Cars: Love 'em or Hate 'em

To replace it, I test drove a 1952 Chevy fastback, after I got my drivers license, and wrapped it around a pick-up truck's push bumper, landing me in the hospital for 10 weeks, almost ending my experiment with life at age16.

That should have told me something, but I wasn't listening: it would have been safer and cheaper in the long run to ride a horse. Being young and foolish though, I persisted claiming my Constitutional right to break my scrawny little neck in the automobile of my choice. I don't know why Ralph Nadar didn't campaign to ban the entire automobile, but I suppose that would have met with as much success as trying to ban guns.

Then came a 1960 Chevy Corvair, the one that Ralph Nadar was successful in having redesigned. People were getting impaled with the steering column rod, I think, while my problem with the car was the gas heater. It's easy to appreciate the instant heat on a cold morning, but my gas heater, which was located on the firewall about six inches from the gas tank, caught on fire while I was driving past a fire station. I stopped a block from the fire house and ran back to summon help only to find the place empty. I grabbed a fire extinguisher off the remaining fire truck, ran back, and put out the fire. When the firemen returned they congratulated me for my firefighting skills, but tried to charge me for recharging the extinguisher. Fortunately, they relented, and I was on my way.

One hopes that when you get married, have a family and assume all those domestic responsibilities that things like car problems will go away. Not so, in our case, car problems have plagued us for over 30 years. Take the time my wife drove into a garage when the family's mid-80s Buick Skylark caught on fire. This was the Skylark which the year before had a used engine replacement after the original died. Needless to say the mechanics were not happy to see her, with smoke billowing and paint bubbling on the hood, and were unsuccessful in accessing the engine compartment. The fire was put out eventually when the firemen came and used pick axes. My wife was safe, and again I was left with a heap of metal good only for the junk yard.

I love my wife and think she is the most beautiful woman in the world, especially when something stupid happens to our cars. She looks at me with those soft brown eyes that scream without sound, “What do we do now?”

We went through a period when several of our good friends felt the need to loan or give us primary or secondary transportation. These examples of Christian charity, while greatly appreciated, often fell under whatever cloud we were under. The late "70s Honda Civic, which we nick-named the “War Wagon,” was tiny in size but had a faulty muffler that made it sound like a Sherman Tank running full tilt. The body was rusting out, and parts were falling off regularly, but that little engine blasted to life every time you asked it.

Some more good friends purchased an "87 Honda Civic and flat out gave it to us at another moment of transportation desperation. It was a nice little car and ran fine for about a week when the engine just quit. The reason, according to the Honda dealer, was a broken timing belt, and the cost was to be over five-grand to fix. We were about to dispose of it when our friends said to go ahead and get it fixed, they would pay for it again. These are not ordinary friends.

Timing belts, older foreign cars and I seem to be another bad mix. This time I took out a loan to buy a second car, and got bamboozled into buying a mid-'80s Nissan that desperately needed engine work. Fortunately, a mechanic friend and I worked on it until it could pass inspection, and again I drove it around for a couple of weeks enjoying the sliding glass roof window, until one night the whole family was in the car and it just stopped. The darned car had to be junked because the timing belt broke and shattered the engines' innards. This time my angel was in the form of my wife's parents, who slipped her a check for the unpaid loan thinking me too proud to accept it. Over the years my luck with cars, has taught me humility.

Another friend loaned us “Darth Vader,” a big black early "70s Jeep Cherokee which not even I could breakdown. It was an intimidating vehicle which created fear in the eyes of opposing drivers, even when my wife who is small was behind the wheel of that beast. The vehicle enveloped her when she drove it resembling a kid on a joy ride and my son was so embarrassed to seen in it, he ran down to the street corner when she picked him up from school and hid on the floor when he saw someone he knew.