1973 Jeep Commando. Four Wheel Drive. 304 V8. Homemade bumper on front, jerry can and spare tire holder on back. For a while it had one of those foil window shades with a couple of English Setters looking noble on it. That was my dad’s idea. A long vinyl woodgrain embellishment ran down its flanks until that bored summer of 1988 when I took a razor blade, a jug of isopropyl, and a hair dryer to it under the shade of McCracken County’s only pin oak. I think there was supposed to be an earthquake on the New Madrid fault that summer, but there wasn’t. 

My dad bought the Commando from postal worker back in 1978 or so. He drove it for a while, but it became my car to drive to school. I remember dousing a flaming carburetor with my calculus text in the senior parking lot. 

People want to call it a “Thing.” My wife just now, looking at the pictures called it a “Thing.” It is not a “Thing.” A Thing is much smaller, and is an air cooled VW. This is a Commando. Calling it a “Jeepster” may be acceptable. 

It was capable off-road. With just mud tires, I’d climb and keep pace with my buddies and their significantly more modified vehicles.

It had two tanks, so I ran out of gas a lot, since I could never remember which I filled when. It went back and forth from Dallas to Paducah, rumbling down the long interstate bisection of Arkansas. It was my ride during my time at UT. Some friends convinced me to remove the metal top and, you know, live a little. The top was a once a season thing, if you live by yourself, and I did. One winter I didn’t bother putting the top back on in a battle of foolishness with a friend with a Land Cruiser. One summer, I scorched my torso from a trip back from Midland. I remember a late Saturday night downpour downtown, me as Charlie Brown in the bathtub of the Commando, while Lucy and Violet pointed and laughed from under the awning near the the Cavity Club. I also think I kissed a girl while we stood on the floorboards under the west Campus streetlights. (I’ve interrogated that memory, and this favorable light is likely a significant departure from the truth. I think.) I drove it to Boston, and that was not a good idea. It acquired tickets. It got towed. I didn’t know where it was at times, and I was lost. I got it together, and left. For a few months I had one key and it had the AMC logo on it. West, to Chicago, to Rockford, to Louisville, to Dallas, to Austin, to Midland, and finally back to Austin. 

The ball and socket clutch linkage failed on the Dan Ryan in Chicago during rush hour. I fixed it with a bandana and a bit of wire. The fix lasted until I found a replacement linkage in Dallas. It was capable off-road. With the right tire, it was a rock climbing, dirt digging SOB. I put over 200,000 miles on the 1973 Jeep Commando. I sold it for not much in 1993, and used that not much with some other money to buy a 1972 Alfa Romeo GTV. I did cry when I saw the Commando go, chained up on a flat bed.