Old Model Car

By Jason Edward Collinge

Hello! I am a wooden 1956 model car from Cuba. As you can see, my detail lines are burned in and my back fins are darkened by wood stain. I have a nice lacquer over everything to make my body shine in the sun even though I am an old model. However, my carriage underneath did not need a coating of lacquer. My tires are little round disks of rough wood, and I have a thin steel rod for my axle so that they may spin easily. I even have a small wooden disk for a steering wheel and hand carved seats for my interior. 

At present, I sit on a shelf in an ESL classroom in Vancouver Canada and inspire English language students to write stories pretty much like this one - an auto biography.

Before becoming a car, I was a piece of Cuban pine, cut and drying in a lumber yard under the hot Cuban sun.

I lay there until one day when an old man carefully selected me from among my

brothers, and took me to his small workshop to handcraft a car for his grandson. Duardo, for that was the old man's name, would spend long hours late into the night working by candle light to lovingly carve and shape me into just the right form. Then he added many details such as my headlights and license plate using a hot iron to burn the lines in and tattoo my frame.

However, Duardo lost his job after forty years at the sugar mill and needed money, so before he could present me to his grandson, he reluctantly sold me to a passing tourist.

The tourist did not want to keep me though. She had a different idea. No, she had bought me as a gift for her favourite teacher. She put me in her luggage and together we traveled all the way

to the west coast of Canada where she gave me to the best language teacher at her school, ILSC.

And before that, I was a tall Cuban pine growing high on the slopes of Escambray Mountain in Cuba. I was tall and proud, and it was my job to provide shade for the

mountain animals on hot days and shelter for them on rainy ones. It was a good life and from where I grew I could see the aging sugar mills of man

in the lush green valley far below .

So you can see that I have had a long life and been many things to many people and things. However, I can't wait to see what I will become next.

~ The End ~