Filed under: autos, Confessions, fragments | Tags: auto, car, paul potter, repairs, susan canavarro
How fitting it is that when I finally turn 65, when life is supposed to be less stressful and free of complications, my car receives a death prognosis in September, 2011.
After the first mechanic I took my car to takes a cursory look at my leaky engine, I asked him, Well, what’s your prognosis? Is it going to live?
He said, You’ve got three major problems: a steering fluid leak, a transmission leak, and one or two bad UV joints that need fixing. He looks at me seriously, I frown back at him and sigh with recognition that I’ve lost the battle, and he says, If I were you, I’d just let it die a natural death.
I know he is implying the repairs were going to be very expensive, and he knew from past work he had done for me that I didn’t have enough money to throw away on dying cars. I assumed his death knell for my Honda was one of kindness and consideration for my financial situation.
But what he didn’t understand was that the prohibitive cost of another newer car was beyond my means. I would not be able to afford a newer used car and a new insurance policy and I didn’t want to be stuck with an older car, or one as old as mine which may have unknown problems to be discovered one by one. At least with my car, I know certain things. For one, I know it has never been in a major accident.
And there was a hidden cost: losing my car meant losing my freedom and independence, but more than that, it meant losing my sense of security and safety. I’ve always felt that if I had nothing else in life—no money, no place to live—I’d at least have a car to sleep in. I’d always loved taking road trips, discovering new roads less traveled, and beautiful countryside and small towns along the way. And all the while, as an independent person, I could go anywhere, be anywhere and feel safe and secure in my own car.
After a few weeks of pondering what to do, I realized I could not just let my car die without a second opinion. The second mechanic looked at it and said it had a bad steering fluid leak and one bad UV joint. He estimated it would cost $638.00.
Only $638 dollars? Wow, maybe this is doable! I expected it to be more around a thousand dollars. From my saved pet-sitting earnings, combined with a few birthday gifts, I knew I could plunk down at least $500 in cash. And he agreed to carry the last bit with installment payments. I said, let’s do it!
However, fixing the car was problematic. The engine compartment, frozen and filthy, was full of old brown pine needles and maple leaves and dirt from having to park outside through heat and cold and wind and snow…and of course, from my neglect of the poor thing.
First, his crew worked long hours just to get the parts off. Second, since they don’t make parts for ‘86 Honda’s anymore, they needed to purchase used parts. Used parts are a hit and miss game, not always in perfect condition. He wound up replacing these old parts three times to find a good one (at his expense), but the third time was a charmer.
He bought used parts three times, he had paid his crew for the extra work hours each time, and he never increased his original estimate. I expressed my concern that he was losing money on my job, but he comforted me by telling me that he would fix the car. That was his job. He would work on it until it was fixed. This man’s name is Paul Potter and he owns and operates Potter’s Tires and Auto Repairs on Hwy. 101 in Florence, a couple of doors down from Fred Meyers.
After all was said, I waited to hear that death knell again: he never wanted to see me again or work on my old car again. Don’t bring it back here. Not fixable. He never said those words of course. I asked him if he would help me keep it running for a few more years. That’s when he said it should get 250 thousand miles. He gave me suggestions of how I could maintain it better and I promised to bring my car in more frequently for the tune-ups—the least I could do was give him my future business for basic preventive care medicine. Perhaps if he caught problems earlier, it would cost less to fix the problem.
The car is old and has been sorely neglected. Parts are rusting and rotting and falling off, fading away. Door locks no longer work properly. The key is often gripped by an unseen force that won’t let me turn it one way or another, like the arthritis in my fingers – they get stuck in one position. The window-washer fluid-hose snapped apart like someone cut it with shears. Chronic fatigue. The black vinyl material covering the exterior metal parts is shedding dead skin like after a sun burn. The dried-up rubber seals in the doors are breaking apart. The doors no longer have tight seals. Water and cold seeps in. The once-nice bumpers burst out in huge fade spots a few years back that look like the areas of skin which have lost all pigmentation due to discoid Lupus. The car’s surface looks like it has broken out with a bad case of acne with its pits and scars and bumps of tree sap and a few dents. Its dark blue color now faded is like the color of my mother’s eyes that drained away to gray as she got older.
Old cars suddenly or slowly develop leaks seemingly for no reason at all other than neglect, like our bodies begin to leak from places we never thought we’d leak: mouth, eyes, ears, nose, and those ahhummmm unmentionables. There are products, duct tape for the leaks, repair jobs, medications, and exercises. Use it or lose they say about our bodies and minds. Well it’s true of cars too. Keep it lubed, drive it or lose it.
I bought a warming wrap used by hikers and campers and I lay it over the car’s engine under the hood at night to hopefully keep the engine warm and dry. The auto parts salesman thought I was nuts. The heat will just escape under the engine he said, but I thought it worth a try. And besides, what else is new? I’m a little bit nuts. I also use newspapers on the windshield to keep the ice from blanketing the glass in a cold snap—nothing worse than scraping off ice with frozen hands on a chilled winter morning. Because I once woke up with all movable parts on my car frozen solid, couldn’t even open the door without the hair drier, I also spray the locks and door edges and wiper-joints with a de-icer periodically which keeps them from freezing
I’m thinking of using duct tape to cover the exposed metal parts. Black duct tape would look just like the original black covering and it would protect the metal from rust—if the water and the freeze and thaw temperatures don’t cause the tape to crack and flake off. I duct-taped the windshield-wiper water-hose together, but unfortunately it didn’t hold for even one day. I used a bright red duct tape. It occurs to me that I could have many colors of duct tape decorating my car in my attempts to hold it together. There is a candy-striped red and white, a purple, hot pink, red, green, yellow, white and black and the standard silver tone. The car could become my canvas. This reminds me of a painting I did in grad school on which I used duct tape wrapped around the entire canvas. It turned out to be one of those paintings with multiple meanings and associations. In my mind it started out as an expression of pain but it wound up as an expression of healing. Holding my car together with colorful duct tape…hmmmmm
In a mental effort to put my car problems in perspective, I had an insight: I envisioned the auto’s aging and breaking down as a perfect analogy to my own age and body breaking down. What is happening with my auto is happening to my body, aging and breaking, freezing with arthritis, and leaking. When you grow up with a car, so to speak, you and it become old together, all the aches and pains of the car and body are living in parallel aging worlds, but it’s as if the rust and destruction and frozen joints of one are transmitted to the other: the minute you start the car, you are jump-starting the transmutation of the rust and goo of this hunk of metal and iron into your own physical body.
Some parts of the aging process of our bodies and our autos are due to normal atrophy that would occur no matter what we do. On the other hand we could make it last longer with better care. Due to my neglect of the health of my auto and my body and mind, things have fallen into disrepair or dis-ease as my father would say, at a much faster rate than they should have perhaps. These days I am holding my body together with artificial means in an attempt to keep it functioning smoothly. I call it the duct tape of adaptation, self-healing and medicine.
Somehow the old faded blue Honda has become very important to my own physical and emotional survival and to my understanding of what my life has become. We need each other. It’s a strange symbiosis. I must keep my old car going. To do that, I must take better care of my now fragile body and mind… to keep on going: going on being.
To take better care of my auto, I must take better care of my body. I have no other choice—the auto/body connection.
11 Comments so far
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Well, Susan, you’ve done it again. I enjoyed reading your adventures with your car’s health, and I think the metaphor is great. I, too, am getting to the place where the old engine ( mine, not my car’s) isn’t running as smoothly as it used to, but still, it’s all I’ve got! I’m thankful that I’ve no major complaints yet. Let’s hope that with lots of TLC our car engines and body engines get us through lots more years of plein air painting
Comment by Jan W. January 18, 2012 @ 12:52 PMThank you!
Comment by Susan Canavarro January 18, 2012 @ 12:57 PMYou bet Jan. I’m looking forward to our painting sessions. The old engine is all we’ve got, and we just have to keep on going, keep on going on being. I find that a very helpful thought, and a hopeful thought! Mine is chugging along, but going on being!
Susan
Susan: If I weren’t serious I’d have suggested Elle or Cosmo. Those babies must have all kinds of troubles with cars and bodies. No. I’m not joking. The article is humrous, pointed, well written, metaphoric. It’s the kind piece that would make the AARP publication something better than the Aging Celebrity on the Cover, doing what the Aging Celebrity did when the Aging Celebrity was a Bright-Shining Celebrity–feeding us a line of celebrity worship crap.
Comment by jack remick January 17, 2012 @ 5:19 PMOkay, Jack. Very funny. I believe you. I’m glad you saw the humor in my piece.
Comment by Susan Canavarro January 17, 2012 @ 6:48 PMIt is hard soemtimes, though, to know when someone is being humorous or sarcastic or serious as hell when it is the written word. You can’t see their faces, read their faces, their eyes, was that a smile or smirk? Did his nose just twitch?
Susan
You may have started something, Jack.
Comment by Susan Canavarro January 17, 2012 @ 6:51 PMSusan,
SO good to “hear” from you again. I am in total agreement with Jack and grb….
Comment by jacquie r wagenschutz January 17, 2012 @ 4:59 PMjrw
Thanks, jacquie.
Comment by Susan Canavarro January 17, 2012 @ 6:49 PMJack has a great idea and I encourage you to sent this to AARP and maybe the Reader’s Digest.
Comment by gb January 17, 2012 @ 2:19 PMgrb
I’ll think on it! Needs more work.
Comment by Susan Canavarro January 17, 2012 @ 3:00 PMThanks grb.
Holy toledo what an odyssey, trial by fire. Wonderful writing, Susan. Can you send it to AARP magazine? I’m serious. Check it out anyway. What a wonderful metaphor you track here. Very novelistic and complete. Car=body; take care of car, take care of body. Very very very…great.
Comment by jackremickJack Remick January 17, 2012 @ 1:27 PMSigned,
Jack’s Body
I never know if you are serious, Jack. But I appreciate your words and that you are so damn quick with a reponse. Amazing. I think I had just uploaded it and your response was waiting in my email, immediately. How does that happen?? Sending it to AARP would be interesting. Thanks Jack.
Comment by Susan Canavarro January 17, 2012 @ 1:36 PM