Chapter 20
Freedom of the Road
As I’m in the mode of thinking back on my life after marriage I thought about the 1980 something Sunbird I was driving right after the divorce. The car I had been driving for several years during the marriage was on its last leg and I was still getting used to getting by on one income. At the time Jessie was in the third grade and I walked her to school every day. We passed by a car for sale in a neighbor’s yard every day for a couple of months and we agreed it was so ugly it was cute.
One day after I dropped Jessie off at school the owner of the car happened to be outside when I passed by, and I stopped to chat with him. He said the car had been owned by his daughter who used it for college. He was a mechanic and had maintained it for her. He opened it up and showed me the furry, blue ceiling lining with black leopard spots with matching seat covers. The steering wheel and the stick shift handle were covered with fluffy pink fake fur. The rear view mirror sported a fuchsia monkey wearing a tiara. Various stickers adorned the bumper, one of which touted the name of the college his daughter had attended. A Cub Scout was seen on another giving the three-finger salute with the helpful suggestion to tailgaters that they read between the lines. Yet another said “My other car’s the Bat mobile.” There were definitely some rust spots on it but otherwise the body looked in decent condition.
The sign in the window, right next to the long crack in the windshield, said “$400 or Best Offer,” and I asked if he’d had any offers. He said he’d been offered $200 by a neighbor he didn’t particularly like and had said no just because the guy was a pain in his cul de sac. I asked if he’d take $250 from a person of somewhat better character and he agreed.
I drove the car to pick Jessie up from school that day and knew she’d be excited to see me behind the wheel of the “new to us” car. When she came out of the school I waved her over. She was completely enraptured with the little beast of a car and was thrilled to see the blue leopard skin seats and ceiling.
“Get in,” I said, “let’s go for a joy ride!”
As she pulled the door closed upon getting in, however, we heard something fall and hit the pavement. She opened up the door and picked up a piece of rusty metal.
“This can’t be good,” she said as she bent down and picked up a chunk of the running board off of the blacktop.
“We don’t need that piece anyway,” I reassured her. “Throw it in the backseat and let’s take a ride!”
We put my favorite CD into the disk player, which was probably worth more than the car itself, and listened to Billy Joel’s “Glass Houses” for the better part of the afternoon while we drove all through Eaton Rapids, into Lansing, and out along mile after mile of beautiful country roads.
We had picked Josh up from his school, and the great feeling of freedom was contagious as we all sang along with Billy Joel while we drove in the sunshine.
I drove that car for nearly the next year with hardly a glitch. I most definitely got my $250 worth. All of the kids’ friends loved riding in it because of the cool way it had been dressed up by the previous, far more hip owner.
The following spring the driver’s side window got stuck and I called my friend Gary to come over to help. He rolled underneath the car and I saw that he was jimmying the window inside the door. I heard him tap on something and then a rather loud crack sounded.
“Damn it,” he said. He rolled out from underneath the car and he looked like he was wearing a raccoon’s mask. Upon closer inspection I could see that the mask was actually a fine layer of rust...apparently that was all that was holding the window up because the whole piece of glass had fallen completely out of the track and was wedged into the inside of the door.
“That’s a great look for you,” I said. “Zorro would be proud.”
“That’s nice,” he said, “you ridicule me while I risk my eyesight for this rust bucket.” He used a rag and wiped the rust from his face, leaving tawny colored streaks that looked like war paint.
“Pocahontas would think you’re hot,” I said.
“I’ll bet Pocahontas wouldn’t make fun of me if I was fixing this rust bucket for her.”
“She’d prefer a hollowed out log. They don’t rust.”
“Really,” Gary said, “you should start looking for a new car. I’ll have to tape the window in and you won’t be able to roll it up or down anymore.”
A couple of days later Jessie and I were on our way to pick up a pizza to celebrate my birthday when I saw bright blue and red lights in my rear view mirror. I pulled over and started to open the door to talk with the police officer.
“Please don’t open the door,” he said. “Just roll down your window.”
“I can’t roll down the window,” I shouted through the glass. “It doesn’t work.”
“Then open the door very slowly and step outside,” he shouted back.
I had to jimmy the door a bit to get it to open because the duct tape that was holding the window in made it a bit difficult to open or close it. I finally opened the door slowly and it creaked on its rusty hinges.
I stepped outside of the car and the policeman was actually smiling at the scenario I had just gone through to exit the vehicle. Well, I thought, at least he has a sense of humor.
“Do you know why I pulled you over?” he asked.
“Does it have anything to do with duct tape?” I said.
“That certainly played into it,” he said. “Can I see your driver’s license, registration, and insurance please?”
I leaned in and asked Jessie to look through the glove box for the paper work he had requested. She was rifling through for what seemed an inordinate amount of time when she handed me a postcard with a naked man lying on the beach.
“Why do you have this in here?” she asked in a rather shocked tone of voice.
“That’s not mine,” I said, obviously flustered. “It must have belonged to the girl who owned the car before me.”
“Right,” Jessie said. “That’s just gross!”
“Please just give me the paper work,” I said. I was ready to take my ticket and be on my way so I could go hide under a rock.
Again the policeman watched the interaction with a genuinely pleasant smile.
When the paperwork was finally produced he waved me back into my car and headed back to his cruiser to call in the information. He returned a few minutes later.
“I actually stopped you because of the crack in your windshield,” he said. “However your tabs expired as of yesterday as did your driver’s license.”
“I actually have the tabs sitting at home on my microwave. I’ve had them there for a couple of weeks now. I just forgot to put them on the license plate. And I went to the DMV at that same time to renew my license. They gave me a temporary and it’s on the microwave at home too.”
Money signs were starting to flash before my eyes as I mentally added up all of the tickets that could be given to me. I was just starting to get my finances in order and this could certainly set me back.
“Hmmm,” he said, as if deep in thought. “By the way, happy birthday.” He handed back my expired license and other papers. “I’m going to give you a warning, but if I see you driving around with duct tape on your window and a crack in your windshield again I will give you a ticket. The microwave is not a good place for your tabs. Go home and put them on the license plate. Oh, and don’t forget this,” he said and handed me the post card of the naked man which I had inadvertently handed to him with my other papers.
Sometimes the entire universe tries to tell me things like when it’s time to get rid of the car to which I’ve become emotionally attached, and yet I refuse to listen. The car was a symbol of my freedom at that point. It gave me the freedom of reliable transportation and was purchased with my own money without the help of a husband or partner or bank or any constraints of any kind. It wasn’t a thing of beauty but was in so many ways an exte
nsion of my new, independent life which I had completely embraced. Still I dug in my heels and hoped to get a few more miles out of the old girl. However the universe would speak even more loudly and far more clearly the following day.
It was a very frigid day with frost on the ground and the car had developed an aversion to the cold. I had taken it to my mechanic a couple of other times for a diagnosis of the problem but it could never be duplicated at the shop. I wondered if the mechanic thought I was just starved for attention as it always started right up for him, even when it was left overnight to try to duplicate the circumstances under which it had occurred the other times. He did, however, give me a lesson in the use of starter fluid with the advice to use it sparingly if the engine wouldn’t fire up.
The following day, with the tabs on my license plate, Jessie and I got into the car in the garage. I tried several times to start it up to no avail. I got out of the car, grabbed the starter fluid, and opened the hood. I sprayed just a bit into the carburetor, shut the hood, and tried again with the same result. I had used the starter fluid previously and it had worked great and so I gave it another try. I opened the hood, sprayed again, and turned the key in the ignition but was not rewarded with the roar of an engine.
“I hope you can get it started soon, mom,” Jessie said. “I don’t want to be late for school.”
“I know,” I said. “I’ll just give it another try.”
This time I really sprayed the starter fluid for a good length of time and piled it on thick. The theory was that if a little was good, then a lot would be much better, right? I left the hood up and returned to the driver’s seat. As I turned the key in the ignition, however, I watched as a flame shot out of the carburetor and then the flames started to grow.
“Get out of the car,” I shouted to Jessie. “Get out of the garage and away from the house!”
“You need to go too!” she said.
“I’m OK,” I reassured her, “I’m going to put the fire out. Just go now!” I could hear that she was crying but she did as I had asked.
I got out of the car, took off my winter jacket, and started beating the flames under the hood with the coat. I could see that the paper air filter had caught on fire and the plastic ring around the top of it melted to my jacket and was thrown out of the engine and onto the garage floor as I beat the flames. Unfortunately it landed right next to the plastic gas can which had been strategically placed next to my pile of firewood. I dashed over to the burning sphere, grabbed the dog’s water dish, and doused the flames with the cold liquid.
Jessie came back into the garage and looked at the smoking air filter. She hugged me tight.
“I was really scared that you’d get hurt,” she said.
“I told you I’d be OK,” I said. “I can handle these situations no sweat.” What I didn’t tell her was that my knees were shaking so hard that I couldn’t actually walk. I could only stand there and hug her back.
As we stood holding each other I looked over Jessie’s shoulder and watched as the smoking air filter caught fire again. I let go of Jessie and kicked it away from the wood pile and gas can and onto the driveway outside. I stomped out the flames and then soaked it with the garden hose.
My next door neighbor, Ruth, was getting into her car which was parked in the driveway we share.
“Is everything all right?” Ruth shouted across the drive.
“Actually we’ve had a bit of a mishap and my car’s no longer running. Could you drop Jessie off at school on your way?”
“Sure,” she said, “no problem at all. Get in Jessie.”
Jessie ran back for one final hug.
“I love you,” she said.
“I love you, too, Jessie,” I answered. “Have a great day at school.”
As I was heading into the house to call a tow truck I started emptying out the pockets of my jacket I had used to put out the flames. The jacket smelled like burning rubber and I wondered if the odor would come out in the wash. Along with some miscellaneous papers and an old pair of gloves I found my reading glasses. The frames would definitely need some work but the glass was not broken.
I sat down at the kitchen table to wait for the tow truck and realized the problem would definitely be duplicated at the mechanic’s shop this time. That was one bit of good news. I watched Ruth drive away with Jessie in the car and then I broke down crying, and I continued to cry until the tow truck was long gone with the car the universe had been whispering to me to release.
When Jessie came home after school she said, “Wow was that a bad start to the day.”
“You could look at it as a bad start,” I agreed, “or you could really look at it like a great start to the day.”
“How can you even say it was a great start? Our car caught on fire and almost burned our house down and now we don’t even have a car anymore! How can that possibly be a good start to the day?”
“Well,” I said quite earnestly, “Yes, the car did catch on fire, but the house did not burn down or even get a little burned. Ruth was there to take you to school and so you weren’t late. My jacket washed up just fine and I walked my glasses over to the optometrist’s office and they bent them back into place just as good as new. Gary loaned me his extra car until we can get a new one and I managed to save enough money during the last year while I was driving the old car for a nice down payment on a new car. Now that’s a truly great start to a day!”
“That’s some twisted thinking you’ve got going on in that dark, little mind of yours,” Jessie said, “but I really can’t argue with the logic. You’re right. Everything turned out great.”
And so I’ve learned to listen a little more closely when the universe starts to whisper. I also tend to stay away from starter fluid now and moved my gas can across the garage from the wood pile, learning life a bit at a time and making the best of each adventure. It really isn’t the situation at hand that’s the most important thing; it’s how we face it.
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