Your car has a name

Whether you know it is up to you

I come from a family that names cars. The first car of my life was a yellow 1980 Volkswagen Rabbit, named Flopsy Mopsy. I think I may even have been responsible for that name, as that was the rabbit I was most familiar with at that time.

Cars I have had, by name:

Anna-Louise, the Bondo Bunny - a 1983 or ‘84 Volkswagen Rabbit convertible, charcoal gray, stick shift. The name was a reference to a character in Douglas Coupland’s Generation X, which I was a bit obsessed with at the time.

Gabriel - a 1984 Nissan Maxima, silver, that came with four years of Brigham Young University parking decals on it. My mother said it would be rude to name it the Mormon Mobile, my first instinct, so I decided on Gabriel. The car talked when you left the door ajar, and the voice was female, so she was known as the guardian angel.

Lucy - a green 1997 Jeep Cherokee, my first new car. I bought her the summer I went to geology field camp and then to collect water samples from hot springs in the northwest. We traveled 14,000 miles that summer, and that was only one of our cross country (and cross Canada) trips. Lucy’s name didn’t refer to anything in particular, but she was the first vehicle I drove with the gas tank on the left, so the L was practical.

Imogene - a 2008 Honda Fit, black, purchased quickly after the sudden and unexpected demise of Lucy. Her name came from a wonderful children’s story called Imogene’s Antlers. The car was aptly named - you could fit a lot in a Fit - and I’m told they developed a cult following among dog sports enthusiasts. My first dog, Beckett, and I took two road trips to NJ in Imogene, and his white fur was deeply intertwined with the fibers of the upholstery, never to be removed.

Koji - 2018 Subaru Forester, silver. My first car was purchased with my husband, who is his primary driver. My first non-stick shift car. His namesake is Koji Uehara, closer for the 2013 Boston Red Sox, an understated but reliable and dominant pitcher from Japan.

Orla McCool - 2022 Honda HR-V, black, purchased at a terrible time to buy a car because dealerships had very few. The successor to Imogene, the HR-V is essentially a Fit with bigger wheels and some models, like mine, have AWD. The main concern with this car was that a dog crate fit easily in the back, so I took the crate with me when I shopped and made a succession of car salesmen stick it in various vehicles. Although the smallest of the vehicles I test drove, the HR-V fit the crate the best. The first non-stick shift that I’ve been the primary driver of, and I still find myself reaching to shift or depress the clutch at times, even a year and a half later. Orla’s name is in homage to a character from Derry Girls, a stellar comedy about Irish teenagers during the Troubles.

Some people do not name cars. My husband’s family did not, and his car when we met was just referred to as “the Civic.” But he has converted, and now refers to Koji by name. Some people object to naming cars. What they do not know is that their cars do have names, the cars just haven’t revealed their names to them because they fear they would not be accepted. Your car¹ definitely has a name.

A quote

Every inch of visible surface of the board had been decorated, with four somewhat gorgeous-looking columns of quotations from a variety of the world's literatures. The lettering was minute, but jet-black and passionately legible, if just a trifle fancy in spots, and without blots or erasures. The workmanship was no less fastidious even at the bottom of the board, near the doorsill, where the two penmen, each in his turn, had obviously lain on their stomachs. No attempt whatsoever had been made to assign quotations or authors to categories or groups of any kind. So that to read the quotations from top to bottom, column by column, was rather like walking through an emergency station set up in a flood area, where, for example, Pascal had been unribaldly bedded down with Emily Dickinson, and where, so to speak, Baudelaire's and Thomas à Kempis' toothbrushes were hanging side by side.

-Franny and Zooey, J. D. Salinger

Currently reading

• Planet of the Blind - Stephen Kuusisto (print)

• The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry - Jon Ronson (Kobo)

It is unusual that I am reading two non-fiction books simultaneously. Generally, if I’m reading multiple books, one is fiction and one is non-fiction, and lately one is print and one is digital.

A note on this newsletter

As I play around with this format, a structure is starting to take shape in my mind. My current thinking is that I will post my regular nonsense on Monday and Wednesday, links and other miscellany with possible digressions on Fridays, and my weekly delights on Sunday. However, I am a loose cannon who does not give a damn, so I make no promises to remain true to this framework.

1. Obligatory acknowledgement that not everyone has a car. I am, despite my obvious fondness for my cars, quite jealous of people who have access to adequate and reliable public transportation and/or walking/biking infrastructure and take advantage of that whenever I am someplace that offers it.