If you ask me, my car has a trip to Prattville in its immediate future. If you ask my car, I may have an unplanned layover in Uniontown in my future.

I drive a late ’90s model Lumina and I am pretty stinking happy about it. The late ’90s model Lumina however? Probably not as happy about it. In the last week, I have put nearly 1,100 miles on the car, a total that will surely increase considerably within the next 24 hours.

That 1,100-mile mark has come thanks to three trips to Birmingham — one of which was work related and two of which were to pick up and drop off a friend at the airport. There is also a trip to Prattville and a visit to Sunshine High School in the mix there. Translation, the Lumina is exhausted. And yet, I have every intention of further developing my relationship with my car this weekend. See, I have some brief personal matters to attend to and then there is the whole issue of being with my dad as I watch my Saints beat his Vikings and I subsequently win the minor stakes bet we made earlier this week.

So my car this weekend will be running on one part gasoline and two parts prayer as I look to make a brief visit home.

But how will my car respond to that? Great question. And therein lies the adventure. My beloved automobile may well hold up just fine and we may have a splendid trip home. Or, it may do what it did to me last year when I went to Newbern to cover a game on a Saturday night. On that evening, my car decided it could no longer maintain a working relationship with its transmission and my desire to drive back to Demopolis nearly became collateral damage in the ongoing dispute. That happens to everybody as some point, just not usually at 9:30 on a cold Saturday night about 26 cows away from getting back into cell phone signal territory.

So, I am hoping my wonderful Lumina is in a more charitable mood this weekend and this trip is without incident. Otherwise, I could have a very interesting time somewhere along the miles and miles of two-lane road that rests between here and Prattville.

Jeremy D. Smith is the sports editor of the Demopolis Times