The Wagon
After 23 years, it's finally time to say goodbye. The insurance on my family's 1982 Buick Regal Estate Wagon expires on Monday, and it is going to the scrap heap.
It still runs great, but it just failed AirCare. I'm very sad. It was a beautiful blue-green silver -- Jadestone Green, on the invoice. 5.0L V-8 engine. Loaded with features - A/C, 8-way power seats, power locks and windows, power steering, intermittent wipers (real intermittent wipers, not the ones with 2 settings), automatic headlights, auto-off defrost, and an _FM_ radio. Yep. No tape deck though. That would have been extra.
It needed very little work. Just replaced the starter once, and some electrical components. I still love driving it. It's just so smooth at highway speeds. You get used to the shaking when it starts up, not being able to use the driver side mirror, and not having the defogger work.
I have memories of going on trips with my cousins, sitting in the back playing "Star Wars" or "Battlestar Galactica", pretending the cars behind us were enemy TIE fighters. In those days, no one thought you were a bad parent for loading your car with six kids and no seat belts. My fondest memory must be when five of my closest highschool friends took the wagon camping at Long Beach. Six people, 6 backpacks, 3 tents, 2 coolers and a stove in and on the car, driving on the ferry, and over the island highway.
Since then, that car has taken my bikes, skis and snowboards on various adventures, and helped me and my friends move many times - I think the record in one trip was 4 chairs, a dresser, an endtable, a lamp, a coatrack and a queensize mattress and boxspring.
A great car. They don't make them like that any more.
After 23 years, it's finally time to say goodbye. The insurance on my family's 1982 Buick Regal Estate Wagon expires on Monday, and it is going to the scrap heap.
It still runs great, but it just failed AirCare. I'm very sad. It was a beautiful blue-green silver -- Jadestone Green, on the invoice. 5.0L V-8 engine. Loaded with features - A/C, 8-way power seats, power locks and windows, power steering, intermittent wipers (real intermittent wipers, not the ones with 2 settings), automatic headlights, auto-off defrost, and an _FM_ radio. Yep. No tape deck though. That would have been extra.
It needed very little work. Just replaced the starter once, and some electrical components. I still love driving it. It's just so smooth at highway speeds. You get used to the shaking when it starts up, not being able to use the driver side mirror, and not having the defogger work.
I have memories of going on trips with my cousins, sitting in the back playing "Star Wars" or "Battlestar Galactica", pretending the cars behind us were enemy TIE fighters. In those days, no one thought you were a bad parent for loading your car with six kids and no seat belts. My fondest memory must be when five of my closest highschool friends took the wagon camping at Long Beach. Six people, 6 backpacks, 3 tents, 2 coolers and a stove in and on the car, driving on the ferry, and over the island highway.
Since then, that car has taken my bikes, skis and snowboards on various adventures, and helped me and my friends move many times - I think the record in one trip was 4 chairs, a dresser, an endtable, a lamp, a coatrack and a queensize mattress and boxspring.
A great car. They don't make them like that any more.
posted by Karen at
10:38 a.m.
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