or weeks my car has sat outside our house, stereo missing, passenger window punched out, neat squares of breakaway glass lodged in the seams of the seat. For a while we had a plastic bag taped over the gaping window, like a big black eye flapping in the breeze. But we don’t care anymore. It’s not like there’s anything inside to steal—or ruin.

My parents bought the Honda Accord in 1992, my last year of high school. Historically, my family bought our cars as though they were fine wines that improve with age. But this car was new. And there was beauty in those temporary paper plates. Glory in the car’s novel color: the aqua-green of the day. I can remember coming home the night it appeared in our driveway. For a moment, I forgave my parents all the humiliation of our crapped-out station wagon, the foolish Mercury Sable. For once, they’d made the right choice .

Mind you, there has never been anything fancy about the car. That’s the charm of a Honda accord, a car that is as imaginative as the interior of a Starbuck’s. But for a family whose previous vehicles had such quirks as stalling on left turns and catching fire in the driveway, reliability was a kind of luxury. I was proud of that car. I was proud for my friends to drive in that car. How can I tell you? I loved that car.

My parents gave me the car. In what may be the most genuine moment of surprise and gratitude in my life—without even a trace of guilt, awkwardness, or mixed emotions—my parents placed a key inside a jewelry box which they offered me the night of college graduation. I think I said something like, “No way,” to which they smiled and said, “Yes way.” Which strikes me as very cute. That at the tenderest moment, we quoted Bill & Ted's.

Until then, I had been the kid forever cadging rides from friends, walking to the grocery, taking the bus. It had become so much a part of my persona I failed to consider it a setback. I certainly never thought my parents owed me a car, and I didn’t seem to be able to stop blowing money on booze and travel long enough to save up for one, so it was a small sacrifice. But with that car, everything changed. I loved giving people rides. I loved going to the grocery store. I loved road trips.

In 2002, I took an extra long road trip, about which I’ve written about on this site many times before. The car became my guide, my shield, my companion. I rode all day in the car, and in the end, when money grew tight, I slept in the car, lying in the backseat with my feet propped against the window, a rather blunt knife within arm’s reach. I named the car Li’l Smoky, although I don’t remember why. Sometimes, I’m not ashamed to say, I talked to the car: You’re doing good, Li’l Smoky. You’re real pretty today. That kind of thing. Nothing too complex.

Once I returned, it took a while for me to stop thinking of my car as my home. I carried camping supplies around in my trunk for close to a year, during which I moved between apartments and couches in Dallas and Austin. I knew I had settled when I took my purple sleeping bag and put it in a closet. I never did take out my lantern. It may still be in there today.

I moved out of Li’l Smoky and in with my boyfriend. What I didn’t anticipate, however, was that my fortune would be the car’s misery. Late one night, a few months after I moved in, someone punched out the back window and ripped out the stereo. Not too long after, another window was punched out. This time they didn’t take the stereo but instead, a piece of the engine. When I turned it on, it shook and sputtered like a violently off-balance washing machine. Poor Smoky. What had they done to him?

Things just unravelled from there: Once, entering our carport, I scraped the side of the car against a pole. Once, exiting a different carport, I smashed the passenger side rear-view mirror against a pole. The car stopped shifting gears automatically so we drove it like a standard. One day, I noticed the left side was splattered, inexplicably, with neon orange paint. At what was clearly the end of the road, the car refused to go into reverse. Two co-workers had to push me out of my parking spot, and for weeks after, I simply drove forward, parked in a place that I could pull straight out of. I thought of it as a metaphor. Me and Smoky: Never go back.

Then, one night, the car was broken into again. They smashed the window, yanked out the stereo, and started loading up various CDs on my floor when, presumably, someone came along and they split. It could have been worse, but the car was done. Finished. 250,000 miles ain’t bad, nothing to be ashamed of. But whereas I once thought I might sell Smoky to a car manufacturer or some youngster with incredibly low expectations, the last break-in sealed his fate. He would be sold for parts. Distributed up for our benefit, rendering his guts for the still-living, the still-smoking. Never again would he guide some adventurer with more bravado than common sense, with more big dreams than guts. They say life is like a winding road, but it was no simile for him. He literally rode himself into the ground. But he will be remembered for his fearlessness, for his occasional recklessness, but most of all, for his spirit.

Ride on, Li'l Smoky. You will be missed.