An Automotive Anthology

A car tells a lot about a person: interests and passions, cleanliness and tidiness, values and perception. Sometimes a car tells a person’s story: adventures and travels, mishaps and accidents, bygone days and active days. If each car is a short autobiography of the car’s owner, then a Park and Ride is an anthology of unique and varied works, ranging from affectionate to apathetic, companionable to belligerent. The brown and green rolling hills, unsystematically spotted with fluffs of distant oak trees, are the book cover; the adjacent freeway, whizzing with the sound of passing cars, is the spine.

The pages of the anthology are all the same color: they are light grey from a distance, embedded with white and darker grey rocks upon closer inspection. Each piece of work is separated by a painted white line upon the asphalt, parallel to countless other white lines. As it is a beautiful Sunday morning – the sun is dazzling brilliantly through the trees and radiating immense heat, while a cool and subtle breeze blows softly through the air – only a few of the parking spots are filled today.

Charming, seasoned, timeless – a black, convertible Buick is inadvertently teasing me. Shiny silver hubcaps are lined with thin tires; a silver bumper lines the bottom, front and back of the car; simple, elegant, silver metal composes the door handles and side mirrors locked onto the driver’s and passenger’s doors. Those are, in fact, the only doors on the old has-been; yes, backseat passengers have to climb around the front seats to find a way in. However, this beauty from many years ago does not tease me with a shiny polish or the status among those of Classic Car Shows – the body is heavily dented, scratched, and faded in places, while the rearview window is infused with rings of dirt. Nevertheless, the car carries with it a certain dignity. It was not uncared for, unloved, or left to collect dust in a collector’s garage; it experienced adventures, be it cross-country road-trips or the daily commute to work.

Nearby a black SUV – a Subaru – waits for its owner to return. Upon first glance it is well washed, civil, and proud. The owner, perhaps, is a mother of three, harried to get Lyla, Scott, and Little Benny to ballet, soccer, and daycare, respectively. However, the mud splattered along the bottom of the plastic hubcap suggests otherwise. Several other details give the owner’s true position away, such as the defined space the windshield wiper has cleared on the dusty rearview window, or the fingerprints splayed about at the bottom of the trunk door where the owner probably closed it: this owner was not afraid to get his or her hands dirty. Maybe the family went for a hike, camping trip, or enjoyed a day at the beach.

Directly beside the SUV is a pickup truck sitting about two or three times higher off the ground than both the previous cars. It is an unassuming tan color, yet with a bold band of dark midnight blue running all the way around the car. The thick tires with considerable traction encase matt grey hubcaps. This vehicle’s owner is a close companion – the pickup is far too worn, persistent, and august to have an owner that is anything but.

There are a few trees dispersed among the parking spaces. They are stout, with the kind of grayish-brown bark that easily peels off into little chunks. Around and within the cement barrier that the trees grow in are moldering piles of fallen and dead leaves, twigs, and branches. Occasionally, bright green clumps of leaves grow from or slightly above the base of the trunk; these leaves are almond shaped with curled edges. Up above, they grow close to the branches that shoot haphazardly from the twisted yet stable limbs. The leaves rustle in the consistent breeze, reminiscent of the rustling leaves of a book. Their smell, however, does not enliven the senses like the smell of a new book, or freshly baked cookies, or the puttering rain; the dried, powder pink blossoms are few and are easily masked by the smell of wildly growing grasses and weeds along the roadside.

Sitting contentedly in the shade of one of the few trees is a silvery grey Lexus. It is washed. It is clean. It is comfortable. It does not shine and sparkle under the sunlight like a brand new car, yet it does not have a visible scratch or dent. It is taken care of. It is practical.

A ways off, two small, quaint and shiny cars of electric blue and bright green sit together, quietly enjoying each other’s company. I cannot help but remember the last time I came to this particular Park and Ride. I awkwardly cruised my dad’s Geo Metro – red yet understated, pint-sized yet commanding, stick shift yet affable – into the parking lot where I was to pick up my Uncle. When I saw another red Geo Metro parked unassumingly, what was I to do but park right beside it? There’s a certain kinship among owners of that beloved car, now out-of-print; it’s a mark of arrogance to neglect waving or honking to another Geo on the road.

From a distance, the Park and Ride is a place for simplicity and practicality: it provides a safe location for people with complicated carpooling systems, and so forth, to leave their cars. Yet there is an unmistakable energy flowing between the cars, between the owners and their vehicles, and even between owners who never have met and never will meet.

- Gabby F.