Inspired by Vintage MG Dash by Bobbie Crews Thurston
Joella West
An Old Love Story
She is for sale for $500. I have that. I have worked for a long time. Not babysitting. Real jobs that pay real money – $2.00/hour. I have saved it all. She has been vetted by my “gentleman friend” who among many other skills, is a mechanic. He has found her frame to be termite-free and she is mechanically sound, although the chrome shows some rust, which I will need to polish out. Electrical system by Lucas, famous among car buffs as the Prince of Darkness, but otherwise she “runs well – if you accept a top speed of 55 mph, if you can master using the manual choke, if you can shift at the appropriate rpm and without stripping the gears, if you can forgive the idiosyncrasies of the single wiper blade and its tendency to be blown entirely off the windshield in a strong wind. If you accept the absence of amenities: no radio, no courtesy light. No gas gauge, just an Idiot Light that only comes on when even the fumes are gone. There is a cigarette lighter but no ashtray. The soft top and slip-in side curtains are useful for keeping out some but by no means all of the rain. She also has a tonneau cover, but this is the Monterey Peninsula, and I am not British, so generally I will keep the top up and put on the heater, which has two positions—too hot and too cold. My gentleman friend will teach me to drive. I will learn all about the friction point and double clutching, and the etiquette of waving at other MGTD’s and TF’s but never at any newer model. He will show me every shortcut from Carmel to Cannery Row, and how 38 | EKPHRASIS 2022
to drive in fog so thick that in order to stay on the road it is necessary to open the driver’s door to find and follow the center line. I will wreck the car and he will rebuild her from the ground up. And when it is time for me to head East to college and a future that doesn’t include him or the place where I grew up, I will sell her to a friend and recover my $500 investment. I will never see her again. But after all these years, I still imagine that she is somewhere, treasured by someone at immense cost and inconvenience. Perhaps she has even posed for this painting. u
