"Betsy's gone," my mother sobbed into the phone. Her grief was palpable and had a chilling effect on me. Who was Betsy? How could I possibly have been so insensitive to my mother and her needs that I didn't know who Betsy was? Could it be a friend or was it some relative I had forgotten about who had died?

     "Betsy?" I hoped the tentative tone of my voice did not distress her further.

     "The T-Bird," my mother's voice quavered and I could imagine the tears spilling wetly down her cheeks.

     "Oh." I just didn't know what else to say as it dawned on me that my mother had finally sold her white Thunderbird with the navy vinyl top. I knew that she liked the car, but I never before realized that she had personified it or that its sale would have the same devastating impact as the death of a child.

     No, I just didn't understand people who responded to cars in that way. We had had cars over the years which illicited emotional responses alright: the giant OD green Plymouth that the kids dubbed "The Tank" and on which they planned to mount gun turrets in case of national disaster; the yellow Oldsmobile stationwagon everyone referred to as "The Banana Boat" which we thought well-suited to border runs full of illegal aliens; the maroon "Bomber" that blew mouse turds in your face if you had to turn on the defroster.

     But although it never had a name (not one which is printable, at any rate), we were always most emotional about the red Toyota. When my widowed mother remarried, her new husband owned both a car and a pick up. They kept Mom's car and his pick up and gave us his red Toyota since we needed a car. It was small, a four-seater, but there were only four of us and we really appreciated having it . . . at first, anyway. It served us well, and ended up being a bus. It started out with just two extra kids: the next door neighbor girls whom we took with us to Bible club each week. But somehow the word got around and by summer and Vacation Bible School, I was packing twelve kids in that car with me. It was similar to stuffing a sausage casing. The more the merrier and merry they were. They would roll down all the windows and sing VBS songs at the top of their lungs all six country miles to the church. Maybe that's how the word had gotten around. That red Toyota became the rolling evangelist, proving that Christians lacked in neither joy nor humor. When we arrived each morning, I think it rather resembled a clown act: you know, the one where clowns just keep coming out of a car obviously too small to hold them all. People were always waiting to see just how many we had crammed in.

     Our childrens' goat took a real liking to the car as well. One warm and sunny spring day I glanced out the window and spotted the goat napping on the top of it. The kids and I all laughed, not realizing the possible consequences of such behavior. My husband, on the other hand, was not amused. "She's going to wreck the car!" he shouted, storming angrily outside. "Barli!" Ken hollered as soon as he got to the porch, "Get off that car!" At the tone of his voice, the goat knew there was trouble ahead and jumped up, hooves flying. The problem was, the 120 lb. goat had caved in the top of the car which was now dish-shaped and somewhat slippery, like metal is. She couldn't get any traction at all and the faster she ran, the faster she slipped back into the center. Ken homing in on her like a crazed bear only made her run faster. The kids and I were overcome with proxisms of laughter: my husband yelling and waving his arms; the goat in a wild, undulating tap dance on the top of the red Toyota. It was years before Ken could appreciate the humor.

     At the time, we discovered that the car had been wrecked in some previous life and the whole top was "bondoed." The girating goat had popped the bondo loose and her wild and stationery flight was throwing bits of red paint and bondo to the wind like dandelion seeds. The top forever after was mottled red with grey primer. In addition, we were never able to keep the goat off so that each time we needed to go someplace, we had to first get in and all push to get the top back up close to where it belonged so our heads would clear inside.

     As time went along the car ceased to run like it should. We kept a pen in the glove box which the kids would insert into the carburator in the morning so I could get it started. It would stall at intersections and someone would have to jump out and stick the pen in the carburator to get it going again. We would smile and wave at people as they pulled around us unwilling to linger. The kids learned that old 50's "Chinese Fire Drill" routine and would sometimes take the opportunity of all jumping out and rotating while they waited for the car to sputter back to life.

     Eventually, it quit starting altogether when it was hot. If it stalled, you just had to sit there and wait it out. When it cooled enough, it would start again, assuming you had been patient and not worn out the battery in futile efforts to get it going. We took Bibles and other reading material along for those half-hour interludes and got in the habit of leaving early for appointments.

     Our local gas stations hated seeing us coming. I think twice they hung up closed signs when they thought we were going to stop. Since you have to turn off the engine when you get gas, the Toyota would invaribly refuse to start and attendants and customers would push us down the road to get us going. We got stuck in the take-out window of Taco Bell. Two waiters and three customers (those stuck behind us) came out in a pouring rainstorm to cheer my little car on its homeward way. They couldn't actually get us started, but they pushed us out of the take-out lane and into the parking lot. We just had to wait until the engine cooled off before we could get going again. I rolled down my window to thank all those who helped.

     "Listen, lady," sniffed one waiter, rain dripping from the end of his nose, his hair plastered wetly to his head, "no offense, but why don't you go to Wendy's next time."

     Getting stuck in the narrow drive-through lane at the post office was even worse. Angry business men piled out of their cars to see what the hold up was since they were boxed in. Four guys in suits got behind that little car and ran, pushing us about three blocks before the car finally coughed and lurched forward when I "popped" the clutch. In my rear view mirror I could see one man laying face down in the street but I couldn't stop to thank him or even see if he was OK. Not only would I have risked not starting again, but the raised fists of the other "pushers" were encouraging me onward.

     Our fondest memory, though, was shortly after Easter. I had made 1890's "period piece" dresses for the girls and I: long and full with ruffles, ribbons and lace. One Sunday morning we were all dressed up and piled in the car for Church. We were running late and Ken had no patience for a car which wouldn't start. We tried the "pen-in-the-carburator" trick to no avail.

     "Well," said Ken, "you guys get out and push it backwards so I can pop the clutch. It shouldn't take much." We lived in the country and did not have a paved driveway, just rocks and mud on that April morning, but we dutifully got out, tucked our long skirts up into the waistbands of our pantyhose, ignored the possible consequences to our heels and started pushing. The car didn't start. Then we pushed it forward. The car didn't start. Twice more we tried the sequence but nothing happened. Not a cough or splutter or wheeze. The engine was definitely ready for the morgue.

     "OK," Ken was obviously exasperated, "we'll turn it around and head it down the driveway. When we get it to the hill, everybody pile in. It's sure to start going down hill." He was obviously losing what little patience he had started with but was making a good effort at keeping his temper under control. Our driveway was a good half-mile long and half-way between the house and the road there was a short but fairly steep hill we had to traverse.

     Ken began pushing from the open driver's door, the girls and I in the back. I'm sure we were a bright and colorful group romping through the sizeable mudholes of the driveway, pushing the car. Just before we got to the hill, Ken hopped in and popped the clutch. The little car lurched and began making the terrible noise we had come to associate with the engine running. The girls and I piled thankfully into the car and untucked our long skirts, hoping they would cover the mud which now covered our shoes and was splashed on our legs to over knee high.

     Ken's patience had completely run out. He is one of those people who cannot deal with being late and we had, at that point, not only completely missed Sunday School, we would be late to Church as well.

     The bear in the driver's seat began growling in short, furious spurts. "I'm not going." "Why bother?" "How can we possibly show up so late?" "Why do these things always happen to me?" "I hate this damn car!" The whole time, the Toyota continued towards the road with his angry, white knuckles grasping the wheel of the machine that only existed to torment him.

     Our seven-year-old daughter, Karen, leaned forward and gently put her hand on her father's shoulder. "Look at it this way, Dad," she said sweetly, with a twinkle in her eye, "it's not every family who takes their car jogging on Sunday morning!" He drove silently for long moments. We hit the road to church about the same time that the laughter, wretched from his gut against his will, finally burst out.