“It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue”

July, 2004. We were a family of four living a pretty great life. We’d always imagined that we would have 2 kids, a dog, house in the woods and jobs to keep the cupboards full and a roof over our heads. The year before we’d traded my wife’s 1994 Nissan Maxima in for a brand new 2003 Honda Civic, 5 speed manual transmission. Even got a great deal on the financing, 4 years at 1.9% financing. With my income as the main source of funds getting a financing deal like that was pretty amazing. We’d just had our second child, a girl, and things seemed pretty great.

Fast forward to July, 2004. We found out that we were going to be having a third baby. I checked the records, went over the numbers, and even consulted with a voodoo doctor and this was NOT in the plans, folks. We had a three bedroom house, and a four person vehicle, and a barely four person financial situation. Don’t get me wrong, I was excited. But also completely dumbfounded and frightened to my soul because I didn’t think I was ever going to be a father of three. After two miscarriages I thought I was damn lucky to have two children.

After some panicking and mentally beating myself up I came to be at peace with this idea. I mean, the girls could share a room. We’d just have to pinch some pennies and tighten up the belts and we’d figure it out. There was one thing that no amount of belt tightening and frugalizing our spending would fix, and that was the fact that a four seat Honda Civic or Nissan Frontier was going to seat a family of five. We had to get rid of our beloved Civic. For a van.

Late summer 2004 we went to Gurley Leep Honda in Elkhart, IN and found a 2004 Honda Odyssey. Brand new, pretty well loaded except for leather seats(and at the time no side door air bags.) It was $26,000, and that was about $28,000 more than I had to spend. My parents even offered to give us $7,000 to put down on it, but even with that the interest rates would have made our payments waaaay too much. But they had a deal going on that you could lease it for $249 a month for 24 months. That was about what we were paying for the Civic. And it was 0 down. We ended up basically just giving our Civic back to the dealership. Zero sum game right there.

We were ready for a family of five now with the big blue beast. And in March of 2005 our son was born healthy and happy(at least I think he was happy), so the purchase was worth it!

I wasn’t sure how I’d get along with a minivan, but I quickly acclimated to it. You felt safe in it. You felt like you were driving a big, blue tank. A big blue tank that was playing The Simpsons and Futurama DVDs in the entertainment system. Yep, it had a DVD player, and two sets of headphones you could run the sound through so at least two of the kids could hear it. The headphones didn’t really work all that well, so they ended up in the under seat compartment to collect dust till I threw them out a few years ago.

It also had a cassette player and CD player. I wasn’t listening to many cassettes in 2004, but I liked having options(that changed in 2016 when I got on a mixtape kick with a newly purchased cassette deck.) I gotta say, the sound system in that van was killer. Amazing low end, crisp mids, and clear highs. It was loud, guys, and when it was just me and the kids we’d crank it. My wife wasn’t fond of the loud, and I can understand that. But I wanted my kids to appreciate music at the appropriate volume, you understand. I can say today with them all well into adulthood that they still do appreciate music, and at the appropriate headbanging volume.

This big blue Odyssey was our chariot to a million family get-togethers, vacations, doctor visits, school drop offs and pickups, and visits to grandparents and friends alike. It could practically drive itself to Brown County, Indiana as many times as we went. Our first trip was in November of 2011 when we spent Thanksgiving there with my parents. It was the first Thanksgiving without our Grandma Ruthie, and my wife and I thought it would be good for my mom if we weren’t in the house where she would eat with us every year. It was just a marginal success in making my mom feel better, but the kids loved being down there. The Saturday morning we left, maybe 10 minutes into the drive home, our son threw up in the back of the van. The third row. We were cleaning remnants of chocolate donuts off the seats parked along highway 46 for ten minutes as the girls “eww”‘d and “gross”‘d in their respective seats.

The blue Odyssey saw lots of sick children action over the years, and it was mainly our son. He’d get migraines when he was younger and would often vomit on the way to or on the way home from school. Threw up on his arm cast after he broke it in a freak trampoline accident. This was also on the way to taking one of the other kids to their orthodontist appointment, which required a vehicle switch so the van could be cleaned of the mess. My wife drove herself to Medstat in 2009 after she had gotten a major hand injury while working at the UPS Store. A fabricated piece of metal wasn’t properly secured and came through the bottom of the box which then sliced her hand open like a hot knife to butter.

In the 2010s my wife got a job with a school photo company out of Durham, North Carolina. She took local photos, but would drive down to Kentucky and take pics as well. And in the summer they would have a whole week of things down at their headquarters. She’d fly to those mostly, but she took the van down at least once or twice. And in 2019 the van was our vehicle that took us to Canada. And when the kids started to learn to drive, well the van was the vehicle they learned on.

The van also made a trip to New York City in 2021 to pick up our oldest who was doing a winter term working for a book publisher in Manhatten. That trip had me on edge, as by that point the van had a chunk of miles. I’d just replaced the timing belt, so I wasn’t too afraid in that regard. But man, you have upwards of 200,000 miles on a vehicle and you’re driving through the hills of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and then plop right into Manhatten, New York…well let’s just say I was on high alert. We even killed the van the morning we were leaving, parked outside the building our daughter was staying in as she was bringing her stuff down. We left the headlights on and drained the battery. Thankfully there was another parent there from Michigan doing the same thing and he gave us a jump. I never turned the van off the entire drive home.

In the summer of 2021 the van became our son’s vehicle. After he got his license we’d bought a 2008 Honda Accord, originally for my wife, but she decided she didn’t care for it so went back to her Flex. The Accord fit me fine, and it allowed the boy to have wheels to drive. He’d learned to drive in that beast, so he was comfortable in it. It worked out.

Fast forward to just a few weeks ago. The boy(well, man now) had some money saved and bought himself a 2015 GMC Terrain. He’s moving to Indianapolis later this summer and a 21-year old vehicle with nearly 260,000 miles wasn’t going to cut it in the big city. This meant we had three vehicles sitting out front and it was starting to look like a used car dealership. We needed to do something about the van.

My wife and I thought about donating to a non profit. We weren’t going to get anything out of it. It was old, tons of miles, paint was peeling off, and it wore the miles it’s driven plainly and out in the open. But the transmission is only 5 years old, brakes are new, tires are good, no oil leaks, and the starter had just been replaced. It’s still a solid driver with a good engine. It’s just not that pretty anymore. I wouldn’t take it cross country, but as a local get around town kind of van it was solid.

Our daughter told us that a friend of hers she used to work with at Starbucks was just in a wreck…literally on her way to the hospital to give birth to her son. The car was totaled and would have cost $800 just for repairing the radiator. It was $800 her and her boyfriend didn’t have. So they didn’t even have a vehicle to bring their newborn home. We thought this was the perfect opportunity.

So Saturday afternoon we took the blue beast out and got an oil change, gave it a good wash, and in the afternoon met the new dad and his dad at my daughter’s apartment complex parking lot. They tried offering my wife $100 and she refused. She told them we just wanted someone to get some use out of it. They were both floored that we were just giving them the van. He said it’s the nicest vehicle he’s ever had, which made me feel a little ashamed. I’m looking at it thinking “Should we just take it to the dump?”. I tend to forget that not everyone has it as good as me. I’m not rich, well, maybe rich in love and family. But wealthy I’m not. But as this kid was looking at the blue beast in complete awe it made me realize that sometimes what you see as old and bygone, someone else is going to admire and would love to have.

We signed off the title and our bill of sale, pulled the license plate off and put his on, and he was off with his dad following behind back to the hospital to pick up his newborn son in his new family minivan.

Not sure I believe in fate or God’s guiding hand or any of that stuff, but I do believe in the occasional bout of luck or perfect timing and this was one of those moments. What was taking up space on the side of the house for me was a Godsend to someone else. I’m so happy we could help this young couple out when they really needed it. And I’m so happy we had that big blue beast for almost 21 years. Every mile shows, and every moment frozen in my mind.

Thankful for the the memories and adventures, our big ‘ol baby blue.