goodbye dear girl

Cranberry has been running a little rough lately. She sounds like a semi, especially puttering over the hills around Tashmoo. So I took her in to see Matt at Vineyard Alternative Auto – I figured she just needed some exhaust work, and settled into a cafe across the street, prepared to spend the morning there working while she got fixed.

Matt called me earlier than I expected, just as I was settling in.

“Come on over,” he said. “I’ve gotta show you something.”

That something was a hole in the frame. Or to be more exact, multiple holes in the frame. Raw rusty apertures you could put your hand through.

“This is the worst I’ve ever seen on a Tacoma.” he said. “You’ve gotta stop driving this thing immediately.”

I managed to wait until I was back on the road before I started crying. I think I was too surprised in the shop to do much of anything. I paid cash for Cranberry two years ago and own her outright. She’s the most valuable thing I own, my first and biggest investment in the farm, and given that she’s a Toyota with 90k I expected to get another five years or so together no problem.

I’ve always known that 1998 Tacomas are part of a frame recall. I’d also heard that Toyota was giving people value and a half for their trucks if they qualified. I just never thought I’d be part of it.

After a tense and ragged twenty four hours I ended up in an office in Falmouth, where they told me I’d receive twelve thousand dollars for her, which is significantly more than I paid, and for which they are receiving a truck that isn’t even drivable. They’re also going to give me a free rental for two weeks, while I sort out my next step.

Things have been better since then.

But some part of me, my irrational heedless heart, can’t see this as an unambiguous win. Cranberry was there every step of the way during such a formative part of my life. I know she’s just a truck, but she was my workhorse, she was my partner in crime. I know the next truck I have will be “better.” But I miss her already.

She carried farm stuff all over town – sunflowers, lily bulb crates, flats of tomatoes and bags of soil.

She let me give rides to my friends.

She took me up to central Maine for the Common Ground Fair in the fall, and down to Bee Heaven in south Florida for the winter, where the local reptiles fell in love with her warm metal shell. We covered the whole Eastern seaboard together, one state at a time.

Tomorrow we’ll get on the ferry for the last time and go to the dealership, and I will leave alone. Cranberry’s got a lot of good parts left and I’m sure she’ll be thoroughly scrapped, pieced out to live on in other ways.

As my grandfather would say, goodbye dear girl. You will be missed.