I Can't Stop!

A week and a half ago, I had to bring my car to the shop.  While driving to work, I noticed my brakes getting worse and worse.  By the time I got to work, the brake lights were on and I could hardly stop!  I popped the hood, checked the brake fluid and found that the reservoir was completely empty!  I filled it and drove home, but by the time I got home, I had no brakes again.

I noticed brake fluid leaking from under my back tire, so (slowly and carefully) I took it to the shop.  The mechanic asked me if I had hit some debris in the road?  I told him that was likely with all the hurricane debris everywhere.  He replaced both the brake lines in the back that had been torn up.  Good to go!

This morning early I got in my car.  A few miles down the road, I thought I was experiencing deja vu all over again like Yogi Berra said.  No brakes.  I drove very carefully on to work.  It was a strain.  I stayed purposefully well behind other motorists.  I felt as if I might have to pull a "Fred Flintstone" at any moment and use my feet to stop the car.

When it turned daylight, I popped the hood.  No brake fluid!  I climbed under the car to inspect and found that the brand-spanking-new brake line had holes in it and was leaking brake fluid on the pavement.  Well, I did what any redneck would do.  I found a roll of duct tape and taped up the holes read good and re-filled the reservoir with... Automatic Transmission Fluid.  I didn't have any brake fluid at work and didn't want to risk driving around town to get it.  I googled and found that ATF can be used as a replacement for brake fluid.

At quitting time I drove home.  Painstakingly.  Carefully.  About 10 miles down the road on my journey, the fluid leaked out and I had no brakes.  I called Tricia and asked her to meet me at the mechanic's shop as it needed repairs... again!

During the day, I began to think about it.  Something was just not right.  Too coincidental.  And I didn't remember hitting any debris in the road.  Then it hit me.  I recently learned that Belle (our Great Pyrenees livestock guardian dog who enjoys eating our chickens more than guard them), has chewed all the valve stem caps off of my car tires.  Even though she is huge, she enjoys laying under my car.  I always have to check before backing out.  What is she doing under my car?  I couldn't wait to get home to confirm my suspicions!

And there it is.  It was too dark this morning to see it, but there is a big puddle of brake fluid where my car was parked.  Overnight Belle plotted my demise, probably sharpened her teeth with a file and cut through my brake line, intending me great physical harm.  Belle proudly sits beside her handiwork.  Argh!  Belle doesn't know it yet, but she's moving out to the pasture.  This weekend we are going to put her in a spot fenced off from the chickens where she can roam without eating chickens or brake lines.  What else are you gonna do when your dog is trying to kill you?  

My First Car

Growing up on a farm, I began driving at a very early age out of necessity.  We helped out at the farm and that involved driving.  We got an opportunity to do that as soon as we could see over the dashboard.  Out in the middle of a field, there wasn't much you could damage.  Running into a ditch was about the most trouble you could get into - and I did that a time or three.

When I got my driver's license at 15 that just formalized the driving arrangement.  I shared Dad's pickup truck with him and would clean all of the farm dirt out of it prior to nights out on the town with friends.  Later, when I graduated from high school, my parents gave me the biggest blessing and got me a car.  I remember going to the showroom and looking at brochures.  This one below caught my eye.  Sporty yet classic design.  The Oldsmobile Cutlass Supreme Brougham. 

I was so doggone proud of that car!  I promptly put a sound system in it and would open the sunroof and listen to Van Halen's (appropriately named) "1984" cassette as loud as it would go.  It had upholstered seats that were comfortable and it drove so smoothly.  Off to college I went.  I parked my car in the Kirby Smith Dormitory parking lot and wouldn't you know somebody vandalized it.  They took a key and marked a big X on the hood and across the driver's side door panel.  I remember being VERY upset.  I remember wishing very bad things on the vandal.  He was never caught.  The insurance company repainted it and all was right in the world again -for a while.

After college graduation, I accepted a position with Exxon in Houston and drove it to the city.  I wanted to familiarize myself with the route to work the day before I was to start, so I drove down the Southwest Freeway into downtown.  Right prior to getting into the heart of downtown, you pass under the Pierce Elevated (I-45).  Being from a small town, all red lights hung from a line in the CENTER of the intersection.  Not so, I quickly learned, in Houston.  They were on small poles on the side of the road.

I blew threw a candy apple-colored red light and T-boned a Houston Police cruiser.  I was wearing some Ray Ban Aviator sunglasses whose wire frames dug into my eyebrows when my head met the rear view mirror with considerable force.  I went to the hospital and got stitched up and went to work the next morning on my first day looking pretty rough.  Although I looked bad, I was okay.  My Olds Cutlass Supreme was not so fortunate.  It was totaled.  I still think about that car.  If only I had paid more attention...  I bought a replacement.  A Toyota Cressida with 252,000 miles on it.  In an understatement, it wasn't near as nice as the Cutlass.  It did get me to and from work though.  In fact, Tricia and I had our first date in that car.  We were driving down Chimney Rock Road in Houston to go to a restaurant and a spark plug blew out of the aluminum head of the engine.  I had to push it into a service station and have it towed.  (Despite that, she still married me!)

Back to the Oldsmobile, they haven't been manufactured in fifteen years!  I read up on it and found according to this Oldsmobile link, after the Cutlass Supreme was the best selling automobile, a mere 20 years later, the last Oldsmobile rolled off the assembly line.  Here's what that link says about it:

In 1897, Ransom E. Olds (1864-1950), an Ohio-born engine maker, founded the Olds Motor Vehicle Company in Lansing. In 1901, the company, then known as Olds Motor Works, debuted the Curved Dash Oldsmobile, a gas-powered, open-carriage vehicle named for its curved front footboard. More than 400 of these vehicles were sold during the first year, at a price of $650 each (around $17,000 in today’s dollars).
In 1908, Oldsmobile was the second brand, after Buick, to become part of the newly established General Motors (GM). Oldsmobile became a top brand for GM and pioneered such features as chrome-plating in 1926 and, in 1940, the first fully automatic transmission for a mass-market vehicle. Oldsmobile concentrated on cars for middle-income consumers and from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, the Oldsmobile Cutlass was America’s best-selling auto. However, in the decades that followed, sales began to decline, prompting GM to announce in 2000 that it would discontinue the Oldsmobile line with the 2004 models. When the last Oldsmobile rolled off the assembly line in April 2004, more than 35 million Oldsmobiles had been built during the brand’s lifetime. Along with Daimler and Peugeot, Oldsmobile was among the world’s oldest auto brands.

There are several morals to this story, I suppose.  First and foremost, keep your eyes on the road and pay attention to traffic signals - wherever they may be placed.  Not doing so could cost you your life, or at least a hospital visit, embarrassment, and the loss of a beautiful car.  Next, don't rest on your laurels.  In twenty short years you could go from being the very best and on top of the world to defunct. 

If You Break It, You Buy It

"If you break it, you buy it," was a quote I often heard as a boy.  I think it probably originated from shopkeepers who tired of young boys going in their shops, rough-housing and breaking the merchandise.  They wisely instituted a rule that made the parents have to buy the items that kids broke.

I hadn't thought about that in a long time until just recently.  At my last place of employment, I had a company car.  I figured since I was driving a company vehicle, I had no reason to keep the old "beater" that I was driving, even though it was paid for to save paying insurance on a car I wasn't driving.  So I let it go.  It seemed like a wise move until my employment came to an end after a year and I suddenly found myself shopping for a vehicle.

We scoured the Internet looking for a dependable used car and found it right in our home town.  On a recent Saturday morning, Tricia and I poured ourselves big mugs of coffee (this will be an important part of the story later on) and drove approximately 4 1/2 miles into town to the used car dealer.  And there she was: A pearl white 2017 Hyundai Sonata with only 31,500 miles on it and reasonably priced.  It was a rental vehicle like our existing car.  They must turn them in after 31,000 miles as that was the same amount of mileage that our existing car had.

We were pretty certain if we could get the price down by $400 or so, we'd make the purchase.  I sat in the driver's seat and turned on the ignition.  I heard Tricia open the back door on the driver's seat and lean over.  She may have said, "uh oh."  Or she may have said, "Doggonit!"  I'm not sure, but when I turned around, she had a funny look on her face and said, "I spilled my coffee on the backseat!" 

She went and told the car salesman what she had done.  He said, "That's okay.  We'll get it out."  I told him, "If we break it, we have to buy it?"  We laughed.  A few days later we went back and closed the deal.  Tricia's coffee stain still graces the back seat reminding us that it okay to laugh at ourselves.

No one else probably notices it, but we do.  Everyone always says after you buy a new car, that sooner or later you get that first 'ding' in the door that initiates a vehicle's rapid depreciation.  Our first 'ding' or coffee stain actually happened before we officially purchased it!