April 11, 2009--
We finally sold our beloved (or rather, MY beloved) 'Burb this weekend, thanks to Craigslist. I don't know why but I get sad and sentimental when we sell certain vehicles and this one is one of those vehicles.
It was a 1993 Chevy Suburban (hence it's nickname "the 'Burb" or also fondly known as the "Hound Hauler") and it had 187,000 miles on it and we only put probably 1,000-1,500 of those miles on it. We bought it about two and a half years ago and (get this...I actually fell for this one...) we bought it for Jeremy to use as a hunting rig so I could use (at that time) our brand-new Chevy pick-up while Jeremy was hunting on the weekends. Well, it turns out Jeremy never once used it for hunting. In fact, I could probably count the times on one hand that Jeremy actually drove it! He hated it! (It DID tend to have some problems but my motto was "I ain't scared!" We eventually did work out all of the kinks but I can't really blame Jeremy for not wanting to drive it because it did occasionally leave us stranded...but that was before we got all the kinks worked out...)
It turned out to be my dog/weekend rig really, which is why it fondly came to be known as the "Hound Hauler." I mostly used it to tote the dogs around whenever I didn't want to load their kennels in our every-day vehicles or when we wanted to go somewhere "dog dirty." The dogs and I explored all kinds of places and we didn't care how muddy or dirty we got because the 'Burb could handle it all!
Our most common trip in the 'Burb was to the dog park downtown where they could fetch tennis balls in the pond and then run through the weeds and the sagebrush without regard to the dirt-factor. We laid the back seats down in the Suburban and they had the run of 3/4 of the vehicle (which included full access to the windows in the back seat) and they would hang their heads out the window like they were the "king of the world!" like in the titanic movie. Here's a picture of Stanley doing his "king of the world" in the 'Burb.
This vehicle is also the one that we crossed many mountain tops in on one hot July day a couple years ago. That day was one where I had intended to take a scenic back route (via old unpaved mountainous logging roads) to a small town nearby. However, I forgot the map I printed at home and after several hours we ended up in some other town (not even close to the one I had set out toward). I kept my fingers crossed that the 'Burb would get us where we needed to go, despite the inability of the operator (me) to do so...and it didn't let us down.
Anyway, when I think about it, I have to admit that I did inherit some of my mother's sentimental connection to material things but when I analyze it in more of a practical way and not in such a sentimental way I realize that just because the 'Burb is gone, it doesn't mean my memories are going anywhere...and for that I'm grateful.~
