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GenePool
Humor
Automotivation
I came to the realization this evening that I've been driving in Boston for fifteen years, and I have yet to die. Based on a recent survey wherein Boston was deemed the most dangerous city in America in which to drive, the very fact that I am not currently dead should be viewed, I think, as nothing short of remarkable. More than that, I've never been in an accident and I've never filed a claim. This is especially good given the "surprise! here's a check!" method I use when paying my bills, meaning that I've probably only been fully covered for about half of those fifteen years.
I have managed to maintain this extraordinary non-dying streak while driving a selection of automobiles that only a junkyard owner could truly love. Historically, my auto purchasing approach has begun and ended with two questions: does it start, and how much for it? This has had its drawbacks. For example, it's difficult to know there's something wrong with your car when it has made that noise from the day you first bought it. It's also had its advantages. I only locked my cars when I had something inside of them of value, like, say, the children. Otherwise, I could walk away with the windows down and be relatively certain that nobody would steal the vehicle, but that in the event they did they would only make it a few blocks before discovering it was a piece of shit, provided they didn't die in some horrible way first after finding out much too late that the car considered brakes an optional feature.
With these cars, I've had to develop superior driving skills in order to survive, and this has its benefits as well. Just on the basis of the cars I've owned as a Boston driver, last week I qualified for the NASCAR circuit. I am such a good driver now that when I operate a decent car-- by which I mean one made within the same decade-- I drive with my eyes closed just to make it a challenge.
Those days are now gone, as I've just purchased a 1999 Honda Civic. I only did it because I had to, because the Plymouth Expletive Deleted that had been my primary mode of transportation for the last three years had only one functional part left: the engine. And it was about to go too.
I've gotten pretty good at recognizing when a car is about to die on me. My first car, a 1972 Chevy Impala, sent a clear signal when I turned a corner one morning. After negotiating the turn I straightened the car out again, to discover that while the car had done what I asked by going straight, the steering wheel still thought it was in a turn. Two blocks later there was a loud WHUMP, followed by a BUMP as I drove over something, followed by my realization that I had no brakes. Fortuitously, I'd been driving only five miles an hour at the time. The BUMP was me hitting my own drive shaft, and the WHUMP was the drive shaft detaching itself from the underside of the car. It rolled across the street and nearly killed a couple of road construction workers, who were kind enough to pick it up and give it back to me. We had to use a flatbed truck to get the car to the junkyard, because when the guy driving the standard tow truck tried to lift the Impala, he discovered that the bulk of the vehicle did not rise when the back wheels did. It wasn't that the car had developed rust, it was more like rust had developed into a car.
My second car also had some serious issues. It was a Dodge Aspen that I got for free. Someone had left it outside their home all winter, hoping that somebody would steal it, and when this didn't work they asked me to please take it away. One afternoon when I was driving down a bumpy road-- this is all we have in Massachusetts-- I hit a particularly large bump that actually sent the front of my car airborne for a half-second. This was rather bad as evidently the top of the car wasn't actually attached to the bottom, but rather was just resting there with the help of gravity. So when the top and bottom came back together at the end of the brief free-fall, they no longer lined up with one another. This created an interesting effect. While driving straight it looked like I was actually aiming for parked cars. I realized this was a bad thing, and so, in an effort to avoid towing costs I made a concerted effort to drive the Dodge to the junk yard. I almost made it. As soon as the car spotted the junk yard and realized it was about to be put down, it was so distraught it committed suicide on its own. The front axle snapped and the entire car collapsed onto the front right tire. And I still had to pay towing costs, because even though the junk yard people could actually see the car on the street a hundred yards away, they still had to use a tow truck to get it.
So when I told my family I didn't think the Plymouth Expletive Deleted was going to survive the summer, they believed me. And for once I was in the unique position of having time to choose a car, rather than buy something quickly over the weekend so I could get to work again on Monday. I had two cars in mind. One was a Volkswagen Beetle. Because they're cute. Also, here in the People's Republic of Cambridge, VW ownership is legally mandated. The second was a PT Cruiser. My wife happens to think this is a very ugly car, but I try not to let what my wife thinks bother me.
When I went online and checked out both cars I found that in the case of the "basic" vehicle, they were both within my price range, which was surprisingly good news. Then I started visiting dealers.
It turns out in the case of the PT Cruiser there is no such thing as a "basic" vehicle. Also, these things are so wildly popular that not only will no dealer negotiate down on an asking price for a used model, they are permitted to raise the price at random.
I suspect there is also no such thing as a "basic" VW Beetle, but I never got a chance to find out. There are only two VW dealers in the Boston area, and both of them were closed on Sunday, the very day I had decided to go car shopping. I guess if I really really wanted one I could have gone back on a Saturday, but I was pretty sure I didn't want to buy a car from anyone stupid enough to lock their doors on the most convenient shopping day of the week.
But I'm pretty happy with the Honda. I ended up with it after falling back to my traditional car-buying approach of finding the best available used car. It's two years old and has only sixteen-thousand miles on it. Apparently, the previous owner was a little old lady who only took it out on Sundays, and only to drive to her local VW dealership, which was closed.
Evidently, in all my years of owning junk, I've missed out on a few innovations. Power windows, for instance. The best thing about the smaller cars I've owned was that they were small enough for me to be able to lower the passenger window by reaching across the seat and turning the crank. I considered this an important feature. Now I can do it by pushing a button. Imagine! Also, stereos come with four speakers now. I've never had more than two. In the case of the Plymouth, I had one, and it only worked if I hit a pothole just right, after which I had to avoid every other pothole in the road or risk losing the speaker again. One spring, I was listening to the bottom of the ninth inning of the Sox opening day game-- Sox down three runs, bases loaded, Mo Vaughn at the plate with a full count-- and I heard "and here's the pitch!...." and then I hit a pothole. I swerved madly, looking for another pothole to resume the broadcast, but the radio never did come back. It wasn't until I got home and called some people that I heard about the grand slam.
I'm going to have to train myself to do a few things I've never had to do before, like look at the speedometer. I was driving the Honda yesterday and I accidentally exceeded the speed limit by about fifteen miles. I have never used to have to worry about this; one reason my driving record is so spotless is that none of my cars were capable of speeding. I once owned a Volvo that couldn't even reach the lower limit, the one you're not allowed to be below of when on the highway. This was because one time I'd accidentally shifted into second instead of fourth gear when going forty, which caused the car to internally hemorrhage. Even after I replaced the fly wheel (whatever the hell that is) the car still didn't trust me on highways and refused to go fast. In contrast, the Honda has hit fifty-five MPH while still in third gear.
Ashtrays are apparently now a luxury, and the Honda doesn't have one. This tells me I was meant to own it, because I have never, not once, owned a car with a functioning cigarette lighter. The closest was the Chevy Celebrity, whose lighter worked for seven days after I purchased it before failing permanently. The Honda has something that looks like a cigarette lighter, but it's actually just an outlet for electronic devices, which is just great except I don't have any. And since I'm already behind the times, I don't even know what I'm supposed to own that plugs in there. A TV? A ray gun?
When the salesman handed over the Honda he asked me if it was a step up from my last car.
"Compared to my last car," I said, "this is a space ship."
He laughed. But I really wasn't kidding. I'm
still looking for the "rocket into lower orbit" button,
but it wouldn't surprise me a bit if it had one. Does it have
something do to with cruise control?
© 2001, Gene Doucette
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