A Memoir by Kim Hayes
Cane field, road, cane field, road, cane field, road. I clung to the steering wheel for dear life as my car spun around and out of control. It came to a lurching stop and then somehow went into reverse. Gazing in the rear-view mirror, I watched in numb shock as the automobile maneuvered backward between a light standard and the bracing wires. The time between when my back tire blew out to this moment; with the car sitting in a sugarcane field, happened within a minute. If that.
The car stopped, and I took a minute to collect my thoughts and recall what the hell happened. There were a few stalks of sugarcane in the car, as the windows were open. I remember driving and hearing a popping noise, right before losing control of the car. After that, I was on autopilot. It all happened so fast; only a minute or two passed.
Still shaking as I got out, I looked around to see if the car had sustained any damage. A man came jogging up to me with one of my hubcaps. “Ma’am, are you okay? I think your tire blew out. If you have a spare, I can change it for you.”
Walking around while checking for damage, my mind raced as I tried to think who to call. I held an AAA membership, but I refused to get the car towed from Raceland to New Orleans. It was too late in the afternoon to find an open garage. Nor did I want to drive from Raceland to New Orleans on a spare tire. I’d have to spend the night.
The entire day had started with me driving to school in Thibodaux to pay my tuition for the upcoming semester. Afterwards, I spent a few hours hanging out with friends before getting back on the road to New Orleans.
I drove along a twisting ‘S’ shaped portion of a two-lane thoroughfare cutting through two vast sugarcane fields. Mid-August marked the beginning of the sugarcane harvest period. The road’s speed limit here stood at 35 and my pace matched it. That’s when I heard a muted popping noise and lost control of my car. Suddenly, I was driving on the wrong side of the road and there was a semi-truck headed straight for me. Whether I screamed is something I don’t remember. The one thing you’re not supposed to do when your tire quits on you is what I ended up doing. I slammed on the brakes and forced the car back onto the right side of the road. At that point, my car grew a mind of its own, showing me its spinning moves that ended with the car buried in sugarcane.
The man who found my hubcap followed me to the nearest convenience store to make sure I’d be okay. My mom freaked out when I called to let her know what had happened. She wanted to drive from New Orleans to pick me up, but I had to remind her we still would have had my car to deal with. After assuring her I was okay, and there was no visible damage, I said I would be crashing at a friends’ house for the night, and I would contact her tomorrow.
I got in touch with my friend Troy, who had already arrived at his job. “Kim, I’m glad you’re okay! But after all the trouble that little car has already put you through, admit this is funny. Give me a couple of minutes. I’ll come get you.”
He was correct; I had to laugh at all this. My car neared ten years old, and the usual but pricey parts needed to be replaced. Despite having insurance, it was reaching the point where continued repairs became unfeasible. As I waited for Troy to pick me up, I recalled the times my car had left me stranded or stuck somewhere. The timing belt died on the way to work. Last year, I made my way to my dorm to move in for the semester when the clutch broke down. A few months ago, the transmission went wonky when I was driving around running errands. These things ended up costing me well over five hundred dollars. Each.
The next morning, Troy followed me over to a Texaco gas station that had a garage. The mechanic on duty said they could replace the tire and have me on the road in an hour. We found a restaurant open for brunch while we waited.
To add insult to injury, within a week of getting back to New Orleans, the A/C broke. It would have cost over $300 to fix it. I decided I could stand driving without A/C for a while. And I started thinking it might be time to sell.
After talking it over with my parents, they both agreed with me that it wasn’t worth keeping anymore. I wrote out an ad to put in the city’s local cars for sale magazine and put a ‘For Sale’ sign on the car.
That made it very real and bittersweet. It was my first car that I owned (and would end up being the only car I ever owned, as I quit driving in 2000) and in some ways it felt like I was breaking up with a friend. Despite leaving me stranded on the road too many times, I have many glorious memories associated with the car. Mainly driving up and down the Gulf Coast on impromptu road trips. These trips usually involved drinking and swimming in the Gulf.
The car was a silver Nissan Pulsar with a red interior and a moon roof. I purchased it from a co-worker of my mother’s. He and his wife wanted to start a family and the Pulsar was not appropriate to haul a kid around in. It had low mileage and was city-driven. I would be the one to put all the highway miles on it.
It was a stick shift and my dad taught me how to drive it. We’d go to an empty store parking lot early on weekends before the store opened. My dad showed me how and when to shift gears, back up, start, and anything else that involved using a stick. It almost felt like learning how to drive all over again.
I had researched the blue book value and due to the A/C not working, knocked three hundred dollars off that. It sold about a month later.
Epilogue
The car was 11 or 12 years old when I sold it. About three years later, I was walking out of the neighborhood grocery store and saw a familiar sight in one of the parking spots. My car. I walked around, looking for a few tail tell signs; a couple of nicks and dents that were acquired when I owned it. They were there. I thought about waiting around to see who the owner was, but the groceries had be put away.
I gave the car a pat on the truck. “I hope you’ve given your current owner the sort of adventures we had together. Good luck.”
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Born and raised in New Orleans, Kim currently lives in Chicago, IL., and works for the Chicago Cubs. Her work has appeared in Confetti, The Southern Quill, Suddenly and without Warning, and Bull, among others. Kim is a reader for Hippocampus Magazine and Fiction on the Web.