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Signs of Life

Nancy L. Horner

Out With the Old

There comes a point in time when even those of us who embrace the “Drive ‘em Till They Drop” philosophy of car ownership have to give in to the facts and fork out the money to acquire a working vehicle. After two years of avoiding the inevitable, I realized time was running out.

My husband and I narrowed down various car options for several months before the day I climbed into our van and saw that the rear-view mirror was, for the second time, on the floor instead of the windshield. This annoyance merely added growling points to the embarrassment of driving with one hubcap missing ("the kudzu ate it," my husband told me, after watching it roll down into a gully thick with our prolific kudzu vines) but it was still one more step toward new-car ownership.

Perturbed about the mirror but eager to get to the park for my morning run, I backed out of the driveway and headed out. By the time I got to the end of the block, though, it was obvious from the high-pitched whine coming from beneath the hood that the van wasn’t shifting out of second gear. I was on the verge of turning around to return home when the automatic transmission made a heavy clunk noise and shifted into third. Saved by the clunk.

The next day, in spite of protest from my husband, I traded cars with him. Our eldest son now lived at a university, car-less, so the Mazda was available to fight over. I wouldn't dare touch the Honda because it had not one but two flashing warning lights glowing. And, our elderly Nissan was experiencing what I liked to think of as one of its “dormant” phases, during which it would reluctantly crank up and then staunchly refuse to go anywhere. So, I snatched the Mazda from hubby. He’s not stupid; he wasn’t willing to drive the Honda, either.

I loved driving the Mazda, partly because a standard transmission is loads of fun. Yes, even females like an excuse to make “Vroom, vroom!” noises while shifting gears. Besides being a hoot to drive, after 180,000 miles our Mazda still idled so quietly that we sometimes questioned whether it was running at all while stopped at intersections. Even better, our teenager replaced the long-dead cassette deck with a used CD player during the time he drove it regularly. Okay, so the entire console fell toward the gear shift if you pushed a button on the CD player with a bit too much force and then tried to yank the stereo back out after it fell backwards into the console. At least it functioned.

But, my beloved Mazda did have one slight problem: the suspension was totally shot.

Let’s face it; a bad suspension is really a mere inconvenience by comparison with something like, say, a dead engine or a non-functioning transmission. So, I didn’t mind that particular foible as long as I was able to safely drive from Point A to Point B—my major requirement for any vehicle. Occasionally, I did feel like the entire car body was going to fly off the wheels, but I made light of it.

Once, after driving down a bumpy back road, I called my husband and joked, “Uh, Houston, we’ve got a wicked shimmy.” He knew exactly what I was referring to.

Another time, I made the mistake of picking up a friend in the Mazda when we went for our weekly walk. Every time we hit a bump, the car bounced back and forth a bit and my terrified friend shrieked, “Watch out!” I tried to explain to her that I was driving the same as I always did, the car body was just attached a bit loosely; but, well, she just didn’t get it. The earache at the end of the drive home was enough to convince me I should take a gamble on driving the van to the park, the next week.

Meanwhile, I let the car dealer I’d been conversing with by e-mail, Ian, know exactly what I was looking for in a new car. I wasn’t eager to indebt myself, but I knew we were reaching Threat Con 5 on the car situation and pretty soon I’d have to give in.

The final straw came on a Thursday. I headed to my youngest son’s school to pick him up—a drive that included hopping on one highway for about 4 miles, then exiting to another highway for a similar length. The problem with both of those stretches of highway was that they involved left exits. Because of its bad suspension, the Mazda shook rather violently over about 55 miles per hour. That fact, along with the fairly short highway distance involved, meant that it was better for me to drive in the left-hand lane, risking the wrath of people in a hurry, than take a gamble on the possibility of becoming totally blocked off so that I couldn’t get into the left-hand lane in time to exit.

In spite of the fact that the speed limit doesn’t actually rise above 55 miles per hour on the second highway stretch, people fiercely tailgated me on both trips to school, so I pulled into the pick-up line, Thursday afternoon, with a sigh of relief. After turning the car off, I opened windows part-way and began to read the book I'd brought along to help pass the time in a hot car.

I was immersed in my reading when one of the teachers, Shirley, walked up to the open car window. Shirley writes down the names of the children whose caregivers have arrived to pick them up and then calls their names out, in order, over a walkie-talkie. I looked up and smiled at her.

“Hey,” Shirley said. “Have you got a big vibration problem when you’re driving on the highway in this car?”

“I do,” I told her.

“Well, I was behind you on the highway and your car was shaking around like crazy on its suspension.”

“Yeah, it has a bad suspension,” I admitted with a nod. “We’ve got four cars. One’s dead on the driveway and three have problems.”

Shirley laughed. “So, it’s the lesser of four evils, huh?”

I nodded. But, I was rather horrified that an acquaintance of mine was unfortunate enough to end up driving behind me on the highway.

The next morning, I called Ian at the car dealership and told him I was ready to test-drive a car. I set up an appointment to meet him on Saturday and late Saturday afternoon I headed home in a new Toyota.

On Monday afternoon, Shirley laughed when I held up a bright orange sign with my youngest child’s name printed on it in big, black letters. “You got a new car!” she said. “Oooh, it looks so nice!”

Later that day, I thought about the Nissan, which we planned to donate to an organization that actually sent out a tow truck to fetch non-functioning donated vehicles, whether they were dead or simply taking a serious nap. The Nissan, I reflected, served us well for most of its 19 years. Come to think of it, we really did drive it till it dropped. Satisfied with that thought, I knew it could happily part with the car and move on, especially given the fact that the new Toyota had a 5-speed, standard transmission. There’s nothing like a little “vroom-vroom” fun to assuage the pain of those monthly car payments.