Over the weekend, Father and I finally untarped my old car. It looks as good/bad as it did when we stored it, which was, at least according to the tabs, before the winter of 2021-2. But three of the four tires are severely deflated and the front passenger side is completely deflated. Plus, the moonroof is cracked and enough, uh, stuff penetrated the cracks that there is mold or mildew in it. It may run, for all I know, but the tires probably need to be changed and the moonroof is a disaster, so I don't think it's wise for us to put money into spiffing it up. Yeah, it's time to say goodbye to the car.
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I remember seeing it for the first time. It was evening, I was hanging out or sleeping in or doing homework or just moping about my senior year in high school when my parents told me to come out. I, at the top of the stairs, saw Mother, at the bottom of the stairs, jangle a key in front of her. It was the car, and they got it for me. And I remember being visibly frustrated. I was a couple years removed from finally getting my driver's license on the third try, and the second time I got rejected by this truly deplorable bitch of a driving tester traumatized me. This new car would be an upgrade over the car I had been using around that time, a Jeep that first had vapor lock issues and then overheated. I should have been overjoyed that I actually got a fucking car that fucking worked, but I think my thinking at the time was that I was over driving as a concept. It was so much work to worry about a car, and I realized there was pain even when owning a car that did work -- gasoline, maintenance, worries about repairs, let alone insurance. I had taken a bus to school all my life, and if I wanted to do something fun, I could either walk there or hop a ride on one of my friends' cars. No, driving a new car was too much adulting for me, and I gave the impression that they shouldn't have bought one for me.
Well, I did need to drive a car, if only for getting to the U. for classes. And then the damndest thing happened: Instead of junking the Jeep and letting me drive the new car, they stored the new car and made me drive the Jeep several more years. In fact, if I recall correctly, I want to say it took about nine or ten years before Father finally relented and let me drive the car as my main car. Up until his decision to stash it, I had one summer to drive it all over the place. And I remember driving it a lot very, very early in my journey with it, albeit inadvertently. I was going to go to my friend's graduation party at his mom's house. He drew up a map on how to get there from our high school, but it was wrong and I got lost. And it took me at least an hour and stopping into one or maybe even two gas stations (remember that we didn't have the Internet, let along a map app, at the time) to finally fucking get to the party. I expressly remember reading the part of the owner's manual where it said to drive the car gently for the first 1,000 miles. I swear I drove about 100 of it just trying to find this goddamn party.
So after I was finally able to drive it, I, well, drove it. Everywhere. It was a stylish low-luxury car. It was great. I hate not remembering all the good times I drove it because when the car drives well, it drives unremarkably. No, I remember when it started breaking down. My first repair was for a ball bearing in the passenger-side rear tire; the car was making a noise that wasn't going away. The transmission died on me as I drove to my overnight temp job in downtown Minneapolis; Father had to step in and found someone in the neighborhood to finally, after maybe a month out of service, fix the transmission for almost two grand, oy. In the winter, when I drove it to the dealership for maintenance, I took the off-ramp curve way too quickly. There was slight damage to the car, but the moonroof cracked to where it is today.
All in all, the make, model and year of the car is a good one, I think, and I believe I got what I could out of it, maybe even moreso. But, maybe because it was stored too long or because of those 100 miles getting to the fucking grad party or maybe just general wear-and-tear, the problems started to pile up -- the oil level light wouldn't turn off; had to re-do the wiring a couple times, 18 months apart; it started leaking oil bad; the passenger-side rear power window broke, and I had to tape it closed until I could get it fixed; the sway bar on the passenger side broke so I heard a loud "clang" every time I steered. One time I drove over a railroad track and the goddamn hood flipped open. The fuckin' thing rolled up like a tuna can. (Come to think of it, I think the hood is totally fixed. Didn't see any misalignment at all as I checked it out over the weekend.)
Finally, when I was driving to my test scoring job (I may have blogged posted about this a long time ago), the car started to overheat. I had to leave for the day to go to this shop I trusted out in Carver County (close by where a stripper who gave me a HJ lived), who said it would be fine. These were the days where I had a second test scoring job at night; the fucking car overheated on my way home from that job. I spent two hours turning my car on and off to see if the thermostat would be low enough for me to limp it home before AAA finally got around to me and towed it to the mechanic close to me.
The culprit: The gasket blew. I thought that when it comes to major engine repairs like that, that's when it was no longer worth it to fix the car. The mechanic said exactly that when he told me in his voicemail what the problem was. But Father got it home and, weeks later (I don't remember what car I was using in the meantime), he got it fixed. And really, the car was driving fine. You had to be careful and the radio was doing this thing where it get really loud and then really quiet and then really loud. Didn't help that the radio button was busted. You couldn't even push it to turn it off or on, it just did that itself. But, it was drivable. And then Father made the decision, at least several years after he got the gasket fixed and probably near the tail end of the pandemic where people could finally go out and travel again, to stash the old car, put the tarp and the cinder blocks on it, and, well, forget it. And forget it we did.
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I got into the car for the first time in years Saturday, but it was to clean it out. I stepped back in it yesterday/Sunday to reminisce, to remember, and to say goodbye. I can't remember them, but there were so many good times driving that car, and it was, for a long time, a trusted, capable, and even stylish soldier. I made an effort to open and sit in the four big seats of the sedan, if only for a minute. I looked at the owner's manual one more time, then realized that, after all these years, there are two features on the car that I did not use at all: The driver's seat lumbar support bar and the bag chute that comes out from the toddler seat in the middle of the backseat and has the shape of a long piece of wood. It is used to store long objects without messing up the interior of the car. Well, we never had to carry big long things in the sedan. And even though I have a bad back now, I didn't back then, so I didn't have the need to shape my back to its proper driving posture. Still, I cranked the bar a few times, just to feel it in my back. Can't believe it's the first time I ever used it, ironically the last week (or so) it'll be in the family's possession.
Yes, it's a car. But it's my car. And I used it for a formative period in my life. Moreover, I saw it "born," and now I'm going to see it "die" as it gets towed and probably stripped for parts. It's a hell of a thing to witness the entire life cycle of something, even something inanimate like a car.
This is the logical thing to do. Yet, I know I should be sad about this. But I'm not crying.
I'm still trying to figure out how best to donate the car. That might give me a good reason to procrastinate. But hell, it's best to let go of the car. And yet ... I can't.
Goodbye, car.
