Reub's journey

18 October 2017

The Corvair

Mary's River snakes through the south end of town, and most of the time she is a quiet stream, offering her banks to the homeless at Avery park, and creating one or two swimming holes for the locals.

As far as I know, she  has not been dammed. So, every year that is extra-rainy, she floods.




Yesterday John and I walked in the city-owned "natural area," a flood plain, that flanks her in the southwest part of town. It is a lonely and lovely thing.



On her bank was a junked car, filled with silt from repeated flooding.





When we lived in the deep South we visited Providence Park in west Georgia, where we laughed at a sign on a nature trail that proclaimed a trashed car as "an ecosystem." It stuck with both of us, though. So whenever we see a junked car out in the middle of nowhere we allow that it might be an ecosystem for various weeds and rodents. It may be so, and we no longer laugh.



Identified by friends on Facebook, the car seems to be an old Corvair or Renault, ruined and dotted with bullet holes. What was its story?




Where had it traveled? How did it end up here? I don't know. But slowly and surely, it is embraced by the world around it. It leaks no oil, and the rear engine was long ago looted. It's now a home for weeds and small animals, Mary's River silt, and not much else.  
You have to love it.





14 comments:

  1. Haven't seen one that runs for 30 years.

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    Replies
    1. They all crashed into smithereens? As Ralph Nader said about it: "unsafe at any speed!"

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  2. It seems to have integrated into the landscape well.

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    1. Yeah, or maybe the landscape has integrated into the car.

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  3. One of my favorite photographic subjects is a rusty old car at Washington State Park's Dalles Mountain Ranch. You do wonder how that old Corvair ended up in a riverbank.

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  4. There is a song about a weed-filled Corvair!
    Lyrics: http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/j/jim_white/corvair.html
    Song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghE_ZiimU6I

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  5. Yes, it is! The song came back to me from at least 15 years ago when I read your post.

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  6. anything that sits still long enough becomes an ecosystem for the small life. I don't think that's a Corvair though. I had one back in the mid 60s and the engine was not in the rear.

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    1. It's probably a Renault, yeah. But some corvairs did have rear-mounted engines! Deathmobiles.

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  7. Wishing you and yours the happiest Holiday Season. Love Granny Annie

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