May 1, 2026

Hello to my last column of this year. I struggled to think about what I wanted to write about as this column is mostly just a silly fun one. I finally landed on one thing I love: my first car. My beautiful dark green 1999 Ford Ranger XLT offroad Sport Package (automatic). I named it  “Amy the Green Machine” after my Nana because she paid for my driving school. While some hated my Ranger and said it sounded like “it was going to explode” that's just a bad opinion. What I loved about this car was not based on its ability to “perform” but based on how cool it was. The ego thing about truck drivers is definitely true because I always felt badass when I was driving the Ranger. The Ranger even had the same birthday month as me.

There were definitely some quirks when it came to the Ranger, I mean…most 27 year old cars do. Like if I went from reverse back into drive sometimes it would only move a little and make a bunch of noise. So to fix it I would go from reverse to 2nd gear and then go back into drive and it would fix itself. Another thing that would happen is that when I was driving it would pause and play “catch up.” I would be driving and for a second it would “hold back” and then kind of launch forward to catch back up. This all happened in less than 5 seconds so it was not that scary. If I had to guess it had something to do with shifting. Sometimes you could just feel the car shifting gears when you were driving. I will admit that the car was pretty loud even after my dad tried making it quieter. Going on the highway with it was a little scary or as my dad would say “sketchy.” You do not realize that you're scared of the highway in your car until you get a new one. The car also did not have a lot of technology in it like most cars do today. Like so old there was no beeping if you were not wearing your seatbelt while driving. There were also crank windows which I did not mind. I actually miss being able to move my windows up and down when it's off. My dad did put bluetooth, heated seats and remote start in it. Shoutout to my dad for that.

There's several fond memories I have in the Ranger. Like one time I was driving my brothers to our dads house. I didn't realize it but I left the bed open. Which meant when I turned onto Ridgewood road and started speeding up all my stuff fell out. I would have never known if my brother Alex did not point it out. So I had to park in the closest spot to us and run across the street to gather my stuff. Or one time I hosted a “trumpet hangout” which meant almost the whole trumpet section came to my house, plus Nathan Garner's little brother who did not play trumpet. We wanted to get food so we went to Taco Bell. I fit 5 people in my Ranger which was definitely not a comfortable squeeze. We waited in that Taco Bell drive through for over an hour and I still never got my food. I honestly stopped going there for a couple months after that. This is a silly one but one time during band practice they had us go all the way to the football field and then were making us go all the way back to the practice field which are on completely opposite sides of the school. So I decided to drive up there and offered two friends of mine to hop in the truck bed and I’d just drive us up there. Except when I was about to turn out on the street I saw a cop so I had to turn the opposite direction and then I had to throw all my junk from inside my backseat into my bed so they could sit in the car. 

When I first started driving the Ranger around I was leaving my job at the Lob (Red Lobster) and the steering wheel started getting harder to turn and was making weird noises. I went to a gas station and was freaking out because at that point I could not turn at all. The noises were so bad a random guy told me I needed “power steering fluid.” Thankfully I was able to get home and my dad fixed it. There is still a big puddle stain on his driveway.

Yet in January, on an unsuspecting day, I was trying to leave but for some reason the Ranger would not move. At first I looked and the back tire was terribly flat so I thought it was just that. So it got air put back in but it still would not move. I had to get my now-ex and my moms boyfriend to push it down and out the driveway. Then I drove it to my dads house which is only about 15 minutes away. Sadly it turned out the transmission was failing which meant I could literally only go forward; reverse wasn't an option anymore. I knew the car would eventually fail but I thought it would at least last me until college. It only lasted me about half a year. So the Ranger was officially retired because fixing the flats+transmission would be like 3X the amount the car was worth. I did cry a lot about the Ranger dying if I'm being honest. I found a new car after looking for a month so now I rock a Mercury Mariner and a car payment. 

Thank you for reading this long article about my old beater, which I loved.