A Head Full of Ideas that were Driving Me Insane....

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This book, duh; a Friend wrote a chapter and our daughter did an illustration for it:



Given extra room, I may also bring along this one-



-which just got announced in the newsletter of my college's English department (a faculty member wrote the stories).

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I've always been partial to What's Eating Gilbert Grape. Not nearly as flashy or big-budget as anything since, but full of heart.

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My first two defied names. They were both '71 Fords and I think I spent too much time fixing them to ever bond with them.

After that, in 1982, I progressed to a '74 Mustang, which by the time of its demise I had named Dolores. Which is Spanish for "pains." Not much had changed in those three model years. This was, at least, the first car I ever managed to sell rather than consign to a scrap yard.

All of our new(er) ones have had names, though, progressing through the alphabet.

Bessie was our '84 K-Car, a nice Reliant Dodge Aries automobile.


Claire was the '89 Chevy Corsica that was our first marital unit, which lasted for over a decade and got donated to the Vietnam Veterans while she was still quite spry.

After that came Bessie's replacement, a concession to the sudden family need for all-air-conditioned cars after Emily started to come along. It was a too-big, too-expensive-to-fix, "gift" from one of my then-law partners, a 1987 Pontiac which, after one or two repair bills, we appropriately named Cruela de Bonneville.

Ultimately, Cruela got traded in for a new '95 Taurus right after we moved here. It nagged me to put my foot on the brake before shifting out of park. It nagged me to only put soft cups in the cupholders. It nagged me to put the car seat only in the back. And so we named it Dorothy, after my mother, the patron saint of nag.

Claire's tax deduction went into Elsinore, a '98 Ford Escort that Eleanor loved and actually painted "Elsinore" onto the door of. I think that was after her near-fatal accident in it, less than a month after we bought it, but before my near-fatal accident in it less than a year later.

The remaining roster is still with us. Dorothy got traded for Frankie, our 2000 Focus which still lives on down in Maryland and will be moving back to Rochester whence he came come three months from now.

Elsinore helped fund Goldie. After our two accidents with that tan car, the later one with the red car, and an even later one with the green car, we decided to get something so blaringly obvious that even Helen Keller couldn't hit it. Eleanor went with a honkin' yellow '01 Ford Ranger, and nine years and 40k-plus miles later, nobody has.

My current wheels, an '05 Focus, came along in the spring of 2006 and got named Heshie, although we tend not to speak of such things as much, because otherwise, oy, he'd just start telling us about his latest hernia. Only time IT ever got hit was on the morning of a beloved cat's death- by one of our other vehicles. Neither has been repaired from that.

I've no plans for a replacement for any of these, but I suspect Izzy will be the choice when the time comes, given that I know three beloved dogs by that name.