What’s the use?

10 comments on What’s the use?
10 minutes

In 1989 I bought my first brand-new car. I had just graduated college, gotten a job, and moved into an apartment when Dad said, “Enough freeloading; I’m coming in two weeks to get my car back.” I looked for a used car, hoping to save money, but nobody in town would lend me money because I had no credit history.

Disappointed but undaunted, I turned to General Motors, which offered to lend me up to thirty thousand dollars to buy a new car. “You’ve achieved so much,” the form letter said, “with your recent graduation. We think that makes you a good risk, so we invite you to reward yourself with a fine new General Motors car.” I went to a Chevy dealer and, resisting considerable upselling, picked out an entry-level car, a maroon Beretta with four cylinders and five speeds. I splurged on a cassette stereo; everything else was as basic as I could get. The interest rate was obscene, but I could manage the payment, so I signed the loan papers on a Thursday. Besides, Dad was coming on Saturday whether I had a car or not. With just 16 miles on the odometer, I drove it home.

newcar

I’d never driven a new car. It cruised so smoothly! It passed without sounding like it would rattle apart! That stereo really rocked! Still, I was not enjoying the car payment, and realized that I would want to keep this car long after it was paid off. This meant keeping my car in top shape so it would be worth having then. So I followed the maintenance schedule religiously and had even small problems checked out. I also washed and waxed my car about every week and kept the interior clean, because I’d want it to look good in the future, too.

And then the troubles started.

One week after I bought the car, the drive thru at McDonald’s didn’t put the lid tight enough on the orange juice. I never got it fully out of the seat, the door fabric, and the carpet.

After about a month, a dying tree hanging over the road decided to deposit one of its large branches on my car’s roof as I drove under it. Just after I got the car back from the body shop, an F-350 with an iron flatbed decided to change lanes without checking his mirrors. Here’s the result.

That’s $2,000 worth of damage. The truck’s driver somehow convinced the cop that I hit him, even though the glass from my window was all in my lane. So on top of paying my deductible to repair this damage, my insurance company charged me a special fee of several hundred dollars for having caused the accident. I didn’t know they could do that! They also nearly doubled my rate, which was already terribly high because I was male, unmarried, and under 25. I changed insurance companies, but I still had to eat peanut butter and hot dogs for three months while I recovered from that financial mess. And then the body shop screwed up the repair three times.

The windshield wipers quit working after a few months, and it took the dealer three tries to get the repair to last. After about eighteen months, the stereo died. I saved up and put a new one in myself. Then the power steering pump started making strange noises. It took the repair shop four tries to put in a pump that worked.

I’d had the car about four years when I was hit in the right rear corner after I hit a patch of ice and slid partway off the road. What looked like minor body damage turned out to be several thousand dollars’ worth of frame straightening. The body shop did a pretty good job, but still the front-seat passenger could pretty easily put their foot on a spot on the floor and with very little pressure make it pop like the lid of a baby-food jar.

Then one day when I tried to turn the car off, something snapped and my key spun freely in the ignition. Turns out that a long aluminum rod that connected to the starter solenoid broke in half. The fine gentlemen who repaired it couldn’t get the steering wheel on straight. When I insisted they get that right, they sent their burliest mechanic to try to intimidate me into leaving. When that didn’t work, they got it on straight all right – by breaking the steering column. I could move the steering wheel about an inch up and down or left and right. I was disgusted, but not wanting to deal with those mechanics anymore I drove it away like that. I ended up never getting it fixed. The car drove fine.

After about six years, the headliner started coming down over the back seat passengers’ heads. I reattached it with neat rows of staples. I noticed that the clear coat was chipping off both doors. And finally, one day as I leaned back to square my butt in the seat, a bracket that held the seat to the floor sheared in half, and I found myself suddenly staring at the neat rows of staples in the ceiling. Thankfully, I hadn’t started the car yet. I fixed that myself with a bracket from a junked Beretta.

The last couple years I owned the car, I washed it maybe a couple times a year, and I’d let it go long between oil changes. My enthusiasm for the car was gone. I felt like I had wasted my effort to keep the car nice, and I felt a lot of disappointment. What was the use when outside events and fate, I guess, had conspired against my little car so much? I didn’t expect it to last forever, but I had wanted it to stay nice longer. And then, as if in defiance during those neglectful years, it had rolled through 150,000 miles when I sold it.

Cars fall apart, of course. It’s what they do. I was naive to think my Beretta would stay like new for so many years. But to my surprise, now that ten years have passed since I sold that car, I look at it differently.

I remember the day I found a long, straight stretch of deserted state highway and put my foot to the floor as I rowed through the gears. With a big smile on my face, I learned that my car could go just beyond 100 miles per hour.

I remember how well, for an inexpensive economy car, it held the road when I pushed it through curves and over hills. I could get it momentarily airborne on a particular rise around a curve on State Road 42 west of Brazil. I hope it’s not too indelicate to say that my car’s handling made my butt happy.

I remember long road trips I took in my car – a sweep through Detroit, Toronto, Niagara Falls, and Hoboken by myself to see old friends, and a trip to the Kanawha Valley of West Virginia with my dad to see where he grew up and meet relatives I never knew I had.

I remember listening to mix tapes and tapes of old radio shows in my car as I drove around town. I often sang along, not much caring whether anybody else saw me.

I remember driving in my car to the old mill dam in Terre Haute with my girlfriend, where we’d sit and talk, solving world problems, and maybe have a smooch.

I remember getting out of a speeding ticket in Thorntown in my car.

I remember a frigid January day when I brought my first baby home in my car.

In other words, I remember enjoying my car as it took me places and helped me spend time with people I loved.

It’s easy to think that I feel better about the car now because time heals all wounds. But rather I think I was so focused on making the car last that I was often closed to enjoying the car while it lasted.

I’ve been studying the book of Ecclesiastes lately. The last part of chapter 2 talks about the frustration of working hard to build up something only to later have to hand it over to somebody else, who may screw it all up. Even though this isn’t exactly my car story, verses 22-25 do apply:

What does a man get for all the toil and anxious striving with which he labors under the sun? All his days his work is pain and grief; even at night his mind does not rest. This too is meaningless. A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?

I spent a lot of time chasing after the wind, as Ecclesiastes says, on my car. There was nothing wrong with taking care of my car – it is prudent to take care of our things so they last as long as they can. But my taking care of it interfered with my ability to experience the joys of owning and using it. I didn’t even enjoy washing and waxing the car; I did it mostly from my drive to keep it nice. It was like I was compulsively hoarding pennies in a jar for another day, checking my jar every day to see how many pennies I had, hoping that I could count on those pennies in the clutch. I wasn’t living in the present, enjoying what God has given me in that moment, trusting God to provide.

Today I have a 2003 Toyota Matrix, which I got in my divorce. It had been my ex-wife’s car and she had picked it out, but she wanted our family car instead when we split. I wish it weren’t red – the only color I like less on a car is white – and I wish it had a little more power. But little car has grown on me anyway. I love its fuel economy, its CD stereo, and that the hatch can swallow a surprising amount of stuff. I don’t have as much time as I used to for washing and waxing my cars, but I took this photo right after I managed to put a good shine on her:

My car

This car is not without its troubles. The clutch makes a funny hooting noise when it’s humid or damp outside, it sometimes stalls when just starting to roll, it has lost five wheel covers so far (at $80 each), and I’m about to have to take the car back for the fourth time to get a brake job done right.

My prayer today is that God will help me enjoy this car as His gift to me as I drive my boys to the park in it, take it on road trips, drive to work while singing along to CDs, maybe make a return trip to Hoboken this year, and yes, wash it and wax it and keep to the maintenance schedule so it will last as long as it can.


Comments

10 responses to “What’s the use?”

  1. chairoelpis Avatar
    chairoelpis

    Sounds an aweful lot like the first care I bought when I got married: 1988 Chrysler LeBaron GTS. My mechanic said to me (after many, many visits), “I think I hate your care more than you do.”
    :)

    Ecclesiastes is my favorite book. Many think it’s a book about meaninglessness but I’ve experienced it as a book about joy.

    Thanks for your inspiring words.

    Peace,
    Sean

  2. Jim Avatar

    I remember the LeBaron GTS. It could be rough to own a late-80s Chrysler product, as I recall.

    I had to gain a bit of spiritual maturity before I could see Ecclesiastes as a book of hope and joy. When I started to see how staying focused on, and accepting, this present moment led to peace, then Ecclesiastes started making sense.

    If you visit again, please link to your blog so I can come visit.

  3. Spikers Avatar
    Spikers

    Hey there…read yea history on the car yea have…and wanna say…I have the same type of car exactly…88 beretta, 2.5, auto. I bought this car for $1000.00 used. The guy before me had put in over $2000.00 in work before I bought it, however, there is plenty wrong with it. Windsheild wiper pump is re wired to a external pump and the safety neutral pump is bypassed. I have put a new starter, alternator, battery, tires, block got warped after I drove it to a garage with the main belt broken, windsheild has tons of small chips, thanks to the good ole semi’s, doors are falling apart, dash is cracked. Its a restoration veicle for me, but recently, all tail lights quit on me, no turn signals, no heat really, horn dont work, ac dont work, and finally cruise dont work. Thinking that when they built these cars perhaps they were poorly built? dunno. Beginning to be a pain, so am doing a quick fix and sellin her cheap lol….just wanted to relate, and fill yea in on some more problems that could have happened way down the road. I relate to how yea feel though about cars that we have put so much into and can never get ahead…

  4. Eric Avatar
    Eric

    Your story has brought back a lot of memories. My first car was a new 1989 Beretta. It was maroon with the maroon interior and had the v6 with an automatic transmission. Several of your experiences with your Beretta were eerily similar to mine (particularly the breaking and trouble getting it fixed correctly). That car was always in the shop (and the local chevy dealership never fixed the problem on the first visit), but I truly loved that car. In 1996 (against my wishes), my parents got tired of the repair bills and they sold it. As much as I loved that car, I will never own another Chevy because of the poor quality and lousy service department.

  5. Jim Avatar

    Eric, the main thing I learned from my Beretta experience is to avoid the dealership repair shop!

  6. Lone Primate Avatar
    Lone Primate

    Aw, man. :) My first car was the Civic I “inherited” from my folks when they got a lease on another. It was pretty old even then but I felt like a millionaire. :) I guess I had it less than a year; I was driving it to work one day and it was driving a little rough so I thought I’d be smart and I took it into the shop. Well, they somehow managed to convince me the transmission was gone and it would no longer reverse… I didn’t even check it; I just let them BS me into signing it over for the cost of the repairs. Man, why did I let them do that? :( Oh, well. :)

  7. daniel b michel Avatar

    A car…THE rite of passage into the grown up world…I worked in radio almost 2 years before i was old enough to get my license…So i had stacks of money for a kid…Then came my first car…Thereafter…at least for a long time…My cars (and trucks) were money eating machines that kept me living from paycheck to paycheck…But i wouldn’t have missed those hungry years for the world…I learned a lot about my friends in my rock ‘n’ rolling talk show/singalong with the radio cars and trucks…I learned a lot about radio by listening to the best of the best on WLS on the car radio…I learned a lot about driving from the accidents i had…I learned a lot about life because of those old cars and trucks…And with God’s help…i always made it home…

    I was almost 30 before i got my first brand new vehicle…But driving it was never quite the same as the old beaters i drove back in the day…My closest high school friends have all moved away like i did…But they didn’t move back to our hometown like i did…The opening theme and credits of “That ’70’s Show” says it all…For me…It really was like that…And i do miss it…a lot…

    1. Jim Avatar

      Yeah, when the car runs well it’s great, but when it doesn’t, it can sure deplete your savings!

  8. gaycarboys Avatar

    I’ve never owned a brand new car as I have a new car for a week every week, sometimes 2 cars. I did love my old SAAB though so I know how you felt about your baby being set on by a truck!

    1. Jim Avatar

      Owning a brand new car is overrated. I bought the Beretta new, and I bought two brand new cars for my wife while I was married, and with that experience I’ve decided that used is the way to go!

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