The Land Rover in Someone Else's Driveway

I have no idea where it is now. Somewhere outside Johannesburg maybe, sitting on a stranger's driveway, is a 1976 Series 3 Land Rover that I bought from an army surplus junk pile outside Voortrekkerhoogte. It had a bullet hole and flat tires. Weeds had grown up through the floor. I often look at old photos of that vehicle, like I do the photos of my family and my dogs. I don't really need the photos though. I can picture every rivet and lever.

I grew up around cars in a way that most people don't. My parents ran a small motor spares shop, and I spent a good part of my childhood behind that counter, being sent to the back for spark plugs or a radiator cap, learning the hard way which parts belonged to which engine and which ones the older guys would happily let me hunt for that didn't exist at all. A radiator cap for a Beetle, for example. Cars weren't a hobby in my family. They were the family business, the family arguments, and more than a few of the family stories.

So when I got my hands on that old Series 3, it wasn't really about the vehicle. I think it was about the resilience that old duck showed. It had been sinking into a field for years, but when we rolled it off the flatbed truck at the mechanics, it took a sip of petrol and a fresh battery, and fired right up. We stripped it down, fixed what needed fixing, and painted it a flat green that would blend into the bush nicely.

Old Fred the Land Rover took us all over South Africa. It went up mountains and rolled happily down freeways, and it never once managed to overtake a truck.

Then we emigrated, and the Land Rover stayed behind, along with a great many other things that didn't fit into the version of a life you're allowed to carry onto a plane. My three dogs went to a new home, tearing my heart out of my chest. I had to walk away from my father, leaving him alone with memories of my mom who had died at just 62. She was just a couple of years older than I am now.

When you emigrate, nobody mentions that you'll lie awake at night thinking about people, and dogs, and cars.

I don't know who owns that Land Rover now, but whoever it is has no idea how much pleasure that old pile of rivets was responsible for, and honestly, that's fine. It was never going to stay mine forever. At least objects have a way of outlasting the reasons you loved them, and then quietly becoming someone else's problem to maintain, someone else's project to love in their own driveway.

A country, a childhood behind a counter, people who knew you before you'd figured out who you were going to be, well, that’s different. The Land Rover is just the one loss I can describe, the others go much, much deeper.