Magic Car Crystals

So if you've seen Napoleon Dynamite, you'll remember the scene where Napoleon is about to try the time machine: Kip is all ready to plug it in and let it rip, when Napoleon stops him and says, "Wait! I almost forgot the crystals!" He dumps some little crystals into a receptacle at the top of the time machine and the rest is history.

My car's name is Mary Jane. She is the best car! She is a replacement for Juanita, my first car. Juanita made me really happy for about nine days, when she stopped on the freeway with a clogged fuel injector. Juanita made me nervous ever after, and she died in a freak accident at 1:00am, getting rear ended and pushed into the car in front in a rainstorm. Both of the other cars sped off. Juanita never started again.

Mary Jane is a Corolla. She runs and runs and runs. She drove all the way to Virginia, then last summer she took me on a fantastic roadtrip to Minnesota. She's had a tire with a small leak that's been giving her the blues, but she handles it like a trooper. She has little stash places for coins. When I lived in Texas, I rarely used them, but here in Virginia where I have to cross a toll bridge every day, the quarter slots are in constant use. That is where the magic crystals come in.

When the Texas quarters came out this summer, I lucked out and got two rolls fresh from the mint! So I reserved the quarter slots by the emergency brake for Texas quarters: a sort of good karma token for Mary Jane since she's a Texas car. This is real magic, not the fake new-agey stuff like crystals. This is four-leaf clover and rabbit's foot material.

Hopefully by next summer, Mary Jane will be able to have the tune-up and new tires that she needs, and then we'll be off again, taking another roadtrip. Driving west, across Tennessee, into the sunset, back home.