Today is a sad day in our family.  We are losing one of our own.  One who has been with us for over 20 years, through thick and thin, always there when needed.

I refer, of course, to the Saturn.

I have written before about some of the, uh, quirks of this ancient car.  Last January George at the Village Garage told us it was unlikely to pass inspection again due to the fact that the frame is basically disintegrating into rust.  (Engine still running great, though!)  With our upcoming 11-week absence, it seemed like a good time to say goodbye.

I bought this car when I was 22 years old, having just gotten my first real job out of college.  The Saturn and I moved to NH together.  Never did I imagine that 20 years later, when everything else in my life is different, it would still be hanging on.

We pretty much stopped driving it on 1/31, when the registration and inspection expired.  It is not easy to be a one-car family!  Bob and I had to plan our itinerary with the precision of a military campaign to get everyone where they needed to be.  Even so, we had to rely heavily on the generosity of our wonderful friends, who gave us rides and shuttled our kids and loaned us their cars.

I paid extra for this tape deck back in 1994.

(One of the car loans was when I had to run an errand from work one day.  My friend Charles loaned me his BRAND NEW AUDI, just off the dealer’s lot.  Many people would have found this fun and exciting, but all it did was stress me out.  I couldn’t even start the car successfully.  As is the new normal around here, the roads were snowy.  The car has all these button and sensors and kept beeping frantically at me all the time.  I was much happier driving Chris and Trisha’s vintage Subaru.)

But what to do with the Saturn?  My friend Sue suggested putting it on an ice floe in Lake Winnepesaukee and setting it aflame.  Though a Viking funeral would have been fitting, I preferred not to get arrested so we went with donating it to NHPR.

A few days after we stopped driving it, Bob tried to move it to clear the driveway.  And it wouldn’t start.  We know that this means: the Saturn knows.  Like those old couples who die a few days apart, the Saturn apparently doesn’t want to go on without us.