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tim!: Things to do with Cars or, Riding in Cars with Myself
2002
The first was really a trilogy of automobiles that did not technically belong to me, but I feel they deserve mention as they were the cars I spent my formative days in, learning how fast to drive. Number one will be the 1985 Dodge Caravan, cr�me colored, manual shift. Yes, they made a manual shift. The fact that it was a stick made driving a minivan in High School ok. Once, post HS, I found myself driving through the city streets of one Bay City, MI. I was in a funky mood, driving this Caravan, enjoying the sound a 4-cylinder engine makes when the rpms get over 4000, and I had just shifted into 4th gear. I was probably listening to Billy Idol. Maybe it was New Order. New Order beats Billy Idol. And then some dude is there in front of me just sauntering across the street like it is his birthday or something. Without thinking too much, I drop the poor van into 3rd just to make a super 5000 rpm noise, and watch this guy run for his life. He did. And then he either shook his fist in the air cursing me, or raised one finger on one hand to do the same. I don't remember which. It was fun. I was a menace.
I would like to now introduce us to the 1984 Chevrolet Chevette. Or Shove-It, as it is often referred to. The only redeeming quality of the Chevette is the idea that it is mobile. In this particular Chevette, I achieved my first automobile airborne experience. The gas petal resembled a Twinkie, except that it was flat. So many memories. I used to be on the swim team in HS. The swim team practices and competes in the winter. On this particular evening, the temperature was very cold. I don't even know, say 10. It was 10 damn degrees. I'm giving this guy Aaron a ride home, as he happened to live close to me. Oh wait - it's late. We just got back from a swim meet and it was about 12AM.
We drive a little, a few blocks away from the HS, and the little red Chevette begins to freak out. What I figured out later is that that accelerator became frozen in the open position as we began our perilous journey. The journey wasn't really perilous, it just sounds better. It was pretty freaky though. Here we are in the cold darkness of late-night northern MI, and this shitty car cannot be slowed down. The only thing that came to mind was to put the brakes on, and then the emergency brake, and then more of the regular brakes. I think I finally pulled over and shut it off, but not right away. By the time we got to Aaron's house it was a little better, but the car smelled of burnt brake linings. Aaron did not ask for rides anymore.
The last of the introductory trilogy is the truck. This is really the mating of two previous trucks, one with a good body and one with a good engine. It was yellow with a black door and was covered in cement dust. My father used to work at a cement plant and bought these two trucks for $50 each or some equally absurd amount. Eventually they were combined, cleaned somewhat and mechanically tuned, painted gray. The engine in it was Diesel, thus beginning my love affair with the word, the fuel and the man.
The truck never stopped smelling like cement. It smelled like cement and diesel fuel and I bought a brand new tape deck for it so I could listen to New Order and Poison on the way to work where I was a waiter and wore Lederhosen. Look it up. Sometimes it wouldn't start, and nobody could figure out why. I'm sure if we went through your closet, we'd find some heart-wrenchingly bad music and clothing, so just sit back and relax.
Cars are shitty. Cars should be abused. Certainly not pampered. I like the idea of a car that is a complete pile and yet it still moves. That's all I'm saying. Each time you get it to start should be an event of joy. I think sometimes the only reason I keep my car in fine running condition is so that I can consistently drive fast. That and I am curious to see how far it is I can go. Right now it is at 200,015 miles. It is a 1994 Honda Civic and I can't kill it. Its been broken into at least three times. I had a recurring flat tire for the period of one whole calendar year that I refused to get a new tire for because the patch they put on and then re-put on should have worked. I knew all of the places in a 50 mile radius that offered free compressed air. There were three. You can't give in to a car's whims. It is washed once per year.
I am curious to see if the car will still be running at 300,000 miles. I have said recently that if the car gets to 300,000 miles or I get to 35 then that is it - no more '94 Honda Civic. But I can already see myself wondering if I could make it to 400,000. Hopefully it will blow a head gasket or get stolen some time before then. Maybe it will catch on fire.
But I digress. To continue with the tale, we will now be introduced to the first Honda, the 1987 Honda Accord. It was gray. There are two incidents of note here. There first was while car and I were living in Kalamazoo, MI, performing a job which was smelly and ridiculous. But not too bad for a first real-paying gig. It was a one of those nice days after a huge storm, and everything was melting. When this happens, you get piles of slush and crap accumulating along the roadside, and it usually has a grayish or even blackish hue. I was riding behind a school bus this day. School buses have dual tires on each side in the back, which when riding in slush makes for a really nice line of slush all along the road where the space between the tires is. And as I am not one to pass up driving through slush, I am following the bus and making sure I hit the slush pile with my right front tire. This action causes the slush to spray off to the right where the sidewalk lies. Of course some poor guy is over there shoveling his walk to get rid of the slush as I drive by and inadvertently nail him with a wall of new wet dirty slush. I remember noticing this happen in slow motion. Just as I'm driving past this guy, I look over and see this slush hit both him and his clean sidewalk simultaneously. I looked back in the mirror to see what his response would be, and saw him shaking his fist at me and my Honda. In fact, it was the same motion as the guy I tried to run down with the Caravan. The Kalamazoo guy could have been raising a finger, but with the mittens on it just looked like he was waving his fist.
I wonder if this was the same guy in both instances? It would make me so happy if this were the case, although the odds are against me. In the movie version of my life, it will be the same guy in each scenario and he will be played by Tom Cruise. No, it'll be Bruce Willis. But in the movie he won't get any tough guy act, he'll just get sprayed with slush and nearly run over buy some kid in a van listening to 90's pop music.
Then for some reason I thought it would be a good idea to trade my 1987 Honda Accord for the car driven then by me Mum, a 1983 Honda Civic. This is a serious step down in the Honda world. But the Civic had some soul to it. The reason for the trade was for money, and my lack of it. Now I am living in Detroit, which lies directly east of Kalamazoo by about 180 miles. Somewhere in here I get this crummy temp job working for an Environmental company. I drive 30 miles to and from. This is no big deal until the heater/thermostat on the car dies. And by the time I get to work or home my feet are getting a little cold. Here is my rationale for not getting a new heater in Michigan in the winter: I am soon moving to North Carolina where I won't need a heater. Of course this is completely false, as the winter in NC is certainly balmier than it is in MI, but it still gets pretty cold. That, and when I got to NC with no heater, there was an ice storm the next week. Mmmmm ice storm.
To finish with the '83 Civic, I drove the hell out of it with complete disregard for its maintenance, still being broke. It used to begin stalling at a light, so I would put the car into neutral, put in the clutch with one foot, apply the emergency brake to stop the car, and use the other foot to keep revving the engine so as the engine would not stall. This was just before the end. I think two things were going on. One: the timing belt was in need of replacement, and two: the engine was leaking severe amounts of oil. The poor bastard. When you looked into the engine compartment, it looked like someone had spent hours cleaning and polishing every inch of the motor. In reality, the shininess was due to all the oil that had spewed out of the engine and back onto itself. I got a $100 bill for it, and some guy with a tow truck took it away. Two months later I saw it parked on the street, functional, as I waited for the bus.
This car gets high marks for making it from MI to NC. Also for being the car I parallel parked in leaving less than 1 inch of space on each bumper. It took me 15 minutes to do this and is one of my proudest automobile moments.
After riding on the local bus for three weeks, I decided to overdraw my empty checking account, pay the 19% interest rate and buy myself a 1974 Volkswagen Bug. Riding the bus is the suckiest thing I can imagine having to do and having to pay for at the same time. This car cost $900. Considering a car that simply moves is worth $500, this was well worth the cost. This car was originally gold. Now the engine lid was black, the hood was yellow, and the front quarter panel was red. I think that's all. It had a sunroof that leaked. It also had a sunroof that was left open by me all the time in the summer, and of course it rained. That was the best part about this car. Who cares? It ran. I drove this car from Chapel Hill, NC to Sanford, NC for a good 6 months. This is about 40 miles one way. That's almost 10,000 miles put on that car, with only a few minor glitches. Once while driving home the car broke down near to where I lived. The reason it broke down was the McDonald's straw I had used as a temporary air hose had melted and begun to drip on the engine. But it ran for 15 miles before that. My roommate at the time and his girlfriend pulled up as I was fashioning a new air hose from some other fast food refuse, and offered their assistance. I politely declined, feeling very MacGuyver for having pulled this off, and preparing to pull it off again.
This was the last car I had before the current Honda. The reason I got the Honda was that the Volkswagen's gas tank developed a large hole one day, oddly enough as I was on the way to look for cars. Truth be told, I didn't want to get the Honda, even though it has been the most cost-effective purchase in my life. I didn't want to get it because I had to get it. I was being forced to get this upscale new car after my perfectly good piece of shit Volkswagen decided to spring a leak. I suppose I could have fixed the leak right away; although it was getting tiring driving in the rain and having my back get wet from the road spray coming in the hole in the floor. I sold it for $500 to some guy who wanted to restore it. A year later I saw it half hidden under a tarp in the same town the '83 Honda died in. It was in the same condition as I sold it.
My favorite thing to do in that car was to sneak up on BMWs and sports cars on the road going 50mph, and then downshift and fly by them at 60mph. They would soon realize what it was that had just sped by them and subsequently fly by me at 80mph. I got a speeding ticket once going downhill. I was going 64mph. The best part was the look on the cop's face as he checked over the car and inspected the inspection sticker for accuracy and precision. He was truly stunned that this automobile before him actually traveled as fast as his RADAR gun said it did. It was worth every dollar.
