I worked hard to seem cool in my red, ’89 Plymouth Voyager minivan.

Despite my efforts, few… I worked hard to seem cool in my red, ’89 Plymouth Voyager minivan.

Despite my efforts, few of my high school peers admired my style as the whine of my engine wheezed in the wind.

I preferred the smooth ride of my grandmother’s beige, ’84 Ford Tempo, but unfortunately, she needed it every Tuesday to drive to her church circle meetings. I loved Bucky — my name for the Tempo, not for my grandmother — so named because of his rough style of switching gears, but he preferred not to start in cold or rainy weather. Considering that Pittsburgh weather is almost exclusively cold or rainy, I declined my grandmother’s offer to bring him with me to college.

After more than a year of my mother urging me to buy a car and save my family the long drives to pick me up, I broke down. As I drove off the lot in a shiny, silver 2000 Civic a few days later, my lips twitched with pride.

I owned a relatively new, relatively small car.

For the next few days, I drove anywhere I could. I felt a flash of guilt each time I pulled into my parents’ driveway and parked behind Bucky, who sat glumly, under a layer of pollen, in the carport. But I assuaged my guilt by using the clicker that locks the Civic’s doors, and I smiled each time when the car responded with a perky honk.

Bucky never honked like that.

Driving back to Pittsburgh several days after my purchase, I felt great. After several friends’ comments about my “college student car,” and a very unpleasant ride from the South Side with three vinyl swivel chairs and a roommate, I’ve realized that my car was not a luxury vehicle.

On the first drive back, though, I couldn’t have felt cooler if I’d been driving a Cadillac. I sped around slow-moving vehicles, pitying their age and bulk while I enjoyed the afternoon sun. Then I saw them. The lowest, darkest clouds I’d ever seen plumed up over the edge of the mountain ahead. The clouds resembled smoke, but they billowed too broadly across the sky.

When my car reached the crest of the mountain, my hands slipped and my stomach dropped. Flames shot from the hood of a sporty, black car, which was wrapped around the guardrail on the other side of the highway. No other cars were on my road, so there was no one for me to hit when I veered across lanes in surprise. No emergency vehicles had arrived yet. I turned off Sublime and prayed that everyone had gotten out safely.

I stopped praying and gingerly switched on the radio after 10 minutes, but my shakes hadn’t stopped when I pulled into the fog an hour later. It came on suddenly, jumping at me on the exit ramp, and I couldn’t see the lines a few feet in front of my tires. I took the left lane, knowing I needed to make a turn soon, and I swerved out just in time to cross the double yellow line back onto my side, avoiding a justly irate driver in the oncoming lane.

When I pulled into the foggy McDonald’s parking lot a few minutes later, I hated my car and felt stupid for buying it. I bought a cup of coffee and called my father, intending to ask him how long fog takes to roll through the mountains. Instead, I began talking about the flaming car. I had just begun to cry when I realized I had lost reception, and that he hadn’t heard anything I had said.

I eventually decided that I would take on the fog. I climbed in, convinced I would die but determined to do it with the little dignity I had maintained. About two hours later, I was snug in a Pittsburgh apartment.

I can’t say that my near-collision in the fog, or the sight and smell of flaming car, has made me more cautious. I still worry about long trips, and I still speed a little when I make them. I look for a burned patch of grass every time I pass the spot where I saw the car, and I know now to always stay right when I can’t see the lines on the road. Other than that, not much has changed.

But I don’t think I regard driving, or my new car, in quite the same way. I haven’t named the Civic yet, and I don’t think I will. Maybe it’s the blow it made to my bank account, but somehow, this car seems more like a responsibility than a friend. In the same way, driving now seems more like a responsibility than a thrill.

I’m still glad to have a relatively new car, but I can’t wait to go back to Virginia and take Bucky on a joyride.

E-mail J. Elizabeth Strohm and her (relatively) new Civic at [email protected].