Thursday, February 13, 2014

Cars, Vehicles and Automobiles

One of our cars broke down late last week roughly a week before we had planned on getting a new one. I think it heard us talking bad about it and decided to commit suicide. I'm not a huge car person. I feel they are not worth the problems you could get with them. And there are people out there who will swear that it's all about what kind of car you get but I like to think of it more like getting cable or satellite service. It can work fine all the time for me but someone with the same service down the street could be calling a technician every other day. Despite being made on an assembly line, every car is different.

When I was in high school, and I went to a rural high school, cars were the main thing the kids, boy kids anyway, talked about. Chevy is better than Ford. Foreign cars are the worst. Why don't you have a truck? Kias are made from the recycled metal of Fords. It was all very stupid but now I work at that same high school and things haven't changed. Chevy is still better than Ford but in power, not reliability. Foreign cars are still the worst and don't get me started on trucks. Occasionally I'll get someone asking me what kind of car I drive. I tell them but I also mention that cars, for me, are just a mode to get to point A and point B. For some reason, now that I'm thirty, I don't really care what car I drive because I have more and bigger things to worry about.

I knew several people growing up who would swear by one type of car and they owned that one type of car but even if the car ran, every weekend it would be worked on which led me to wonder was having that car worth it? My first car was a 1987 GMC Jimmy. I loved that car despite it being a piece of crap. Right after I bought it the starter went out so I had to get that fixed then my wipers stopped working so I got that fixed, then something happened to my transmission so that was fixed (luckily it was a just a hose needing repaired) and then the brakes went out. I tried to get those fixed on the cheap but I couldn't. I realized the vehicle was more of a problem than it was worth so I got rid of it.

Our neighbors have a car in their driveway that hasn't run since they towed it onto their property roughly six months ago. Every decent weekend he and a couple other people spend the entire day standing in the driveway attempting to fix it. They haven't succeeded yet. I call these gatherings an "Old Fashioned Redneck Car Fixin'" I'm not making fun. I've been a part of these Fixin's before but in none of them has anything ever been accomplished. I am all for an excuse for friends to get together, imbibe in some alcohol and just shoot the shit but why does it have to be centered around repairing a car that may or may not ever run again? If you spend $1,000 fixing a car but it took you a year and half to do it, wouldn't that be same as taking it to a professional, spending $2,500 and getting it back in one to two days?

But it's not really about fixing the car is it? Maybe but it's a very minute reason. You just want to drink and hang out with friends so whatever. When you finally get that car working, I call shotgun.

My last car, before this one that just died, has been, by far, my favorite but once it started costing too much to keep on the road it was time to get rid of it. While I may really like my car, I know when to let go. I don't know understand why people who let their cars do nothing and drain their money are sometimes the same people who hate when people do nothing and drain their money.

Yeah, maybe that was a bad analogy.

Until,next time, I remain...

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