The Blueberry

The Blueberry is for sale and that's so sad. She's a good Blueberry that drove both of our daughters safely to and from college over miles and miles of highways. I bet you were expecting to read about a fruit? Sorry, but this is about the end of the Explorer era on the farm.

A month ago, I washed her preparing her for the used car market. It was a sentimental time for the two of us during her photo shoot. I wanted her to know how appreciated she was for her dependability with the girls during their teenage years. As you can see, she's so majestic in her royal blueness, so strong with her V8 engine, so flashy with her sun roof, leather seats, climate control and bug guard. Let me show you inside The Blueberry now that she is clean and shiny!

Impressive! Don't you want to buy her?

Cleaning the Blueberry was exciting. Both of our girls drove her resulting in some historical artifacts buried in the seats like this matchbook for instance.



Interesting, I thought to myself as I studied the front.

So which of my lovely daughters collected this?

After lots of artifacts were collected and disposed of, I moved to the vacuuming part of the job. Here my heart had a jolt when I encountered this creature next to the vacuum hose hook up.

Meet Wilma the black widow spider. I didn't see her until after my hand passed close to her. She informed me that if I crossed her again she'd take a bite. So I did exactly what you're thinking....I sucked her up into the central vacuum system. It was a little gross when I heard her body get sucked in, thwack! Later Bill asked me if I had disconnected the hose from the main unit because if I hadn't Wilma would scurry back out through the hose. Yes!!!!!

Our Explorer Era began the spring of 2001 when Shyla found Philberta, the '92 Explorer.

Shyla helped purchase Philberta when she was 16. A couple of years later, we sold her to a couple of old guys from Leavenworth who sounded exactly like NPR's Car Talk brothers. I'm not even kidding.

After Philberta, we got the green '96 Explorer called the Exploder.

The Exploder eventually had a transmission problem so we replaced it through the work of a friend/mechanic. We thought since we had more money invested and a pretty good car mechanically, maybe we could use her on the farm, but our hired guys didn't like her. So we sold her to a family that was in need of a starter car for their teenage daughter. Really that was The Exploder's destiny, so she drove away happy! Both the teenager and The Exploder.

Now the Blueberry's for sale, and when she's gone that'll mark the end of an era. There'll be no more teenager cars or teenage girls.