Cars: Love "em or Hate "em Three

Given my track record with automobiles I seriously explored the idea of trading my car in for a horse when my daughter took riding lessons, as a teenager. Kids can teach you many valuable lessons, and this was a first for me: spending Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years mornings feeding and watering the horses and shoveling frozen horse poop into piles. I guess I'll stick with cars as difficult as it has been.

Following the “Periods” in my automobile development (“Cars: love 'em or hate 'em, the Sequel”), returning to college eventually filled the void of losing my beloved sports car. The was my “academic period,” highlighted by a "65 Ford Futura , two door hardtop, which I eventually sold to an acquaintance who moved to Denver, became a Black Muslim, and eventually I heard was blown off his porch by someone else"s shotgun. I don't know any more details, and don't think I want to.

Undeterred, on graduation from college, I purchased a "68 Oldsmobile 88 hardtop, which I drove to my first newspaper job in the small southwestern Washington city of Longview., 20 miles or so in a straight line from the mouth of Mount St. Helens several years before it blew. On the drive south from Seattle, just outside of Longview, I was shocked to see the antlers of a deer climb my fender and then splatter it all over Interstae-5. A rather bad way to start a new job in a new location, but I understand the orphans benefited from the fresh venison. Fortunately for the city, the mountain blew the other direction, but there was deep concern that the mud flow from the eruption would inundate the city through which it flowed. Fortunately, that did not happen.

A few months later the Oldsmobile carried three of us back to Washington, D.C. in comparative comfort, considering on the first trip four of us made the same drive in a Volkswagen bug at the end of winter, with blinding snow storms and empty gas tanks to add to the excitement. I sold the Olds to my cousin, who lived outside Washington, when I moved to New York City, because with the varying modes of public transportation no one in the city needs a car, but lots of people have them. On alternate days drivers were made to double park on one side of the street, so street sweepers could clean the other side. Invariably, someone would get caught on the inside and have to get their car out, so would stand on the car horn until the offending car owner would come out and move. This could last for hours, and sometimes end in a verbal or physical confrontation.

Several years later the family drove from outside Annapolis, MD, where we currently reside, to New York City to take my wife and daughter to the New York City Ballet. This is the same daughter who finally traded in her spurs for ballet shoes and a Tutu. Our "88 Ford Taurus was doing fine on the New Jersey Turnpike until we started to cross the George Washington Bridge and noticed the temperature gauge was almost in the red. It was winter with snow on the ground, so I risked driving the 20 or so blocks to our friends house on West 93rd.

So there we were in the snow in the Upper West Side of Manhattan on a Sunday, with an over-heating car and two ladies who were late for the ballet. It's funny, how when you live a good life, things will eventually work out for you. The only garage I could find open on the whole island of Manhattan was only a few blocks from the ballet at Lincoln Center. My son and I spent a couple of hours playing in the frozen tundra of Central Park while the fan motor was being replaced for about $250, and was completed just before the ballet was over. I guess you can call that our “ballet period” because those were very expensive dance tickets.

We rented my wife's parents house in Annapolis to care and repair it before they returned from Louisiana. Ours was the only double car garage in this water privileged community without two cars, so we became the repository for several very nice automobiles. The only charge was to let me drive the cars once in a while. These cars included a couple of older Pontiacs, a two year old Thunderbird, owned by a Midshipman, a very nice classic MG-TD in show condition (didn't drive), and a doctors Jensen-Healey. The Jensen was an older convertible powered by a Lotus racing engine and sounded like it.

So one day, I'm out tooling around in the Jensen, with the top down, going a little too fast around the approach to the Interstate, and ready to tromp on the accelerator to hear the deep throaty rumble of the high compression engine, when I chanced to look in the rear view mirror to see an officer of the local constabulary on my tail, also waiting to hear that deep throaty rumble. Boy was he disappointed when he didn't hear it.

The chronic problems I've experienced with cars go beyond the several worn timing belts on older foreign cars. It also includes a spate of overheating problems, both foreign and domestic, that I encountered. In chronological order: an "83 Honda, 165,000 miles; an "88 Ford Taurus, 155,000; a "93 Taurus, 138,000, and a "97 Subaru Outback, 126K. There seems to be a pattern here that needs to be explored. We'll call this one my, “overheating period.”

Once again, my wife's dad went to the heart of the problem, and bought her a new car, a “06 Saturn, which after two years just passed 70,000 miles. No problems yet, but then it isn't my car, and perhaps being the property of the U.S. Navy, Ret., in a manner of speaking, the car will be immunized from the “curse.”

Personally, I'm glad all my money is gone, because I'd be tempted to buy another old used car, which would launch me into another automotive period. Right now I can live with the “common sense” period during which we have but one automobile and I walk a lot more.