier while looking out my window at my car.

It snowed, and rather than try to walk and drive in all of that, I stayed home until all of the snow had melted. Early on, I was excited by the snow. The more of it that fell, the more beautiful it was outside this building.

But one night, with the snow still inches deep out there, I finished a difficult work shift, pulled up a chair at the window, stared out at my car and just started bawling. My life had changed dramatically in the previous month: new job, new routine, new way of working, new co-workers, new technology to learn, new policies to navigate, and much more. I had to leave my health insurance and health provider behind, which was all under the same umbrella, and that meant I now had different insurance, doctor, clinic, pharmacy, trans-care team, system of ordering medications and scheduling appointments, and on and on and on. The cost of my medications skyrocketed, and it took months to get it to where I was paying $100 more instead of $300-plus more. I was overwhelmed and overcome by all of the changes.

So, sitting there at the window, I cried as I looked at my car, which I missed driving, and which was one of the most meaningful things in my life that represented continuity. I’d had it for almost 22 years, so while everything else was new, she was a constant in my life. We had a history together, and we would continue to.

At least until Feb. 28, when she was stolen. And after becoming a team again, now we’re broken up again, this time forever.

Bye, old friend

There is so much more I could tell you about my car, but a lot of it is in that blog post from last summer. And yes, I’m torn up about losing the car for good this time, but I think the February theft had me better prepared. Every day since then that I walked outside and found a Honda Civic in my parking space, that was a bonus day with a car, I told myself.

It’s the same thing I told myself in April 2018 when a co-worker who had parked next to my parked car at work hit it, totaling it, starting a chain reaction that led me to move from 8 miles away from the office to six blocks from the office. That story? Yeah, it gets a mention in that August 2020 blog post linked above.

The most recent Google Street View image available for this place is from a couple of months after I moved here. My car is sitting there in space 2, it’s a lovely day, and life is starting to smooth out for me after another rough stretch.

It’s comforting to know that I can look at it anytime I have computer access. I can even simulate a drive around the area in it, thanks to the amazing technology that makes that image possible in the first place.

There might be updates, but this is all I can write right now. I have a big day tomorrow to prepare for, and lots of changes in my life to plan for. It’s just me, without my faithful companion of the past 22 years, and I need to sit with that for a time.

Thank you for listening.