Chewymom

My Dad was pretty funny about cars. Smart, actually. Once he bought one, he would drive it into the ground. And he really didn’t buy them that often. One time, we owned a cute little Toyota Corolla. It wasn’t fancy–a little brown thing, 4-speed. It was the mid-80’s, and we had owned that car for several years. I was in college and really hankering for a car, which he had no intentions of giving me. I had a little money, so I started looking at a little VW bug. I think that alarmed my dad, because I was in North Carolina at the time, which meant he couldn’t verify that this was a reliable enough car for his only daughter. So he proposed that I use my money and buy the Toyota from him. I wasn’t picky, I just wanted wheels, so I was thrilled with the idea!

So, they were having this little problem with the Toyota. Sometimes after you would park it, the tail lights would stay on. He figured, me being a college student and all, I’d never think to tap the brakes a few times and check to be sure the lights went off, so he took it in to get it fixed. As seemed to happen on the rare occasion when he actually did purchase a car, he never really intended to come home with something different. But somehow he decided that it wasn’t worth it to get the lights fixed, and he really needed to get a better car. Not much better, mind you. This is my dad, who never truly owned a new car that I know of. My dad was extremely friendly. For example, when he was in the hospital, within weeks of his death, he would really talk to the nurses and get to know them. They loved him. He would find out names and never forget them, he would learn the ages of their children, what was worrying them, and what job they really wanted to have. And he would ask about these things whenever he saw them. The same was true for everyone, even car salesmen.

So Dad would wander into a service center for a simple tail-light repair, and he would come out with a new best friend and a different car. And that’s how I got a white Nissan Sentra when I was in college. But that wasn’t what I really planned to write about.

Several years after the Toyota-turned-Nissan incident, when I was married and had kids, my dad began admiring my father-in-law’s Lincoln Continental. He had been driving a small old car–I can’t even remember what kind–and it was obvious it was near the end of its life. He kept talking about that Lincoln and how he wished he could afford one (which he could, but he hated to spend money). I don’t even remember why, but I’m sure it had to do with being a nice, friendly guy and all, but Dad decided to use this fellow who would bring cars to you, rather than go to a car lot. Somehow “Lincoln” got translated, “small white Honda,” and that is the first car this fellow showed up with. I really don’t know how THAT happened either, but I’m sure it had something to do, again, with Dad being friendly and the guy saying, “Hey, I don’t have any Lincolns, but I have this sweet little Honda. It’s a real beauty. You should see it!” And there it went. Dad bought the Honda on the spot without looking at any other cars. Compared to a Lincoln, well, let’s just say it would’ve fit nicely into the trunk of my father-in-law’s car. It had no bells or whistles except for the leather seats. And it was tiny. (It amazes me that the Accord was Honda’s LARGE vehicle!) My dad was practically sitting on the ground, and watching him climb into and out of the thing was downright silly. But still.

So, a couple of years ago when my dad passed away, we inherited the Honda. It is a 1994 and even now it only has 108,000 miles on it. We have owned it for two years. We have replaced the transmission…twice. Soon after we got it, the air went out, and we were given an estimate of $1200 to fix it. It pulls to the right, and we took it in for an alignment. That wasn’t the problem. The frame is bent, apparently from a wreck, (seems Dad didn’t probe quite deep enough)and the right front tire sits a full inch further back than the left. The guy who told us that pointed out that the front passenger seat has what appears to be pink stitching on the brown leather, unlike the rest of the car which has white stitching. (The seam wasn’t always pink, but it seems to have faded to that color over the years.) The driver’s front door has faded to a different shade of white than the rest of the car.

A few weeks ago, I had the old Honda at a birthday party and apparently one of the doors didn’t shut properly leaving me with a dead battery. Several kind and knowledgable men attempted to help me jump it. I say attempted because all it would do was click, leaving them very puzzled as the windows still rolled up and down, the dome light worked, and the radio came on. We had to have it towed, and the car repair people said there was some piece that had come loose and they soldered it back on. Once we got the thing back, we realized the dash lights were out. We assumed the car repair people had done something, which of course they denied, so we took it somewhere else. After two entire days of diagnistic work, they finally found the problem (a severed wire, I believe) and corrected it.

So, all that is to say that we have on our hands a 12-year-old, Honda with only 108,000 miles on it. Which is kind of like dogs where years mean nothing–it should run like a two year old car. But it doesn’t, and we just keep being surprised when things go wrong. “Surely that’s the last thing that can go wrong. It’s a HONDA!!” We’ll see if we’re right this time.

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 20th, 2006 at 5:52 am and is filed under This and That. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.