Over the past while, my beloved car has slowly begun to fall apart.
It started when the air conditioner quit working. For a long while, air only came out of the defrost vents next to the windshield. On really hot days, you could lean over the steering wheel and occasionally a small amount of semi-cool air would hit your face. Likewise, during the cold of the Texas winter, you could hold your freezing hands near the glass and warm them slightly. It proved to be an easy problem to fix; a small pin size hole had developed in the tube that switched between A/C and defrost. We paid someone some money and corrected the problem.
The next adventure was the seatbelts in the back seat. Heat and years of use broke the buckle part, and eventually one of them quit working entirely.
Then the mileage counter quit counting miles. It is forever frozen at 128079. Not to say we haven't traveled much further since then.
Problems continued with the cranky speakers. The bass had long since completely gone out, so there was always a little background fuzziness, but the lovely speakers have now decided that only one of them will work at a time. The truly fun part is guessing which one has chose to work at a particular moment. Any time you close a door or drive over a bump or even brake quickly, the sound rotates to a new speaker.
And then it was the driver's side window. The handle that you turn to crank the window down broke off, leaving the window permanently rolled up. Which doesn't seem like a problem until you realize that every time you go to the bank, or go to happy hour at Sonic, or turn in books at the library, or return your movie at blockbuster, or enter a parking garage, or get directions from the construction workers on the side of the road, or even just pull up next to your friend in the parking lot to make plans, you will not be able to roll down your window. Rather, you will have to open the door and get out of the car while the person behind you at the ATM stares at you like you've literally lost your mind and the construction worker looks like you're going to attack him since people don't usually get out of the vehicle in those types of situations.
But all these were manageable. It was the time that the clutch started acting up a month ago that we took the car in to the shop to be fixed. Which all seems rather harmless. We decided to have the clutch and brakes fixed, and the door replaced.
Well the car was returned in the most awful condition. The air conditioner had completely gone out, you had to slam in the clutch as far as it went and then jerk the gear shift as hard as possible, and they had managed to cut the muffler so the engine was insanely loud. The door was fixed though. That was a plus. In the interim before we returned it to the shop, I left work one afternoon to find that I could turn the key in a complete circle in the ignition while the car made no response. We had to have the ignition replaced and I then had two keys to the car: one to open the door, and another to start the engine.
Eventually we got the whole thing fixed, though the muffler never did return to perfect condition. And then last Wednesday, at approximately 5:28 pm, I was driving to work and the car died while I was stopped at a stop light. It was rather frightening actually.
My lovely vehicle has a habit of revving the engine on it's own while you're in a stationary position, so I though nothing of it while the engine revved as I sat at the light. But then the engine started making some loud noises, and it began to smell like something was on fire, and then the car turned off, much as if I had stalled out. I turned the key in an effort to restart the car, but to no avail. The most horrible noise, much like the sound you get when the chain falls off your bike and the gears grind together, came from the engine. I finally got it to jump forward, but I couldn't get it out of first. I rolled onto the street where I was working, and the car died right there. Leaving it on the side of the road, I ran to work.
Dad got the car, push-started it, and began to drive it to the shop, only to have it die on the side of the road. We towed it to Goodyear later that night.
The conclusion of my story came late yesterday evening when we heard the sad news: our car will never return. It breaks my heart just a little; it was my first car. I have many memories of driving in that good old friend. He was reliable, for the most part, and he got me where I needed to go.
So here's to my car, may he rest in peace.
Goodbye, my friend. You served me well.
That's all.
