In my post about parades I mentioned my disinterest in cars. After dropping $600 dollars on a repair to get my car to pass inspection (and for those of you who happen to be from states that don't require annual inspections, I hate you), I think I can come right out and say that I really hate cars... with a passion.
I realize that in this day and age, in the area of the country I reside, having a car is essential. Most of my jobs have required me to commute quite a distance, so not having a car has not even been an option. I also have never lived in an area where, if there even was mass transit, it would be compatible with my work schedule. (My jobs always seemed to have started depressingly early in the morning). I have always been at the mercy of my cars, but have never had the cash or credit to get a new one (well, until now, and that would be because of my wife's good credit). Therefore I have driven/owned some real winners over the years.
I have been driving since I legally could. Growing up in the backwoods of a tiny town, you had to learn to drive pretty early or be stuck at home. This was especially important during those important dating years. (If you have read my "On Being the Little Fat Boy That Nobody Loved" post, you'll realize that in fact, I really didn't need a car for this reason for many years after that.) Forget about dating--the most important reason to get your license and a car was so that you didn't have to ride the school bus anymore!
Of course the first cars I drove were purchased by my parents. At first it was just their cars that I got to drive on occasion, but then they ended up buying me a car that was "mine". The first car I really remember was a Plymouth Champ, or the "Chump", as it was referred to by my friends. (Actually it started as my brother's car and was passed down to me when he went into the military.) Don't ask me the year or how much my parents paid for it but it had a standard transmission, was reddish-brown in color and not the coolest car in the lot. But that did not bother me. I was off the bus, had a car, and that is all that really mattered. I don't remember how or when the car passed away, but the thing I remember most about it was that it was rather tricky to get into reverse, which would lead me into an embarrassing situation (just one of many in my life). <cue the blurring screen effect for a flashback>
One day when I was still in high school, I was heading to my best friend's house and when I arrived no one was home. I spun around and headed back to my house. On the way back home I passed him and his family heading to their house so I decided to pull a three point turn to go back. I pulled right to the edge of the road, which was very close to a bank that was quite steep and went straight into the lake. I quickly slammed the car into what I thought was reverse and was actually 5th (or 4th... I can't remember what speed it was, but it sure was not reverse!) and the car bucked forward, propelling me right over the bank. I slammed on the brakes, but by that point I was a prisoner of gravity. There was no way I was going to be able to get back up the bank. I tried a couple of times to get up but only ended up heading closer to the lake. Fortunately my friend's father came back and with the help of someone else, we tied a chain to the car and pulled it up. Everything was okay.... well, the car was fine, but as for my pride...
After the Chump I believe I briefly drove an old beat up pickup truck. I think it was from the late 70's and was again, a standard transmission. Three on the tree as they used to say, which meant the shifter was on the steering column. The brakes were pretty hard to work and I really had to press on them firmly to come to a stop (sometimes actually standing up on the pad.) My father had bought it for a general purpose work truck but I had the "pleasure" to drive it. Again, I can't recall the fate of this beauty, but my next car would be one that I remember fondly.
This car was my 1980 Chevy Malibu. It was two-tone blue, had a working tape deck, was an automatic (no more shifting... woohoo!) and we would end up being together for about three years. My dad paid about $600 for it and it was worth every penny. This car I remember very clearly because I had it for my last year of college years and it was the car I had when I left home and got married. The car was down for a while (when I did my brief tour of Memphis) but was resurrected, before it finally died a most agonizing death.
The car was perfect, until I hit my first deer with it. I was heading to work at my parents' video store when a deer dashed out of the woods. I clipped it and it ran off into the woods. I doubt it lived, but it killed my headlight. Overall, I made out pretty lucky, except for the fact that I ended up getting a parking ticket that same day because the town had changed the parking in front of our store to 15-30 minute parking and I left my car there all day. I remember going to court with my story for why I was parked there all day, ready to go over the trauma I suffered from the vicious animal attack, when the judge exclaimed the ticket would cost like $5 dollars (or some equally small amount). I just paid it. It wasn't even worth the amount of the wasted air I would have expended with an explanation.
It was only a few weeks later that I was attacked by another deer, and this creature would come to be the most-hated animal in all of my life. I was just beginning a relationship with my ex-wife and things were not going well. I was catching glimpses of her true nature but still on the fence about what to do. I was in a relationship and was afraid of being alone (this is a major simplification, but I will talk more about this in another post). Despite this, I had come to the conclusion that we were done. I was going to drive her home and do the adult thing.... avoid her and her phone calls and figure she would get the point, without me having a confrontation or ending it myself. Well it was a cold and quiet ride to her apartment when all of a sudden, there was a large deer in the middle of the road. I hit it head-on and it wrecked the front of the car. The experience was a "sign" that me and my ex-wife should stay together and stop fighting. We would eventually get married and 15 crappy years later, divorce. I hate that deer... even though we got to take him home and eat him, he could have spared my a long painful marriage, and the $300 dollar bill for fixing the front end.
The car was fixed by a local garage and back on the road again. It sat for quite a while but like the mighty phoenix, it rose from the flames. Unfortunately while the car was waiting to be fixed, someone stole all of my tapes out of it. I was saddened to lose them -- many of them were from college -- but my disappointment was overshadowed by the joy of getting my car back.
I would have one other "accident" with the Malibu, which fortunately was not serious and not reported. My ex-wife and I were driving down some back roads and it had just started to snow. There was barely any on the ground when I came around a small turn and hit a straight away. I don't know if there was black ice under the very thin layer of snow or what, but the back end of the car started to fishtail. I got the car back under control for about 2 seconds and then it started to go again. We spun a couple of times and ended ramming the back end into a tree. Thankfully there was a tree there because it was a 20-30 foot drop down a very steep bank. I banged up the back bumper but that was all. I didn't get it repaired but it really didn't matter. The car reaper was coming.
I would have this car until its death later that winter. I was working for a company down in Clifton Park (nearly an hour commute). I should mention the fact that I was working five ten-hour days and starting at 5 in the morning so I was very tired all of the time. One afternoon on my return home I nodded off briefly. I didn't think I fell asleep at the time--my mind was just wandering, thinking of a hundred different things--when I heard this scrapping sound. I suddenly realized it was coming from my car and I was right up against the guard rail. I jerked the wheel and got back on the road and thanked the good Lord because a few hundred feet ahead were several cars parked on the side of the road that I would have taken out (and possibly myself along with them). Now the Malibu had three racing stripes on the passenger side of the car.
The car was running fine (although looking a little beat up because of my "accidents") when two or three incidents occurred all around the same time. First, the windshield wiper motor died. Well, actually, the heater died first, which made for some very uncomfortable rides in the dead of winter, but I had a blanket that I wrapped around me, so I was okay. Unfortunately the wipers died while I was driving up the Interstate in the middle of a blizzard. They were swooshing right along and then stopped dead. I remember rolling the window down and using my arm as the wiper. I could barely see, and a thin crust of ice was forming on my arm. I was trying to get off at an exit so I could put less people at risk from my death machine. I actually tried to stick my head out the window and drive Ace Ventura style, but my glasses kept misting over. I eventually pulled off the Interstate and slowly made it home on the back roads, still using the arm wiper. I was many hours late and got ripped a new asshole by my future ex-wife for being so late.
Then one day, something else went wrong: it started driving really slow on a trip down to work. I had the gas floored and it would still only creep along. I pulled over and checked under the hood. Flames were actually shooting out of the car (the carburetor to be precise). I was ready to take it out into the backyard and put it down then, but with my ex-father-in-law's help, I got it going again. At this point I figured either this car was going to kill me or I, it.The straw that broke the camel's back was when I was coming home that same winter and I got a flat. I pulled over and started to change the tire in the middle of giant pile of slush. As I used the tire iron that I had, I ended up snapping three out of the five lugs on the tire. I ended borrowing another tire iron from someone at a Stewart's shop and got the other two nuts off, and the tire changed. I drove home slowly and decided that was it. The Malibu was no more. May she rest in "pieces".
I don't think I had any other really memorable cars after that. I would pick up cheap used cars, and my ex-father-in-law would help me to keep them going. He was a car guy and when I say he helped me fix the cars, what I mean is he showed me what needed to be done and then went into the house for a cigarette and coffee. I learned what little I know about cars from him and he saved me a lot of money over the years, but it always drove me nuts to be under a car, half in tears because I was so frustrated, and him just not seeming to care. (It's stupid, but the thing that always made it worse was that he would say that he got nauseous working under cars, but if it was one of his sons, he would be under that car for hours.)
I don't think I paid more than $500 for a car until the year before my divorce. There was just a constant succession of piece of crap cars that I struggled to keep going. I was pulled over so many times for car problems I can't eve guess now how many. All were fix-it tickets and usually muffler related. I remember one time using putty and tape to patch up a muffler system that was too loud. I waited until the absolute last minute to fix it and after applying the material and adjusting the coat hangers that were holding the exhaust system up, I was ready to take it up to court to get the ticket signed off on. Right before I was about to head up, the tape broke loose and it was loud again. In a panic I came up with a solution: I stuffed tin foil in the gap and around the pipe. Then I wrapped it in duct tape. Court was a very short ride up the road and I drove up and had a sheriff come out to listen. I revved the engine and it was nice and quiet. He signed off on my ticket and I drove home. I hadn't even pulled into the driveway when the heat of the exhaust pipe melted the duct tape and the loudness returned.
I owned another car that had the alternator go in it. It first died when my ex and I were driving home from visiting an old college friend of mine who lived in Dannemora (he lived in the town -- he was not a resident of the maximum security prison.) We were travelling in the rain, in the middle of the night, down a section of the Interstate where the exits are many miles apart and far from the nearest towns. Truly the middle of nowhere. We were cruising right along when the lights began to get dimmer and dimmer and the wipers began going slower and slower. I eventually had to stop because I could not see and we decided to head for one of the emergency phones set up every few miles or so. Fortunately a trucker actually picked us up as we headed to a phone (my first and last--to date--ride in an 18 wheeler) and dropped us off in a town we could actually call someone for help in. We went back the next day and the car started right up. I learned the the alternator kept shutting off for some reason. Instead of taking it to a garage to get it fixed I discovered a work-around. Whenever the battery light came on I would pull over, pop the hood and hit the alternator with a stick until it kicked on again. This was going great for a while but slowly became less and less effective. Then, the piece de la resistance, was when I pulled over one time and the hood didn't shut properly. As I headed down the road, the hood flipped back and smashed the windshield. Of course I kept driving it until I got a ticket and just decided to retire it (it wasn't worth fixing all that was wrong with it).
Well this is turning into another novella so let me try to make some kind of point and wrap it up. I have driven a lot of junkers and done a lot of questionable things to keep them running. The main reason for this was because I did not have the money to get them fixed properly. Now that I am older and have a wife that works and makes decent money we are in possession of some decent cars. I don't have to crawl under the damned things in the middle of winter to change a brake pad or anything like that. I actually have tires with treads on them, which is something wondrous, let me tell you. The only problem with this is that it comes with a price. The check engine light came on in our shiny new car (not that new anymore--a 2009 Sonata) and when we took it to the garage it came up as a small emissions leak (or something like that). They reset the light and sent us on our way. It came back on a few days later. We took it back and the "small" emissions leak ended up costing $600 dollars. This repair is more than I paid for just about all the cars I ever owned, which, on a side note, is why I cannot even look at the price of riding lawn mowers at Lowe's. Seriously, $1200 for a mower? If I could ride it back and forth to work, then maybe...
Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do to live without a car. I could ride a bike, I guess, but then I would have to invest in little headlights and reflective gear for my 4am bike ride. Let's not even talk about rain, or winter, or other weather conditions. I just really hate cars, and I think it is for that reason why I have no interest in going to car shows or checking out someone's really cool car. I have spent too much time under them and spent too much money fixing them to care. The only car-related thing I have any interest in would be Car Talk on NPR. Not only do those guys crack me up, but I truly don't mind listening to other people's car problems. As long as they aren't mine!
I have been driving since I legally could. Growing up in the backwoods of a tiny town, you had to learn to drive pretty early or be stuck at home. This was especially important during those important dating years. (If you have read my "On Being the Little Fat Boy That Nobody Loved" post, you'll realize that in fact, I really didn't need a car for this reason for many years after that.) Forget about dating--the most important reason to get your license and a car was so that you didn't have to ride the school bus anymore!
Of course the first cars I drove were purchased by my parents. At first it was just their cars that I got to drive on occasion, but then they ended up buying me a car that was "mine". The first car I really remember was a Plymouth Champ, or the "Chump", as it was referred to by my friends. (Actually it started as my brother's car and was passed down to me when he went into the military.) Don't ask me the year or how much my parents paid for it but it had a standard transmission, was reddish-brown in color and not the coolest car in the lot. But that did not bother me. I was off the bus, had a car, and that is all that really mattered. I don't remember how or when the car passed away, but the thing I remember most about it was that it was rather tricky to get into reverse, which would lead me into an embarrassing situation (just one of many in my life). <cue the blurring screen effect for a flashback>
One day when I was still in high school, I was heading to my best friend's house and when I arrived no one was home. I spun around and headed back to my house. On the way back home I passed him and his family heading to their house so I decided to pull a three point turn to go back. I pulled right to the edge of the road, which was very close to a bank that was quite steep and went straight into the lake. I quickly slammed the car into what I thought was reverse and was actually 5th (or 4th... I can't remember what speed it was, but it sure was not reverse!) and the car bucked forward, propelling me right over the bank. I slammed on the brakes, but by that point I was a prisoner of gravity. There was no way I was going to be able to get back up the bank. I tried a couple of times to get up but only ended up heading closer to the lake. Fortunately my friend's father came back and with the help of someone else, we tied a chain to the car and pulled it up. Everything was okay.... well, the car was fine, but as for my pride...
After the Chump I believe I briefly drove an old beat up pickup truck. I think it was from the late 70's and was again, a standard transmission. Three on the tree as they used to say, which meant the shifter was on the steering column. The brakes were pretty hard to work and I really had to press on them firmly to come to a stop (sometimes actually standing up on the pad.) My father had bought it for a general purpose work truck but I had the "pleasure" to drive it. Again, I can't recall the fate of this beauty, but my next car would be one that I remember fondly.
This car was my 1980 Chevy Malibu. It was two-tone blue, had a working tape deck, was an automatic (no more shifting... woohoo!) and we would end up being together for about three years. My dad paid about $600 for it and it was worth every penny. This car I remember very clearly because I had it for my last year of college years and it was the car I had when I left home and got married. The car was down for a while (when I did my brief tour of Memphis) but was resurrected, before it finally died a most agonizing death.
The car was perfect, until I hit my first deer with it. I was heading to work at my parents' video store when a deer dashed out of the woods. I clipped it and it ran off into the woods. I doubt it lived, but it killed my headlight. Overall, I made out pretty lucky, except for the fact that I ended up getting a parking ticket that same day because the town had changed the parking in front of our store to 15-30 minute parking and I left my car there all day. I remember going to court with my story for why I was parked there all day, ready to go over the trauma I suffered from the vicious animal attack, when the judge exclaimed the ticket would cost like $5 dollars (or some equally small amount). I just paid it. It wasn't even worth the amount of the wasted air I would have expended with an explanation.
It was only a few weeks later that I was attacked by another deer, and this creature would come to be the most-hated animal in all of my life. I was just beginning a relationship with my ex-wife and things were not going well. I was catching glimpses of her true nature but still on the fence about what to do. I was in a relationship and was afraid of being alone (this is a major simplification, but I will talk more about this in another post). Despite this, I had come to the conclusion that we were done. I was going to drive her home and do the adult thing.... avoid her and her phone calls and figure she would get the point, without me having a confrontation or ending it myself. Well it was a cold and quiet ride to her apartment when all of a sudden, there was a large deer in the middle of the road. I hit it head-on and it wrecked the front of the car. The experience was a "sign" that me and my ex-wife should stay together and stop fighting. We would eventually get married and 15 crappy years later, divorce. I hate that deer... even though we got to take him home and eat him, he could have spared my a long painful marriage, and the $300 dollar bill for fixing the front end.
The car was fixed by a local garage and back on the road again. It sat for quite a while but like the mighty phoenix, it rose from the flames. Unfortunately while the car was waiting to be fixed, someone stole all of my tapes out of it. I was saddened to lose them -- many of them were from college -- but my disappointment was overshadowed by the joy of getting my car back.
I would have one other "accident" with the Malibu, which fortunately was not serious and not reported. My ex-wife and I were driving down some back roads and it had just started to snow. There was barely any on the ground when I came around a small turn and hit a straight away. I don't know if there was black ice under the very thin layer of snow or what, but the back end of the car started to fishtail. I got the car back under control for about 2 seconds and then it started to go again. We spun a couple of times and ended ramming the back end into a tree. Thankfully there was a tree there because it was a 20-30 foot drop down a very steep bank. I banged up the back bumper but that was all. I didn't get it repaired but it really didn't matter. The car reaper was coming.
I would have this car until its death later that winter. I was working for a company down in Clifton Park (nearly an hour commute). I should mention the fact that I was working five ten-hour days and starting at 5 in the morning so I was very tired all of the time. One afternoon on my return home I nodded off briefly. I didn't think I fell asleep at the time--my mind was just wandering, thinking of a hundred different things--when I heard this scrapping sound. I suddenly realized it was coming from my car and I was right up against the guard rail. I jerked the wheel and got back on the road and thanked the good Lord because a few hundred feet ahead were several cars parked on the side of the road that I would have taken out (and possibly myself along with them). Now the Malibu had three racing stripes on the passenger side of the car.
The car was running fine (although looking a little beat up because of my "accidents") when two or three incidents occurred all around the same time. First, the windshield wiper motor died. Well, actually, the heater died first, which made for some very uncomfortable rides in the dead of winter, but I had a blanket that I wrapped around me, so I was okay. Unfortunately the wipers died while I was driving up the Interstate in the middle of a blizzard. They were swooshing right along and then stopped dead. I remember rolling the window down and using my arm as the wiper. I could barely see, and a thin crust of ice was forming on my arm. I was trying to get off at an exit so I could put less people at risk from my death machine. I actually tried to stick my head out the window and drive Ace Ventura style, but my glasses kept misting over. I eventually pulled off the Interstate and slowly made it home on the back roads, still using the arm wiper. I was many hours late and got ripped a new asshole by my future ex-wife for being so late.
Then one day, something else went wrong: it started driving really slow on a trip down to work. I had the gas floored and it would still only creep along. I pulled over and checked under the hood. Flames were actually shooting out of the car (the carburetor to be precise). I was ready to take it out into the backyard and put it down then, but with my ex-father-in-law's help, I got it going again. At this point I figured either this car was going to kill me or I, it.The straw that broke the camel's back was when I was coming home that same winter and I got a flat. I pulled over and started to change the tire in the middle of giant pile of slush. As I used the tire iron that I had, I ended up snapping three out of the five lugs on the tire. I ended borrowing another tire iron from someone at a Stewart's shop and got the other two nuts off, and the tire changed. I drove home slowly and decided that was it. The Malibu was no more. May she rest in "pieces".
I don't think I had any other really memorable cars after that. I would pick up cheap used cars, and my ex-father-in-law would help me to keep them going. He was a car guy and when I say he helped me fix the cars, what I mean is he showed me what needed to be done and then went into the house for a cigarette and coffee. I learned what little I know about cars from him and he saved me a lot of money over the years, but it always drove me nuts to be under a car, half in tears because I was so frustrated, and him just not seeming to care. (It's stupid, but the thing that always made it worse was that he would say that he got nauseous working under cars, but if it was one of his sons, he would be under that car for hours.)
I don't think I paid more than $500 for a car until the year before my divorce. There was just a constant succession of piece of crap cars that I struggled to keep going. I was pulled over so many times for car problems I can't eve guess now how many. All were fix-it tickets and usually muffler related. I remember one time using putty and tape to patch up a muffler system that was too loud. I waited until the absolute last minute to fix it and after applying the material and adjusting the coat hangers that were holding the exhaust system up, I was ready to take it up to court to get the ticket signed off on. Right before I was about to head up, the tape broke loose and it was loud again. In a panic I came up with a solution: I stuffed tin foil in the gap and around the pipe. Then I wrapped it in duct tape. Court was a very short ride up the road and I drove up and had a sheriff come out to listen. I revved the engine and it was nice and quiet. He signed off on my ticket and I drove home. I hadn't even pulled into the driveway when the heat of the exhaust pipe melted the duct tape and the loudness returned.
I owned another car that had the alternator go in it. It first died when my ex and I were driving home from visiting an old college friend of mine who lived in Dannemora (he lived in the town -- he was not a resident of the maximum security prison.) We were travelling in the rain, in the middle of the night, down a section of the Interstate where the exits are many miles apart and far from the nearest towns. Truly the middle of nowhere. We were cruising right along when the lights began to get dimmer and dimmer and the wipers began going slower and slower. I eventually had to stop because I could not see and we decided to head for one of the emergency phones set up every few miles or so. Fortunately a trucker actually picked us up as we headed to a phone (my first and last--to date--ride in an 18 wheeler) and dropped us off in a town we could actually call someone for help in. We went back the next day and the car started right up. I learned the the alternator kept shutting off for some reason. Instead of taking it to a garage to get it fixed I discovered a work-around. Whenever the battery light came on I would pull over, pop the hood and hit the alternator with a stick until it kicked on again. This was going great for a while but slowly became less and less effective. Then, the piece de la resistance, was when I pulled over one time and the hood didn't shut properly. As I headed down the road, the hood flipped back and smashed the windshield. Of course I kept driving it until I got a ticket and just decided to retire it (it wasn't worth fixing all that was wrong with it).
Well this is turning into another novella so let me try to make some kind of point and wrap it up. I have driven a lot of junkers and done a lot of questionable things to keep them running. The main reason for this was because I did not have the money to get them fixed properly. Now that I am older and have a wife that works and makes decent money we are in possession of some decent cars. I don't have to crawl under the damned things in the middle of winter to change a brake pad or anything like that. I actually have tires with treads on them, which is something wondrous, let me tell you. The only problem with this is that it comes with a price. The check engine light came on in our shiny new car (not that new anymore--a 2009 Sonata) and when we took it to the garage it came up as a small emissions leak (or something like that). They reset the light and sent us on our way. It came back on a few days later. We took it back and the "small" emissions leak ended up costing $600 dollars. This repair is more than I paid for just about all the cars I ever owned, which, on a side note, is why I cannot even look at the price of riding lawn mowers at Lowe's. Seriously, $1200 for a mower? If I could ride it back and forth to work, then maybe...
Unfortunately, there is nothing I can do to live without a car. I could ride a bike, I guess, but then I would have to invest in little headlights and reflective gear for my 4am bike ride. Let's not even talk about rain, or winter, or other weather conditions. I just really hate cars, and I think it is for that reason why I have no interest in going to car shows or checking out someone's really cool car. I have spent too much time under them and spent too much money fixing them to care. The only car-related thing I have any interest in would be Car Talk on NPR. Not only do those guys crack me up, but I truly don't mind listening to other people's car problems. As long as they aren't mine!
