My Boyfriend the Car

My Boyfriend the Car Part 1

So I'm turning off the road onto the Great Salt Lake Salt Flats trying to get my mother's parting shot from our conversation this morning out of my mind. "I am 87 years old, have six children, thirty-six grandchildren, five great-grand children and you don't even have a cat." If she would have listened, I would have said, "yes Mother, I'm an embarrassment. I'm the only one of your lovely Latter-day Saint children who didn't marry for time and all eternity and raise a family. You know I've tried. I've dated a lot. I was even engaged once. Too bad I happen to think that a good Christian man should save jumping into the sack for after the wedding, with his wife, not six days before with her next door neighbor. The bum didn't even marry her! Hey, I go to church, live the Word of Wisdom, help my neighbors, pay tithing, lovingly care for my widowed mother and generally stay out of trouble. Shoot, I even teach Sunday School.

"It's also not like I haven't done something with my 52 years on this earth. I worked my tail off to finish school, spent a year and a half with the Peace Corps, and have done my share of serving my country with the Army Corps of Engineers. I was a mechanic, ok? Not a nurse or secretary or teacher or what's your other mom sanctioned job—oh yeah, a seamstress. But hey, I was the best. I could not only fix 'em but drive 'em too. I even won a cup at Bonneville Raceway, not that you cared. That's why I got my sanity saving job. And Mom, I love it. I just happen to have the most fabulous job in the world. I test drive motor conveyance for the James Bonds of the USA." But she never listens, so I kissed her good-by and went to work.

Hearing the crunch of tires on sun baked salt crust clears my mind. Out here with nothing but dry white earth and brush spotted hills, one can escape the gravitational pull of the SaltLakeValley and associated city insanity and transport to another planet with adventure around every corner. Especially when one is driving the sweet little number I am experiencing today. Experiencing is the word. This top of the line, fully loaded spy car has a V8 5.86liter engine with a sinter-cast compact graphite iron block. It reaches 800 horsepower at 9,000rpms. In other words, it moves. All over it moves, turns, twists, spirals, tight corners, u-turns, you name it, it takes it like it was glued to the road. I probably couldn't flip this thing if I tried. And that is exactly what I am going to do.

So I just finished breezing it through its paces and I'm having fun with the extras. You know, finding my position in the galaxy, blowing up the hillsides, switching to boat mode, releasing booby traps, spying on a drop dead gorgeous man asleep in a passing small airplane, when the sensor voice starts talking. "Warning," it says in that pitiful attempt at sultry female, "missile approaching, twelve o'clock." "Seagulls are not missiles," I think and then realize that there is something approaching. A ball of flame is headed right for my windshield. Due to the fact that the force field has yet to be invented, let alone installed, I peel rubber backward until I am stopped by the explosion. After the spray of salty dirt settles, I jump out to assess damage. First of all, I get blasted by the fact that it is the middle of summer. Seventy-two climate-controlled degrees is much more pleasant than 105 dry as a fossil degrees. Anyway, after I cook my lungs, I notice that there is no impact crater. There is a shallow depression, about 15 feet across and a layer of dust, part of which has settled on the front half of the car. "But, it nearly shook my teeth out," I exclaim. I'm not one for talking to myself, but at times I make an exception. "I know I heard something hit the car, and the engine died. But, I don't see anything," I mumble as I walk around it. No dents, scratches, or other marks, just dust. So I walk over to the depression.

In the middle of the depression is a piece of smoking metal. I squat down and hold my hand over it. It's way hot, which today is saying something. It seems to have been a box. The bottom and two sides are still attached, but the other two sides and bits of the top I guess, are ripped and twisted, held onto the rest by small strips. It is about the size of a man's boot box. Half is empty, the other packed with circuit boards and crazy straw-like tubes. Oddly enough, the insides look intact. I don't see any bits around it. There are symbols stamped around the sides. They are lined up in patterns with a regularity that looks like writing. Weird, just plain weird.