I purchased my 2011 Nissan Versa hatchback brand new in 2010. As jet black as a moonless midnight. I bought it on my lunch break while I was working at the IDOT lab in Schaumburg.

Test drive? Why bother. It was a brand-new Nissan. I had already previously owned a Pathfinder, a Maxima, and a Sentra. All I cared about was that there was 1/8^th-inch input jack for my iPod nano, a CD player, cruise control, and an automatic transmission. That was it.

The salesman made absolutely zero push for a test drive, and I made that guy’s day.

Look, I’m a simple man. Or at least I was before I had dizygotic twins. Nowadays I drive around in a giant SUV that we bought when we found out we would need to cart around multiple car seats, double wide strollers, and status wagons. In 2010 before computers completely took over cars, it was a slower, more deliberate way of life.

At age thirty I required neither bell nor whistle. Just get me from Point A to Point B and let me listen to Joy Electric with the windows down. I didn’t need apps. Just a small note paper scrap scrawled with ballpoint on directive for where to go. It was always about the journey – not the destination.

My first wife, instead of being content with a brand-new car that she didn’t have to pay for, asked, “So where are the floor mats?” She not only needed to point out the one flaw in not only that, but in every situation, but she wanted me to go back to Nissan and get the floor mats. She assumed they should be free, and she assumed I’d be comfortable walking back into the dealership to ask for them like some kind of a chode. She was probably right about the former, but definitely wrong about the latter.

I told her I would go back and ask for them, but I knew I wouldn’t. Squeezed between the fear of my wife and the embarrassment and hassle of having to go back to Nissan Schaumburg, I just drove to Pep Boys and bought some car mats and made her assume I got them from the dealership.

…

I drove the car on solo expeditions to Indianapolis, Nashville, Detroit, and St Louis among other cities. Cylinders mixing air and fuel in a grand concoction to carelessly shuttle me about. What classifies me as an introvert is that I get recharged from large spans of time being by myself.

An errant wanderer.

The escape pod was always there. Trustworthy to start when prompted, run until I didn’t need it to anymore, and play my mixtape CD-Rs, one after another, pulled from the spindle. I dined on footlong Subway sandwiches over the interstates, skyways and byways, lettuce and black olives flying off through the breeze because if it was anywhere approaching 65 degrees or warmer, all the windows were always down.

I drove that machine eight-hundred miles from Chicago to New York City in 2012 to visit my friend Tim. Through the Hershey chocolate mountains of Pennsylvania, over valleys punctuated by rolling hills. With aerodynamic drag I cruised over the Hudson River, and I took the Manhattan Bridge over the East River to the Cobble Hill neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Navigating the dense local streets that made no sense to me as a captain, still using a paper map. I found my way just moments before swearing that I’d never make that drive again.

There was a sense of security with that car. I kept it after my divorce and psychologically it became engrained as my getaway vehicle. An unequivocal emotional attachment existed. It became an appendage.

No matter where I ventured to, as long as it was parked outside, I had an escape.  

When a tire got low, I pumped it with fix-a-flat and didn’t think twice about it for years on end.

I slept in that Nissan a few nights here and there. I had a few sexual encounters in it here and there. A lot can happen when you own a vehicle for thirteen years, man. Climbing in that thing after waking on a friends couch at 6AM. Googling the closest coffee shop at sunrise after a night of downing high gravity beers.

I remember going to get it washed and detailed before picking up new potential love interests, time and time again. Mostly to uphold a guise that the car was always in that sort of shape. Perhaps a KPI that my life was in that sort of shape. Not that I was in a bad place. Just have to put your best foot forward.

I’d pinpoint the Nissan Versa’s complete transformation into a soldier around 2016 when the air conditioning fully stopped working.

I took it in to get coolant added, and they told me it just had a leak and there was no way to fix it, save for removing most of the engine and replacing something that costed a lot of money.

I only really used the AC when I had other people in the car, anyway. I made the executive decision to go on without air conditioning.

After the standard five years of car notes, I eventually paid the thing off in 2015. It was the first automobile I ever owned outright, and it felt really good.

Around the time, I had a job checking ADA ramps all over the city for pitch and proper construction. I drove all over the place on a daily basis, from Rogers Park to Hegewisch.

At a point of no return, I decided to give up on maintaining the car’s proper hygiene. I gave in to completely ruining the cloth interior with cigar smoke. Plumes absorbed into the fabric of the auto’s being. Ash burns punctuating the seats like morse code to read wear of the entrenched addict.

It was henceforth christened: The Smoke Car.

I became the guy known for only owning a car in order to smoke cigars in it. This became a workaround for cold days when you can’t sit outside and enjoyably puff a stogie. Just blaze the heat and roll the window down. Traveling cigar lounge, pal.

No more first dates in that car. In fact, around that era was a time when I decided to stop dating altogether. Besides, if you let someone new sit in that thing, you may as well not even ask for a second date. It truly became a mobile ash box not fit for polite society.

Personally, my only issue arose during heavy rain mixed with 100-degree weather. The car was no match for that tumultuous combination, what without air conditioning.

While driving I’d be forced to roll the window down in order to offset the window fog and even breath due to the heat. The electronics in the driver’s side door for the windows would get wet due to the rain, and then the mechanical window gear would start malfunctioning.

One time I simply had to leave the window down all night because it just stopped working. When I came out to the car in the morning someone had rifled through my glove box. I still can’t believe they didn’t want my spindle of mix CDs.  

In Fall of 2023 I finally surrendered and sold the Smoke Car to Carmax. I hadn’t washed it in seven years, interior or exterior – besides periodic rinsings due to rain of course. I wasn’t planning to start washing it now, so Carmax would have to give an altruistic estimate on the reality of my Smoke Car.

Damaged interior; crumbs galore. I didn’t want to fake it during my post-dating tenure so I definitely wasn’t about to fake it for Carmax. I think I got about a G-note for it which was more than I had expected.

I miss it. It was my haven and my tank through various battlefields of life.

So, here’s to the Smoke Car as I sit in my other Smoke Car. Puffing a Partagas Black Label while signing off and bidding you all goodnight.

(Below is a photo of a dirty soldier of a calculator that I’ve stowed-away in my various vehicles since about 2001):