Kirby: Moving on and leaving the old car behind

“No one wants to quit when he's losing and no one wants to quit when he's winning.”

— Richard Petty

Got rid of my old car the other day.

It was time. Eleven years, 260,000-plus miles.

To paraphrase a baseball benchmark, better to trade an old player a year early, than a year late.

The air conditioner still did a good job, although lately I'd noticed pieces of foam padding coming out the vents.

About two weeks ago, the radio just went "dead." No sound. The next day, it was back to normal, but I didn’t know for how long.

A low-slung sedan, it had the darnedest propensity for windshield nicks. I must have used the windshield repair service a dozen times. The last time I asked if my model was aerodynamically prone to catching small highway projectiles.

"Not really," the windshield man said.

There was a slight leak underneath that had been leaving the smallest of drip marks in the garage. You could smell oil burning ... somewhere. Mechanics never could quite successfully spot the source, although each 3,000 -to 5,000-mile oil change they tried.

It was a good car on tires, usually allowing them to wear evenly throughout their warranty. But it did love to pick up nails. Once a year, it seemed, I would have to get a tire "plugged."  Never had to change it on the road, though

Say what you will, it gave me a safe ride to wherever I pointed it.

It took me to too many funerals and not enough weddings.

Only once did it ever provoke a police traffic stop, and that was by a state trooper in West Virginia on a very quiet Sunday morning. After politely informing me I had been driving eight miles over the limit, he warned me to slow down until I got to the next state. (We both laughed.)

I kept the inside upholstery pretty clean, although there was a small coffee stain on the passenger side between the console and the seat. I didn't realize it was there until it had dried pretty good and I could never quite get it out.

The biggest cosmetic flaw was the driver's seat. Since Christmas I had been using an pillow to keep me on top of things, and that's actually what did the old car in.

A month ago, I had switched vehicles with my wife so I could haul some things to my parents' house, and had returned to face her dismay at driving in a car that required an old bedroom pillow to see above the dashboard.

She also brought up the "burning" smell and the creaks and noises it made. I tried to put her off, but she insisted.

She set about finding a new one, and she was successful.

The dealer didn't want the old car. So I gave it away. Donated it to charity. I hope it will help someone as much as it helped me.

I don’t know its future, but I well know its past.

It never broke down. It was never in a wreck And I never got a ticket while driving it.

That’s a good car.