Elements of Time: The Rusty Car In The Woods

By Craig: When I was a kid I can remember playing in the woods with my brother and my friends. In those days the world was huge. The woods foreboding and mysterious. This was especially true once you lost sight of your house. The further we ventured from our place of security the more enigmatic the terrain became. There was an open patch of grass which I imagined had been created by giants who had destroyed all of the trees and used it as a place to rest their weary gargantuan bodies. However, it was not the giants, or the strange noises that you might hear in the woods and try and discern the source that were the most mysterious. No, it was something solid... something old...something in the state of decay.


 The old car sat rusting about 100 yards from the road. I was told that it was a Model T Ford, but no one seems to know how it got there, or why it was there. Trees had grown all around the hulking mass of rusted metal that had once served a useful purpose. In fact, I distinctly remember a tall pine tree growing through where the engine block once sat...long since removed by some forgotten hand that had probably utilized the various parts. The rubber tires had disintegrated in a previous decade, so it sat on its bare rims looking forlorn and sad. Alas! Where was the glass? It too was missing. Countless New England winters, falling branches from trees, and mischievous kids with rocks from a bygone day had settled that. I wondered how it got there. There was no road, or even a trail that led to the spot. Trees and thick brush had grown up all around it. Was it a time traveler? Who had drove it to it's final resting place, and why there? Was it because it was so out of the way? It's final run had obviously occurred in my grandparents time. To me...that may as well have been in the Devonian times when trilobites ruled the earth.

During the six years or so that I lived near this decaying relic I became a common visitor. I can remember sitting on its rusted frame, a nine year old boy pretending to drive it back onto the road from which it had last departed a half century before. I would sit there and think about the time from when this car was in its hey-day. It was a hot summer day. The car was shiny and new and I tested its horn which sounded like a foghorn from a ship! The tires...They were there! rubber United Royal Cord Tires! I drove it onto the main highway and pulled it into the General Store where a bearded man was listening to the radio. In a crackling voice Calvin Coolidge was addressing the nation. I listened for a minute or two before examining the glass counter top that protected the candy underneath. Was that a Baby Ruth candy bar? I attempted to gain the attention of the bearded gentleman, but of course he could not possibly see me. I was a ghost...a time traveler from another age whose sentimental leanings had landed him here in a time other than his own. A newspaper on the wooden counter had a headline Dempsey beats Willard!!!! I left and walked out onto the newly paved street lined with tall elms from which their canopies gave plenty of shade to walkers on their late afternoon sojourns. And there! the patrolman on his beat! I knew him! It was old Mr. Johnny who lived down the street, but he looked different...younger...more full of youth and vigor. I did not belong here. This was not my time. I found my automobile...yes...MY automobile, for I was to be the last one to drive it. I admired its shiny hood...why it looked as if it had just come out of the factory in Detroit. I climbed in, tooted the horn and drove off down the road. However, something was wrong...the paint...it started peeling off, slowly at first, and then faster...and what's this...RUST! At first only small patches appeared, but soon the car started belching a thick white smoke. I had to get it back....back to its proper place. The scenery began to change. The farmland with the ubiquitous New England stone walls began turning into wooded forests. There it was! A small lane and I barely had time to maneuver the smoking jalopy back to its final resting spot before the forest encroached all around us. It disintegrated before my eyes, and I found myself back in my own time seated on this bucket of rust...a metallic can slowly being reclaimed by the elements from which it was molded. The same elements that will reclaim each and every one of us as we advance down the endless corridor of time.