Farewell to Billy's first car

Several years ago, Bill's dad decided that Grandma shouldn't drive anymore, so he gave Billy Grandma's 1991 Dodge Spirit.

It was a quirky car, panting up Township Road, but it was Billy's first car, and he loved it.

When Billy went off to the University of Tulsa, Bill decided that Billy should have my car, a zippy red Toyota Corolla. I call my car Ruby Begonia, but Billy christened it Roxanne. He may have loved the Spirit, but it worries me that he's given my car a name!



I never drove the Spirit, but on occasion I did sit in the back seat where the velour ceiling would brush against the top of my head.



Since the Spirit gave up the spirit while Billy was in Tulsa, Billy asked that I take pictures of his car to memorialize it. And that's the reason for this blog.



Unlike my car that doesn't wear it name on its sleeve (or it's boot), the Spirit did and the name stuck.



And here's the boot!



When Bill and Billy first drove it from New Jersey, all of the hubcaps looked like this.



However, somewhere on I-70 they lost either two or three hubcaps, and there really never seemed to be any need to replace them.



It was a Yankee car and over its 20-year lifetime, it developed some rust.



On a serious note, as the Spirit was in the shop, Billy's grandfather was hospitalized for congestive heart failure and pneumonia. Dad was alert but generally didn't discuss specifics about our life in Arkansas, so it was odd that in his last week Grandpa asked how Billy's car was doing. Sadly, Bill told him that it had quit running.