When you drive a car with a manual transmission, there is what I believe is called "power shifting," that is, shifting gears without using the clutch. It is usually not too hard to shift out of gear into neutral, just a slight pressure on the shift lever, listen for the rpms of the engine to decrease, then pop it out of gear. But if you're real careful, know the car and the sounds of the engine well enough, you can shift from one gear into another completely without the use of the clutch. Even down shift. I don't recommend doing this on a friend's car the first time you drive it. With that Chevy, I think I was able to shift into any gear, except first and reverse, without using the clutch. It required knowing just how the engine sounded (no tachometer to take the art out of it), feeling the shift lever and backing off on the gas, while waiting for the moment the car began to float as the car eased back from the impulsion of the engine and momentum took over, then easing the shift lever out of gear and teasing it into the next. The degree of difficulty with which the shift lever came out of gear gave me an idea as to how easily I'd be able to do it, or if I'd be better off saving wear and tear on the gear teeth and finish with the clutch. But when I got it right, I could shift as seamlessly as the finest automatic transmission, without being insulated from the basic physical forces propelling me down the road.

The odometer maxed out at 99,999.9 miles, and I turned it over to 00,000.0 the next summer somewhere in western Nebraska on the way up to the Black Hills of South Dakota. It took me to Albuquerque at least twice. Just south of Taos there is a long climb up a hill with a passing lane, and a long stretch of narrow, winding road through the Rio Grande canyon follows. On one trip as I hit this stretch of road I was behind a semi, and I knew I had better pass him if I didn't want to spend the next twenty or thirty miles looking at his license plate. I climbed that steep hill in second gear, accelerating up to fifty-five miles and hour, I think all the way up to sixty miles an hour in second gear to near the top of the hill before I shifted into third and cruised past the truck just short of the summit.

Near one hundred thousand miles after I purchased it, it started to burn oil. As the cold weather turned warmer and I found myself closing the window at a red light, I knew it was time for the car to be retired. This was in the middle of the farm and energy crisis that hammered all of Colorado in the mid to late eighties, and northeastern Colorado had been especially hard hit. My employment and finances at that time were such that budgeting for a new car would take some time. Fortunately, some friends were selling a car, and gave me a deal on it. I came home from their house and was standing in my kitchen looking out at the Chevy that had brought me far more than the new miles on the odometer, just kind of wondering how or if I would sell it, when there was a knock on the door. A guy in his twenties said he was driving by and saw the Chevy and would whoever owned the car be willing to sell it?

I ran into him a few times and saw the car a number of times around town. His ability to resurrect that Chevy bound us together. We were at least the fourth and fifth owners of that car, and I think not even the original owner could have felt the same joy of ownership that we shared. It was the car I didn't even know I was looking for when I bought it, and the car I didn't even know I was selling when I sold it.