Utah can be a desolate country. Miles of desert in every direction. Not lifeless, but not life that is recognizable to inhabitants of either continental coast. It is best approached on foot, allowing the change to overwhelm you slowly.

Long before I arrived, Utes and Paiutes knew these lands. They followed water, shade, and seasons where others saw only emptiness. Later came wagons, horses, and men carrying maps. Most passed through. Some stayed.

The desert remained.

Then roads appeared. Steel, rubber, and engines began crossing country once measured in footsteps.

I was born into that change.

A 1947 Willys Jeep Station Wagon. All steel. Two doors in front, two more for passengers, and a rear hatch for whatever needed carrying. 

Veterans trusted my cousins. Farmers trusted my mechanics. I was built to work, and Utah always seemed to have work waiting.

I was formed by pieces, each with their own responsibility, each with their own unique characteristics.

Tires connected us to the earth, most times with warm asphalt, cracked, but mostly smooth. Sometimes the raw rock weathered away to sand, again, warm but yielding. We were lighter than most vehicles, and rarely sank to our hubcaps, which disappeared after a few years.

The earth connection felt right, it kept our speed lower, more sure of our progress. The frame was still rigid, but the ever present rust had thinned the steel in parts. Several places in the floorboards had ‘windows’ to the ground.

The protective paint on the outside had also thinned, making a ‘mottled skin’, more like a reptile, instead of a city car. On the surface, the rust wasn’t hidden, and human hands kept it at bay.

We knew human hands. They came with the original parts that formed us. They came with replacement parts that kept us moving. We sometimes wondered how that happened, accident? Misuse? Or simply age?

A human hand turned the key that allowed the battery to connect. It sat there waiting to be asked, slowly draining its charge. Then suddenly it felt the surge it the generator and all was well.

Human hands gripped the steering wheel, there was movement, some backwards, mostly forwards. Air flowed around the body, hit the flat forward surfaces like a blast furnace, yet flowed through the radiator parts, cooling the water in the engine.

Friction reigned supreme through all of our parts. Wear was met with oil in the crucial connections. Oil seeped through gaskets, coating the steel in black sticky clumps.

In other places the oil was absent, springs creaked, the large ones near the wheels, the small ones in the hood clamps. Movement made noise, even when the engine was turned off.

We are a collection of parts, and parts have parts, yet we are also one object in motion. Some feel the heat, some feel the weight, and some feel the wind. None of us know where we are going.

A human came and things changed again. If our radio could also hear, we would know that the human wanted to take us out of Utah, out of the desert. The human no longer wanted to hitch hike, he wanted to ride in a vehicle as the driver, not the passenger as a favor.

More changes were made, shiny brake pads disappeared, old oil replaced with new, timing was adjusted, windows were cleaned. And early one morning the tires were turning.

We knew that the tires were not perfectly round. Sitting so long waiting, they had formed a flat spot. The heat of the desert, the heat of the road, and the weird rhythm of rotating tires mellowed.

Late afternoon sun from the front meant that we were headed west, the Bonneville Salt Flats in our future.

A day time crossing was possible in something newer with fresh parts. We needed the cool of the night to keep all of our parts together.

There were limitations, the tires were not aligned and serious shimmy occurred over fifty miles an hour.  That meant vehicles coming from behind had to pass us, making a terrible vortex of wind, sound, and light. But traffic was less at night.

The more difficult thing was the oncoming traffic that was going east. It was pushing air and sound directly into our path. It was like being shoved to the ground every two or three minutes.

The springs of the hood clamps screamed with metal abuse, as the ‘shove’ forced air under the hood, trying to flip it up to smash the wind screen.

There was a collective understanding that this needed to stop. But key was still on, the engine still turned, and the tires grabbed asphalt.

The Salt Flats were behind us, but the long grade up to Nevada was ahead. I don’t remember a meeting, or even an agreed consensus. But all of us heard a slight ‘knock’ from the engine. The third piston from the front had developed a ‘wobble’. Perhaps a ring, or a joint, but some part of a part was failing. We all could sense it.

The human could hear it too. He stopped to add thicker oil. The climb was still there, and the knock continued. The human changed the speed, in increased the passing from the rear and the front. It became a ‘perfect storm’!

At the top of the grade, near Wells, a push rod went sideways through the engine block. The third cylinder was broken. The engine stopped, the Jeep continued on in silence, most of the parts perfectly willing to do the job. Gravity won and the tires slowed, the human used the last of the rotation to steer off the road, the passing vehicles still causing havoc, but less so.

For the very few brief moments, it was black and very quiet. Then came the fainter ‘shove’, light, and rattle. It went on for awhile.

The Jeep engine took pride in the fact that bullets could disable a piston, but if the piston was then disconnected, the engine would still run, oscillating slightly, but run.

The human had few tools, and none for the piston.

The human could not stay, he was still moving west, but he left the Jeep by the side of the road, outside of Wells, Nevada. He left a note.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve left the Jeep. I suspect it never wanted the cold damp West coast. Be careful towing, most of the parts are useful. It did well in the Salt Flats.”