| Steve Blow: 216,000 miles and memories 12/20/2000 By / The Dallas Morning News I'm saddened to report the departure of a dear family member.
After many years of faithful service, '91 Astro van has gone on to a better place.
I refer, of course, to Dallas Can! Academy.
On Tuesday afternoon, I donated the poor, dilapidated old minivan to the Cars for Kids program.
And that's fitting because the minivan was the ultimate "car for kids."
As I cleaned it out for the last time, it was like an archaeological dig back through Allison and Corey's childhood – a jumble of travel-game pieces, school pencils and Happy Meal trinkets.
We bought the minivan in June of 1991. So, let's see, that means Corey had just turned 11 and Ali was still 12.
That would have been the era of New Kids on the Block and Z. Cavaricci jeans. (Remind me to hold that over the kids' heads next time they accuse me of being a nerd.)
We drove the van to a Rangers game on the very first night we owned it. And it carried us on a lot of fun outings from then on.
There were trips to Florida's luxurious Redneck Riviera. (Among the items found deep in a seat pocket: a scorecard from a miniature golf course in Destin.)
There were po-folk ski trips to Colorado where we joined with church friends in minivan caravans.
Through good and bad
Even when the van failed me, something good came of it. We had an alternator meltdown in Kansas on the way home from a ski trip. Everyone else went on, and Corey and I stayed behind. It proved to be one of our very best father-son bonding times.
The minivan also took us on our first driving trip into Mexico. In fact, it still had some rattles from those ragged roads. And my wife still has some kinks in her chassis from that trip.
This was also the van that took our kids off to college. It seems like yesterday that I left my whimpering daughter in her new dorm room at Baylor – and hauled her wailing mother back to Dallas.
By the way, that blubbering little girl completed her bachelor's degree last week!
Ali still has one more year to go to receive her master's degree in accounting and (we hope) her CPA.
Corey is in the middle of his junior year at Baylor. And amazingly, brother and sister seem to have actually become friends at college.
I remember those early days in the minivan when their conversation was: "Corey hit me!" "Ali's hair was on my side!" "Stupid!" "No, you are!"
And so on.
We got a minivan mostly so they could have separate seats. I kept driving that minivan mostly so they could stay in college.
Showing its age
But after a mere 216,000 miles, it was time to say goodbye. Little things began to break. Like the door handles.
Ali still hasn't forgiven me for the time we took a new college friend of hers somewhere – and we all had to climb in the van through the driver's door.
The driver's window had also become unreliable. Oh, it went down reliably but was very particular about going back up.
To get around the problem, I had perfected a tollbooth technique of opening the door and throwing money back over my shoulder.
For a long time I referred to the peeling paint on the hood as "freckles." A colleague informed me recently that a better word would be "mange."
Ali was playing around with one of those car-value estimators on the Internet the other day. She thought it was quite hilarious when the report came back on the van:
"No value."
(I think she had been unduly harsh in describing its condition.)
In fact, the nice folks at Dallas Can! Academy seemed tickled to get a vehicle that didn't need towing. I hope it will provide a few dollars for their good programs.
So now we have a shiny new SUV. It's really pretty and everything works. But it sure doesn't have 216,000 miles of memories.
Steve Blow can be reached at 214-977-8374 or at
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