Driving by a gas station in Belmont, Mass. and...it kinda stood out. Faded glory, certainly; but not bad after 96 years. Looked like a barn find, except not in a barn. Might have been repainted a long time ago, but those wooden spokes do look original. Some inanimate objects--even semi-mass produced mechanical contraptions--do acquire, with age, something more than just patina. Is it soul? Something of the dead generations that must have known, driven, been driven in this car...must have rubbed off on the machine. Soul? Maybe. The living and the dead. Anyway, there she was, on a bright early-fall Saturday in New England, confronting my 16-year-old son and me, on our way home from the driving range, with history, mortality, and decay; and doing so with a certain kind of steadfast integrity. A lot to ask of a machine. Built and owned and maintained and, maybe, loved by humans, though.
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