Good-bye, Lifeboat

Today was one of the saddest days of my life. It was also one of the angriest. When I left to go pick our kids up from school, I found an orange sticker stuck on the back windshield of our Ford Aerostar. We haven't been able to drive our van in just over a year due to various mechanical problems that are typical of a vehicle over fifteen years old. The tires were shot, too. That orange sticker was one from the city saying that our van was a blight on the city and needed to be removed from the property and went so far as to say that it needed to be taken completely outside of the city limits.

They don't know the story of our Lifeboat, how it was given to us in our time of need, how it kept us cool when our house a/c died, how it got us out here to Texas twice, and how it took us out of Texas as we evacuated during Hurricane Rita. All of these rescues made our Lifeboat priceless to us and now they wanted to rip it out of our lives. They said "get rid of it or start paying $200 per day for every day that you keep it here". We don't have $200, let alone $200 per day. Our hearts were broken. We had no choice but to have someone come to get our Lifeboat and take it out of our yard and our lives.

They don't know how we promised our Lifeboat that we'd never get rid of it, that it had a home with us forever or how we were trying to find a way to get the money somehow to have it completely overhauled and brought back into service, how we wanted to honor its loyalty and good service to our family. Maybe it sounds silly to most people to have so much emotion over a vehicle, but this one had gone through so much with our family that it was truly a part of the family.

We have neighbors that sit outside smoking, filling our carport up with their blasted smoke, all the while I have COPD and our daughters have asthma. We have people around that let their little kids wander around the neighborhood with nobody looking after them, being perfect bait for kidnappers and perverts. We have people beating their wives while police officers stand in convenience stores scratching off lottery tickets after receiving domestic violence calls. Yeah, right, my sick van sitting in my driveway is somehow a public menace. Tax dollars at work.

Here is a clip of the last time that we'll ever see our Lifeboat.