Love Patsy, love her car

When Patsy Love runs into people she knows, they don’t ask about her.

They ask about her car.

Patsy drives a 1987 Chevrolet Caprice Estate Wagon. Almost 18 feet long and over 6 feet wide, it’s about half the size of Echo Summit, the wooden boat that brought Patsy and her late husband Hal to La Conner in the 1990s.

For a decade, they lived part-time on their boat in the north marina. “The marina was its own neighborhood,” remembers Patsy. “Families lived aboard with kids and one baby came straight to the marina from the hospital. He had every water toy known in those days.”

Live-aboards celebrated holidays with potlucks and watched as two residents were married on the stern of their boat. A highlight was the night a television crew filmed scenes for a remake of the 1960s series “The Fugitive”.

“We stayed up until 4 a.m. watching,” says Patsy. “It was a nice community and a good move for us. We were happy.”

In 2000 they moved ashore and became fulltime La Conner residents. After buying a house, they looked around for “a Valley errand car – something to haul the trash away,” says Patsy. She still remembers the look on Hal’s face when they got home from Blade Chevrolet and realized their new used station wagon barely fit into the garage.

From prow to stern, everything about the nine-passenger car is big. “From the driver’s seat, you can barely see over the hood,” says Patsy, who sits on a pillow for a better view.

She even has her own parking spot behind the Pioneer Market, because the wagon is too hard to maneuver in and out of the diagonal spots in front of the store.

“I could order my groceries in, but the store is a social place,” says the retired special education teacher. “Plus, I’m a supplier. I supply their rhubarb.”

When she’s not driving her car – and she drives less now that she is 93 – Patsy writes books, including a children’s recipe book and pieces she has written while participating in Clare Swedberg’s creative nonfiction class at the La Conner Senior Center. As editor on the children’s activity book Animal Talk in Salish, she worked with Vi Hilbert, the Upper Skagit elder who first put the Lushootseed language on paper and spent her last years in La Conner.

Patsy’s car still gets plenty of attention. “When people see me now, they don’t say ‘I haven’t seen you lately!’ They say ‘I haven’t seen your car lately!’ I get a kick out of it!”

Her family is less excited about the Caprice. Her son-in-law won’t drive it, and her grandchildren don’t want it.

“It’s not their style,” she says. “I didn’t ask them if they wanted it, either. I have somebody waiting in line to buy it, and when I see her, I tell her I’m taking good care of it.”