While Henrietta, our 1985 Ford LTD wagon was still ours, we were blessed with a VW Microbus, a 1979 automatic with seats rather than not camping furnishings.

I bought her from a student at the private school where I taught. The student had bought her from another teacher at the same school. But the student was planning a trip through the West with my daughter, and her parents bought her a red Subaru wagon for their great adventure West.

Shortly after buying the VW, the fates delivered me from the private school to the Lewiston Sun Journal to write rather than teach. The VW, which ran great but was heat challenged on those dark, cold winter nights when I had to drive 40 miles one-way to cover meetings in Fryeburg for the Sun Journal.

I can't recall for what problem Henrietta was being diagnosed and perhaps treated, that led to these wintry VW adventures.

I'll always recall my warm winter boots, warm gloves, and parka that I wore while driving to those meetings. The heating system in those good old VW Microbuses was such that had I not worn that cold-weather outdoor gear, I probably wouldn't have any memories of those evening trips through the woods and past the lakes of winterized western Maine.

But the 1979, whose name I fail to recall, eventually went to a Baptist Sunday school teacher who wanted to use her to pick up and then return the youngsters in his class. Before he bought her, he informed me he would have to remove the Grateful Dead stickers that adorned her and possibly passed for duct tape in needy places on her orange anatomy.

"They are evil," the Baptist advised me of the famous singers.

"Oh, you must have heard them sing or speak somewhere to know that," I replied, always ready to be educated.

"Oh, no," he said. "I wouldn't go hear them. They're evil."

That made sense, just not to me.

He bought her and the stickers went.

I went to a Grateful Dead concert once, taking the same two daughters on this great adventure East -- but in Henrietta since the VW had joined Sunday School. The kids made me wear an old slouch hat and a tie-dyed T-shirt. I had a half-dozen offers to sell the shirt as I walked across the large parking area toward the arena. But I refused, because, well, just because.

I thought the Grateful Dead were "awesome," which I think was a teenager word in those days. The open Foxboro arena, the crowds, the interesting smoke drifting on the breeze, the starry skies above, and the Deads' mellow music seemed almost worshipful to me.

I wished my Baptist friend could have been there.

I had met my first Subaru, which with its four-wheel drive would go anywhere, possibly not up trees. That critter had kind of come our way accidentally, and I gave her to my son as we were still blessed with the GFW (Giant Ford Wagon). The second Suby was a 1986, front-wheel drive station wagon, and was an eye opener to the products of the great nation of Japan.

One morning, my younger son, Scottie, who had just gotten his license, stopped in a roadside parking pulloff deep in snow to rest for a minute because driving in the snow was making him nervous. He couldn't get out again, and -- heavens! -- asked his father to drive. His father did, and Sally Suby pulled right out of the deep white stuff. Dad and Sally got along well.

I had backed into a stump, so her rear lift wouldn't lock. No problem. I hadn't locked a car in Maine for many years. I think, actually, never.

While we were at the "movies" one night, someone broke into her front passenger-side door the first time I locked her. I can't recall why I locked her. The would-be thieves found nothing -- not even my reporter's camera and laptop hidden in the trunk beneath the rear compartment floor, just inside the unlockable rear lift.

Still don't lock those cars.

When Dolores was in the hospital in Boston and her cousin and I took Sally to retrieve her on a cold winter day, her cousin had a different locking philosophy. We were staying overnight with some of Dolores' relatives.

"Don't forget to lock the car," said the cousin.

I did. All four doors, just not the unlockable lift. No one in suburban Boston bothered her. After all, rusty Subys with Maine license plates couldn't contain anything valuable enough to steal. We made it back to Maine with nothing nor anyone having been stolen.

The moral to this car saga: Don't tell a cousin the whole truth, especially if you can't lock that car.

Scottie and I didn't need to lock Sally Suby the day we drove through New York City on I95 and across the George Washington Bridge. We hadn't driven through the city for years, and Scottie wanted to see it on the way to Grampa and Grandma's house.

It would have been nice, however, if she hadn't kept stalling. With some apprehension while noticing the broken down vehicles along the side of the highway, many with parts missing, Scottie said, "Dad, we'll never make it." (That's the kind of thing eighth-graders say.)

"We will if that truck ahead of us will stay at six miles per hour," I replied.

The truck did, and I put Sally's gear lever into first, and the extra engine speed in that gear enabled us to drive right through the city with no more stalling.

When we returned home, Scottie told his classmates about the trip, remarking to them that in New York City AAA doesn't actually aid stalled motorists.

"They hover overhead in a helicopter and holler advice," he explained.

After several mechanics failed to find the reason Sally stalled, Out of Town Auto Sales -- Subaru gurus just west of Ellsworth -- found the problem in 20 minutes. A wire from the fuel pump to the carburetor had rusted and was intermittently parting. (Remember carburetors?)

Dolores bought a 1992 Toyota Corolla sedan just before we met and became an "item," as our news manager called us. (We both worked for the same paper, and how we became an item is a story you'll be happy to be able to wait for another time to read. I was creative, I have to say.)

That car went places cars should not go, such as up a steep, steep haul road to where we did our volunteer work on the Appalachian Trail. The rocky gravel road was so steep her front wheels skipped, but He went right to the top and parked near the trail. He also drove through a foot of snow uphill atop the garage at Massachusetts General Hospital, fresh snow with no prior tire tracks to break the path.

For some reason, Tommy died of a blown headgasket at only 170,000 miles, and we'll go to our graves not understanding why. He had been in an accident before Dolores bought her, we somehow figured out, and we wondered if Tommy had been banged hard enough to damage the engine.

For a brief six months, we next had Bobby Beater, our next Suby, a 1990 wagon with four-wheel-drive that was even able to negotiate Ellsworth's wintry roads. On a steep hill that turned out to not have been plowed at all, I thought Bobby had been defeated. He sort of stopped on the hill in the more-than-a-foot of snow. But, no, I felt this throbbing as he kept on chugging, so I kept my foot down a bit on the pedal, and Bobby broke on through and up the hill.

Tommy got 40 miles to the gallon. Bobby got 26. Our present Toyota Echo, Ellie, gets 45 or even 46 on good summer open roads and 35 in winter when she has to sit and idle while her windshield defrosts before she plows through fresh, unbroken snow. She's gone through ten inches or so this winter, kind of smiling a bit. A friend said she felt bad for us, because our small car couldn't go through snow like her prehistoric wagon.

We'll never tell her the truth, because we don't have many friends.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2008