Please note that Catherine is one of my cars. More precisely she is a 1966 Vanden Plas Princess 1100 – a small British four-door sedan that I cherish immensely. I am writing a series of posts to document how I came by her, why she is important to me, and why I am crazy enough to anthropomorphize her and call her by name.
My history with Catherine actually goes back further than when I got her in 2010, further back than when I met her in about 2002, further back than when I became friends with her previous owner back in 1990, all the way back to the job I had during college back in 1984.
Back then I was attending the College of Charleston as an English major. I was young, idealistic, and I wanted a car. Unlike most of my friends who either got hold of the cheapest thing the could afford or saved up for American muscle cars, I was determined that my first car was going to be an MG. Yup, I wanted a small British sports car that was no longer imported into the US. The first time I got to drive an MG was between high school and college, and the car belonged to actress Stockard Channing. She was living in Charleston at the time, and I was working for her then husband, a local marketing personality. She was nice, friendly, and had an MGB that I got to drive occasionally. It was great.
I left that job, but didn’t forget about the MG. That is what I really wanted. About a year later I found and bought my dream car. I fell in love with an orange 1971 MGB GT. The GT is a hardtop coupe vs the more common convertible. I was quite happy – and promptly learned that although I might have been able to afford the car, I couldn’t afford the maintenance or repair bills. Seeing as I wasn’t going to give up my prize, the only alternative I could see was to learn to do my own work. Slowly I learned to change the oil, rebuild clutch hydraulics, tune carburetors, and eventually about every other automotive task. Through that process I became good friends with the owner of the foreign car parts store at the front of my neighborhood, and eventually an employee.
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To Live Forever is a journey into a little girl’s future that also explores the past of not only Meriwether Lewis, but the historic Natchez Trace as well. Following the none-to-friendly divorce of her parents, young Emmaline Cagney must run away from a situation at home that has gone from bad to worse. Along the way she picks up the help of the wandering spirit of Meriwether Lewis – of Lewis and Clarke fame – and a host of other characters both modern and folkloric. From the sultry sway of New Orleans to the icon country of Nashville, the reader is taken on their own journey of exploration into some of the most interesting characters in America’s past. Told from the few points of Lewis, Emmaline, and “the Judge” (one of those unsavory characters you will love to hate), the story unfolds at a quickening rate to an explosive climax.