{"id":824,"date":"2010-11-12T07:43:54","date_gmt":"2010-11-12T13:43:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.keloland.com\/lund\/?p=824"},"modified":"2023-07-20T21:00:10","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T21:00:10","slug":"white-lightnins-last-ride","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/white-lightnins-last-ride\/","title":{"rendered":"White Lightnin’s Last Ride"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve ever taken that sad trip to the vet to have an ailing pet put to sleep..you\u2019ll know how I felt this week. <\/strong>\u00a0<\/p>\n

White Lightnin\u2019 our 1990 Lincoln Town Car, which I\u2019ve had for 18 years and written about several times here, is gone. Her just reward for such long and faithful service is a spot in the Ewe-Pullet yard at Nordstrom\u2019s Auto Recycling near Garretson to be picked over for parts and stripped clean by salvagers like vultures on a dead wildebeest..then squished flat and melted down to hopefully be turned into steel to make another car for somebody some day.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Nordstrom's..White

Nordstrom's..White Lightnin's final resting place<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019d been driving Ol\u2019Lightnin\u2019 up until this past week and, in fact, would have kept her through another winter but try as I might, I couldn\u2019t get her finicky heater to function again..so I had to make that dreaded call to Doug at Nordstrom\u2019s. \u00a0\u00a0He had read a blog I\u2019d written several months ago telling about the old Lincoln\u2019s eerie ability to heal itself: a leaky power steering unit that suddenly \u201cstopped\u201d leaking, an air suspension system, radio and heater that mysteriously sprang back to life..and other restorative oddities. But this year, many of those same problems returned so I reluctantly called a Sioux Falls business I saw in the Shoppers News that advertised it will pay top dollar for any vehicle in any condition. But when I told them what I had they said \u201cNO..NOT INTERESTED.\u201d \u00a0What an indignity. That\u2019s when Doug from Nordstrom\u2019s let me know that I could bring her out there and he\u2019d even give me a couple hundred bucks for it. (That\u2019s one good thing about big heavy cars..they\u2019re worth more as scrap.) \u201cShould we send a truck out to haul it in?\u201dDoug asked.\u00a0 \u201cOh, no,\u201d I said, \u201cShe runs just fine. I\u2019ll drive her there myself.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

On that last ride, as we smoothly sailed down the road , I couldn\u2019t help but think of all the places we\u2019d been in that car and how great she looked when I bought it used at Frankman Motors in 1992. Her lovely white paint job glistened in the sun and every passenger commented how she rode like a dream in town or down the highway. \u00a0When our daughter, Suzan, got married..the Lincoln served as their private limousine, shuttling the happy couple around on their wedding day with dad as chauffeur. \u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I pulled in to Nordstrom\u2019s, I half expected the radio to come on and the heater to start working as a one last desperate attempt to save herself. \u00a0But not this time; she was ready to accept\u00a0fate.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Me

Me collecting my 30 pieces of silver from Nordstrom's Doug Abeln<\/p><\/div>\n

\u201cDo you see a lot of people who get emotionally attached to their vehicles and are reluctant to give them up?\u201d I asked Doug as I\u2019m snapping pictures for posterity. \u00a0\u00a0\u201c No No..lots of folks feel just like you,\u201d he said. \u201cIf you\u2019re taking photos for your blog would you like to hang around for a shot of the fork lift loading it up and hauling her off to the yard?\u201d \u00a0\u201cNaw, that\u2019s alright. I said.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

Just then I noticed some fluid start to slowly drip down from White Lightnin\u2019s power steering unit. <\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll miss you too, old friend. <\/strong><\/p>\n

\n
\n
<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you\u2019ve ever taken that sad trip to the vet to have an ailing pet put to sleep..you\u2019ll know how I felt this week. \u00a0 White Lightnin\u2019 our 1990 Lincoln Town Car, which I\u2019ve had for 18 years and written about several times here, is gone. Her just reward for such long and faithful service…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11838,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824\/revisions\/11838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}