About a year and a half ago, I lost a dear friend. My car.
Many called it “The Boxcar,” though the official title was Element, made by Honda. Indeed, it was an angular vehicle, like a tissue box on wheels.
My mom bought the Boxcar in 2005. She drove it everywhere: To work, school, and, on one memorable occasion, across a middle school’s back lawn when we were 20 minutes late to basketball team photo night. Our dog Daisy used to stand—not sit, stand—in the hatchback trunk, slamming into the walls whenever we came to a stoplight. And before you accuse us of animal cruelty, note that her tail wagged the entire time.
The Boxcar had a sunroof above the back row for reasons that remain unclear (usually one finds them above the front seats). When Daisy wasn’t bouncing like a pinball in the trunk, I’d recline and gaze up at the night sky as it scrolled past, hoping to glimpse a UFO. I never did, but if a UFO glimpsed us, the pilots might’ve wondered, “Haven’t these humans discovered aerodynamics yet?”
Yes, the Boxcar was rather boxy. Throughout high school and college, I had a reputation for driving slowly; I suspect the Boxcar was holding me back. That wide body and sloping hood reminded me of a bow-legged bulldog, and bulldogs aren’t sprinters.
iconic? Also yes.
We overuse that latter adjective these days, but in this instance, it fits. “Regarded as a representative symbol”: That’s the New Oxford American Dictionary definition of iconic. And for me, the Boxcar truly became an icon.
To my knowledge, mine was the only green Honda Element on campus at Ithaca College in 2012. Thus, people recognized me for it. By “people,” I mean my friends, not strangers, since I rarely ventured outside my dorm. Yet still, this wasn’t your run-of-the-mill Sebring or F-150. I had a recognizable ride. If fact, if I ever arrived without it, friends would say, “Kyle, didn’t realize you were here! Where’s the Boxcar?”
On breaks, I drove that Boxcar from Ithaca to Albany and back, three hours each way. I cranked bootlegged audiobooks and/or CDs (remember those?), then stopped at Ithaca’s Taco Bell for the usual Crunchwrap. It was the car I drove to the occasional date. It was the place I first said, “I love you” to Sara, my future wife.
After graduating, Sara and I relocated to Colorado. We took the Boxcar skiing, hiking, camping, once even up the muddy slope of a mountain, gunk spraying beneath the back tires, and I was like “We’re not gonna make it!”, and Sara was like, “Just keep going!” We didn’t make it, but I give the Boxcar (and Sara) credit for trying.
A year-and-a-half later, we drove back across the country when we resettled in New York. Five years after that, we returned home from the hospital with our daughter Sasha in the same seat I used to gaze up at the stars in.
Oh, that Boxcar. It was durable, trustworthy, and ageless. Like LeBron.
In fact, it only showed its age in its 18th year. Frequent doctor’s visits are part of getting old, and so it went for my icon. We took it to the mechanic every month, replacing brake pads, tuning wheels, fixing calipers, repairing hyperdrives, and paying out the ass for mechanical mumbo-jumbo I didn’t understand. Sara suggested it might be time to search for another vehicle, to which I hissed like Gollum at the suggestion they’d cast his precious into the fires of Mount Doom.
She was right, of course. If there’s one thing that hurts me worse than losing a dear friend, it’s spending money trying to keep them alive. We pondered the car owner’s classic conundrum: If we’re paying so much for repairs, why not put that money toward payments for a new vehicle instead?
I wonder if the Boxcar could hear us out there in the garage. I wonder if it knew. Eighteen years is old for a car, and it had well over 200,000 miles. I wonder if it was ready go, or if it said to itself, “I can do it. I can keep going. Just a few miles more.”
One morning that fall, the Boxcar wouldn’t start. I called AAA. AAA sent a guy. The guy was like, “I can’t fix this. Try your mechanic.” He estimated it would cost a few hundred bucks just to get the poor old thing started.
Instead, we called a towing company. Another guy arrived, this one wearing a “Hawk Tua ‘24” hat, and he hooked a chain to the Boxcar, then hauled it onto a platform, inch by inch. Sasha watched from the window, and Sara recorded her three-year-old little voice as she waved and said, “Goodbye, Boxcar. Dank you, Boxcar.”
We got a Godfather offer for the old faithful Box: $100. I’m sure this was just a tax write-off, since the dealer did us a favor by towing it away. We test drove several vehicles, during which process Sara thumped her head against the headrests of each, insisting, “It doesn’t go high enough! We need neck support. We need neck support!” We’d grown to expect such support from our Box.
Eventually, we chose a CR-V. I wouldn’t have minded another Element, but Honda discontinued them in 2011, so CR-V it was, and is. It’s a dark aqua shade, the color my frienemies the New York Giants wear, so naturally, we named the car Bluey.
Bluey is a wonderful vehicle. It’s got a remote starter, heated seats, Apple CarPlay, and a spacious interior. But it’s also decidedly average—a basic bitch, if I may be so crass. I spot CR-Vs every day on my commute to work, many of the same blue hue.
Yet Boxcars are rare. I glimpse them every so often, like proud, squat hippos on the riverbank, standing or plodding but never quite zooming by. (In fact, I think a hippo’s probably faster.) The sight brings me back to Ithaca, to Colorado, to the delivery room, to it all.
So to close this eulogy, or essay, or whatever it turned out to be, I’d like to quote my daughter.
Dank you, Boxcar. Dank you.
Kyle A. Massa is a comedy author of some sort living somewhere in upstate New York with his wife, their daughter, and three wild animals. His published works include 10 books, along with several short stories, essays, and poems. When he’s not writing, he enjoys reading, running, and drinking cheap coffee.
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