Out with Lynn’s Car

Posted on March 13, 2003 in Daily Life

Lynn left me her car, yesterday, because I am the man of the house and I’m supposed to know about these things.

Her car used to be my car. It still is my car, to the degree that if I decide to up and run off with it, it’s all in my name.

She drives an 1986 Tercel. When I took it down to the Mobil station last night (thinking “It’s not noble to die for Mobil” like I do every time I go there), I checked the Odometer and saw that it had 211,019 miles on it. The seats are in shreds, the overhead light doesn’t work, and the fan doesn’t blow, but the engine still hums.

The car was entrusted to my care because a coworker noticed that the bottom surface of the right front tire was resembling the locomotive surface of a banana slug: it was low on air. I promised to gas it up and look over the tire.

I’m the man, after all. I’m supposed to know these things.

The car — my Tercel, my beloved rice burner that I had driven up and down the state ten times and many more times around the confines of the Silly Con Valley — treated me as an utter stranger. First, it hid the parking brake from me. I know it was laughing at me. The Nissan has the parking place in the customary place next to the clutch. The Tercel employs a hand brake.

Then the clutch sprang into action. I got it started and shifted into reverse with no difficulties: even though the gear is opposite to where it is on our Nissan truck, it couldn’t fool me there. But when I started out, it jumped out of the garage and stopped cold. I restarted the engine. Shifted into first. Damn the thing. It knew I hadn’t figured out the secret of the clutch, so it did it again!

I got it started again. I wasn’t going to take out any death warrants for it because, after all, this car carried the principal bread winner of the house to her place of work every day. And, frankly, I’ve got a soft spot for the old rice burner. How many American cars made in that year are still on the road, I ask you. This is a senior citizen of automobiles yet it can still embarass the driver of a Jaguar with its unexpected bursts of speed. (“Thought ya could pass me, buddy? Well, you was wrong!” Heh heh heh.)

To repeat, I got it started again. I was more careful with the clutch. But turning that wheel — it felt like I was flipping over the corpse of a bull elephant. I got myself down the hill in one piece, gassed it up properly after I realized that the gas cap was on the other side from where the Nissan is, and rolled it over to the air pump where they extort 50 cents for a few minutes of pressurized smog. A trucker was taking his sweet time filling his tires, so I waited. Then I checked the Tercel’s.

The problem with the right front tire is this: it’s been worn down along the edge. You can see the metal mesh coming through the rubber at points. It’s a slow seep, but I’m not entirely comfortable knowing that she’s taking it on the freeway.

Lynn can be stubborn. I believe I detected the problem with the steering a few weeks ago, but I didn’t think to check the tire. (Yes, I know. I’m the man and I know about such things. It’s all in the testosterone.) She’s been driving it ever since, fighting the wheel every time she wants to make a turn. Putting air in the tire helped things. I imagine that — if she weren’t a Quaker — I could enroll her in Women’s wrestling and she’d throw more than her share to the mat what with the exercise she’s been getting turning that wheel.

What do I do? I toyed with the idea of finding a sheriff and asking her/him to look at the tire. “Is this equipment safe? No? Could you write me up for it so I can put some pressure on my wife to get it fixed? Thank you, officer.” (Here in California, it’s a trivial matter. You show that the problem has been fixed and they tear up the ticket.)

In the end, I decided to just reason with her. “OK,” I said. “The tire is dying of old age. The tread’s worn down. I filled it up, but I want to look at it over the weekend to see if it is still holding. If not, we’ve got to replace it.”

And she listened, though I knew I was pressing the bounds of my knowledge about these things. After all, I’m the man and I’m supposed to know about these things. Even better than a woman who made the highest score on the New York State PSAT the year she took it, even though she was a year younger than all her peers.