By Dawne Belloise
“I think it may be time for you to let Ruby give up the ghost,” my friend said of the ‘72 VW bug I had sunk over $4k into over various and continuous mechanical ailments. There she sat in her red splendor, dead again by the side of the road. A glorified lawn mower, how hard can it be to find someone who knows what they’re doing to work on her? Beyond foolish adoration and the somewhat disturbing humanization of a machine, Ruby represents an era, an entire hippie generation of mobility and freedom, a lifestyle choice and philosophy. However, similarly to that love generation’s dream, sometimes Ruby just didn’t get as far down the road as I had hoped.