Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, August 22, 1995                   TAG: 9508240010
SECTION: WELCOME STUDENTS                    PAGE: WS25   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: ADRIANNE BEE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

A PART OF ME VANISHED ALONG WITH MY SPARE TIRE COVER

Either way, it's gone now. My beloved spare tire cover on the back of my Dodge Raider. Woke up, walked to my car and there the tire was, in all its nakedness, completely coverless. The gray thing that says Raider had been lifted, stolen, swiped, filched. It was gone.

At the height of the Beastie Boys' career, it was Mercedes Benz symbols. People helped themselves. Ripped them off parked cars and attached them to large chains around their necks. Benz symbols, spare tire covers, people feel free to help themselves. I've been asking around-apparently those tarp-material circular thingees emblazoned with Jeep, Bronco, etc. are a hot commodity for deviants who like to take things that don't belong to them. Sure, it's not a car stereo but in principle it's the same thing.

I try to tell my Raider that it's okay, that his coverless makes him special, different from the other automobiles. He buys it for awhile but then we pull up to a stoplight, right smack behind a sports utility vehicle with big, bold, black letters: JEEP. My car sputters and coughs, green with envy.

Yes, I talk to my car, personify it, so what? Stephen King did it quite masterfully and when I think about some strange person creeping up to my car in the middle of the night I wish it was not the wimpy middleground of sports utility vehichles, not a Geo Tracker, exactly, but not quite a Jeep. Rather I wish it was Christine, complete with some sort of demonic possession/life of its own thing going on. It could have flipped its headlights on and began chasing the thief down the street.

I haven't been the same since the burgle. Everyone's a suspect. Today I saw a Bronco with a Raider cover at Wade's. Bronco-Raider? Pretty fishy if you ask me.

I made the mistake of telling my parents about all this. My mother was greatly disturbed because she says my car doesn't look "attractive" anymore. I told them I was going to go without a tire cover as it would probably just get stolen again. My parents, who have a habit of ignoring me, decided a better solution would be a unique tire cover that could be spotted anywhere as MINE. Maybe something in gold lame, I suggested jokingly, or perhaps we could rig up a device that would spray green dye to later identify the crook.

My parents got me a personalized tire cover. No lie - a black cover with Adrianne in big white swirly handwriting. The "i" was dotted with a big circle, the cutesy handwriting style I most detest. I imagined myself cruising the streets of Blacksburg with my name trailing behind me in all its eight-letter glory. Didn't my parents listen to McGruff, the crime dog? It's like one of those T-shirts with your name on the back. Strangers can lure you away and trick you when they know your identity.

This was asking for trouble. Like the red Miata I see about town with the tags: DADEZGIRL. A general invitation to harm the car.

The cover sits under my back seat now, next to my Garfield ice scraper that's cute and all but lacks hefty scraping abitities. The "Adrianne cover" has joined the graveyard of my car floor with the Slurpee cups, parking tickets and a dog leash of questionable origin as I don't have a dog and never did.

I have decided that my car will remain spare tire coverless. I cannot bear the pain of losing another one, thinking I see it at every intersection, not knowing where it is. But I will be eternally haunted and tortured by the question I cannot answer. Is it better to have lost a tire cover than to have never had one at all?