Goodbye Blazer of Glory (has it been 20 years?)

I moved here (Oklahoma) in June of 1991. But I left again as soon as I got here to tour the country with a Drum and Bugle Corps. When I got back in mid-August of 1991, I had a week until my first day of college. It was at that time that I learned from my father that I would be driving his 1985 Chevy Blazer to college instead of my step-mother's car.

I was very familiar with the Blazer from cross-country trips I'd taken in it with my dad when I was younger. And more recently at the time, it was the vehicle my dad and I drove to Oklahoma in when I moved here from Philadelphia. But, there was just one small problem. It was a stick. And I didn't know how to drive it.

So, I had one week to learn to drive a stick. And my father tells me to this day that the Blazer wasn't exactly the best vehicle to learn how to drive a stick for the first time with. I have many terrible memories of my one-week crash-course. But I didn't crash.

I did eventually get the hang of stick-driving (and until my most recent vehicle, had always insisted upon getting a stick when getting a new[er] vehicle). So all through college, while I lived with my father, I drove the Blazer. It wasn't a show-horse, but it was capable and reliable.

Several years later, my dad got a different primary vehicle, so he outright gave me the Blazer, so that, as I was married at the time, we could have two vehicles. I drove it for a few years as my primary mode of transport, until, in its old age, it started to have some trouble.

Finally, in 1999, it experienced a catastrophic engine problem. While it probably could have been repaired at the time (for non-trivial amounts of funding), I was newly divorced with two small children (they were 1 and 3 at the time... can you believe it?), so I wanted something undeniably reliable. I got my first Saturn at that time, and the Blazer, shamefully, sat in my driveway ever since.

My dad and I always intended to fix-up our old beast of burden and give her a new, good home, but we just never had the time. She literally rotted away before my eyes in the driveway. I figured I would be reserved to having it towed off for the scrap pile one of these years.

But then my ex-brother-in-law called. He's the car-fixer-upper type. And he offered to buy Blazer of Glory from me, fix her up, and give her a new, good home. However, he's called me three times now with such an offer. Never before was the offer fulfilled. Finally, though, he came, to save my dying old truck, some 20 years after my father bought it, and 10 years after it became my primary vehicle.

Today, he and two others arrived to tow Blazer of Glory off into the distance for new adventures. Fare thee well, BoG. You deserved better than I was able to give. I'm glad come morning you'll find yourself in a better place than my driveway. Though I must say, returning home this evening to that empty driveway was somber. The definitive end of an era. The closure of old bonds. Thanks for the memories.