In 1981, as soon as I was old enough, I took my
driver’s test in a ‘64 sky blue Ford Falcon – a three-speed column shift. The sedan had belonged to my great aunt
Ann, who never drove it much. I
failed magnificently the first test - mis-releasing the clutch, bunny-hopping
into the driving course’s little fake intersection and stalling out.
The first car I actually owned outright was a red-orange
Ford Maverick that my grandmother had accepted to settle some debt at the
general store. I bought it from
her for something under $300. I
got a year or so’s worth out of it, but when it threatened to start
sucking me dry with repair bills – I sold it to someone I can’t remember
for the same amount I’d paid for it. Caveat emptor.
So the family Falcon served until the fall of 1983, when I
went off to college in Philadelphia, where it made no sense to have a car.
(In fact, the only time I had
wheels in Philly was 1987, when I was the founding field manager for PA PIRG’s
fund-raising canvas, and had a company rental car to tool around in in my free
time, which meant whenever we weren’t canvassing, sleeping or drinking pitchers
of Yuengling porter at McGlintchy’s – which meant pretty much never. I ruined three of those cars – all in the line of duty. Over the course of a week, the first
car gradually developed an acrid burning smell and fewer and fewer gears, until
it had no gears at all and I had to call a tow truck. A second car I just outright wrecked (possibly running a red
light, though I don’t remember any light at all). I got T-boned by a heavy steel van, which reduced one of my
more fragile canvassers to tears and a week of hypochondria. Within the week, the replacement had
the window shot out as we drove through suburban Ardmore. Probably a BB-gun, since we’d have
noticed a bullet I think. That
last one was kind of a relief because I’d destroyed the rubber seals on that
window breaking in with a coat hanger.
And since my boss happened to be in the passenger’s seat when all the
shattered glass fell into his lap, it was pretty clear I couldn’t be blamed for
that one . . . )
Anyhow, by the time the car had been returned with a hundred
unpaid parking tickets, I had left Philadelphia and moved to central
Massachusetts in pursuit of an Englishwoman I was in love with. I got by with my old silver Motebecane
Mirage bicycle – and hitchhiking.
A few months later, after things had blown up with the
Englishwoman, I was in the Poconos helping my grandmother with the store. At the end of the winter, as a
thank you, she sent me off with a ‘78 Chrysler LeBaron that had belonged to her
boyfriend Stan. It was maroon and
silver land yacht that drank gas like a sailor and I put a million miles on it
driving around the US and Canada as though it were Belgium. At the end of summer 1990, I sold
it to a fearless guy in Eugene Oregon for $175 because the chassis was
apparently ‘soft’ and the mechanic seemed legitimately concerned for my
life.
As mentioned earlier, I got by in San Diego with that
Motebecane, but after a year of it I bought a sooty yellow Rabbit diesel with
150,000 miles on it for $500. A
previous owner had welded in a second gas tank and with the full twenty gallons
you could drive 800 miles between fill-ups. This was the car I was driving in the days when I met
Monica, which demonstrates her shining ability to see past an unpromising first
impression. (She was getting
around on a red Kawasaki motorcycle at the time.) The car survived to some point in 1995, but I had left it at my
father’s while we were in Kazakhstan for a couple of years and he
got tired of being saddled with a sooty decrepit Rabbit as a driveway ornament and
sent it off to the junkyard. I
can’t blame him, since by then one of the doors wouldn't open and I was the
only one who could coax it into life in anything below 50 degree weather. (A rolling start always helped, but my
father wasn’t that motivated.)
In 1996 my grandfather was upgrading his car and unloaded a
Ford Fairlane on us, behind whose solid steel bumper Monica gained her first
experiences with Pennsylvania black ice – taking out both a stop sign (no harm)
and a pine tree (yeah, some harm).
But the old Fairlane took us back to San Diego. Before it could fail its inaugural
emissions test we traded it in, buying a near-new ‘97 Saturn station wagon,
which at $12,000 was 24 times more than either of us had ever paid for a
car.
We crossed to the new millennium with two nearly new cars –
the Saturn and a ’95 Jeep Wrangler, which was named Wilhemina. She was sold a couple of years later
while we were living in Ireland where for three years I drove an anonymous rented Vauxhall
with the steering wheel on the wrong side.
The Saturn persisted through all of this as this time my father didn’t send the
car to the junkyard. When we moved to
Rhode Island with our now eight-year old Saturn, I said to myself, we need
to go shopping for a second car – because even though we don’t need a second
car very often, we do need it sometimes.
Thus began an epic decade of car-shopping
procrastination. I don’t think I
can reconstruct all of the machinations that went into me not ever buying a
second car, but I think it started with my sister’s wedding, when they sent us
back across country from California driving my brother-in-law’s grandmother’s
old Dodge Raider. (They were
relocating themselves, but it would be nearly a year before they reclaimed it
from us.) I think by then, Monica
had taken a part time job driving an enormous Suburban for the school we’d
enrolled the boys in – and that became our second car for two or three
years. When she’d had enough of
carting school kids and turned in the SUV, Monica did actually buy a Saturn
sedan off of Craigslist for two thousand dollars, but within a month or two she
totaled it, getting rear-ended while buying eggs from a local farmer – so that
car hardly counts. At some point
my father off-loaded his Dodge Van on us, but it was never going to pass
inspection in Rhode Island, so I sold it to an old man who seemed down on his
luck and I’m sure that van didn’t help.
Friends moved to Japan for a 18 months and needed someone to look after
their zippy little Impreza. And
finally, my mother’s reliable and well-preserved ’96 Honda Accord came our way
when she upgraded to a Lincoln hybrid.
The old lady – our once-reliable Saturn gradually became the second car.
But my mother’s old trooper of a ‘96 Honda Accord – is also
showing its age. The odometer
stopped working after it’s last inspection, so the mileage remains a
perpetually spry 264,954. The
radio comes and goes and we need pliers to adjust heating.
So in December we did the unthinkable. We finally went car shopping and quickly bought a brand new 2016 Toyota hybrid Rav 4. There was no bargaining, because only
show models could be found and we had to pry the vehicle away from the dealership.
And so the Saturn was
demoted to third car. It is still parked just off the driveway by the woodpile, finally looking entirely derelict and forlorn – with a bashed bumper (we spent that long-ago insurance money on something besides fixing the bumper) a roof scraped and scratched from ill-advised snow-shoveling, a speedometer that thinks you’re always driving 40, windshield wipers that spontaneously jump to startling life on cold mornings, and ceiling fabric hanging in drapes and tatters. And since it
failed to start in March – demoted still further to ugly driveway ornament.
I have to jump start it and drive it away to the salvage yard, because I need that spot. Porter's aunt has a '98 Honda to unload and she figures her more or less penniless nephew could make use of it when he goes off to college this fall.
And so the cycle of life continues . . .
