12 Aug 1999: Today is the day that I said good-bye to my car. Three years ago today I bought my first car, a 1984 Buick Century Limited, and today I dropped it off at a junk yard in Canton, MI.
It was the end of the summer, just before my Junior year of college up at Michigan Tech. Living with my Uncle Pat at the Doherty family homestead, I had spent the summer working for The Univeristy of Michigan at Dearborn and Ford Motor Company. I worked under a Research Experiences for Undergraduates grant from the NSF developing an automated automobile glass analyser. The work had constituted my first computer job, and the end of my minimum wage life (or so I thought... I didn't really know about grad school). The job was definitely a step up for me and by the end of the summer I had a wad of cash burnin a hole in my pocket: It was time to buy a car.
I spent nearly two months looking for a car. While $1000 seemed a veritable fortune to me, it really didn't amount to much when buying a car. After much scouring of classifieds and magazines for the right car, I received a call from my parents. During an evening walk, they passed the house of my little brother's second grade teacher. In her driveway squated a old car with an attractive price tag: nine hundred dollars. That weekend my Uncle, who happens to have a respectable mastery of the automobile, and I made tracks for Mt. Pleasant to give the beast a once-over. I drove the car around the block a couple of times and Patrick dissassembled and reassembled the car. Pat grumbled about one thing or another and finally declared the car a good deal. Just the words I had hoped to hear.
The next day I bought the car, wandered through the maze of beauracracy necessary to drive a vehicle on the state's roads, and drove back to Dearborn. At $900, the car was a good deal, but it was still a twelve year old car. In preparation for the the long U.P. winter the car would have to survive, I started to work. With Pat's help, that summer I sand-blasted the rust off the rear of the my beast, bondo'ed the holes, and scavenged new plastic molding for the side. I put two new tires on the front wheels, bought new struts and shocks, installed a passenger side mirror where once there was none, replaced window gaskets (they whistled as wind tore through them at highway speeds), and glued the headliner back to the ceiling where it belonged.
Before that summer cars were a mystery to me. But working with Pat on the Century acquianted me with the wonderful auto-recycling centers (junk yards) and gave me the courage to futz with my car. Just as some people who were afraid of technology slowly figured out how to use a computer, I figured out as long as I kept track of how I took something off the car, I could probably put it back on and it would still work.
The Buick started my love affair with driving. Going to school in a place that was 500 miles from just about any other civilization (unless you can count Green Bay as civilization) had trained me in the art of sitting in a car for an extended period of time. But now I had a car of my own and could fling off into the wilds at a moment's notice. In the three years I drove the car, I made countless trips between Mt. Pleasant, Houghton, Ann Arbor, Minneaplois, Rochester MN, and Chicago; not to mention the numerous little road trips that made life bearable living in the isolation of the Upper Penninsula. Copper Country Cruisin involved packing as many innocent by-standers as possible into the car and then driving the many many roads covering the Keweenaw Penninsula. Direction mattered little, the Pennisula is actually an island, cut off at the bottom by the Portage and surrounded by Lake Superior on the remaining shores. When lost, one simply had to drive in one direction for no more than 40 miles to find reference. The Keweenaw offered nifty old mining towns, beautiful waterfalls, and rocky coast lines no matter where we might stop. It was the perfect way to waste an afternoon, and infact many were wasted that way. 52,000 miles of bliss.
Until recently, the car had been in good condition, requiring only the general maintenance that one would expect from any old car. Brakes, starter, CV joints, muffler. Little things like the interior handles on the front doors breaking off also kept me busy on random Saturday afternoons. Keeping the car going was fun, it was a challenge. But over the last couple months, my Buick started to give me signs that bigger problems were on the way. After much toiling on my part, I could not get the engine to stop blowing oil up through the crankcase filter and into the air filter. You don't have to know much about cars to know that the air filter should not be coated in oil. In addition, the transmission started shifting really roughly into third gear, and water pump started leaking fluid indicating it's time to failure was near.
Little things had built up as well, like the expanding cracks in the windshield, the busted windshield wiper pump, the ineffectual wipers and defrost, and the lack of heat when it was colder than 25 F out. All of these things and the unexplainable surplus in my bank account led me to wade into the sea of new car buyers. While having had fun maintaining my Buick, I suspect that I've exhausted my used car karma for a while; the Buick was a great deal and I don't think I'll be so lucky again.
Getting rid of my car was hard, it really wasn't something I'll remember as pleasant. Now all I have to remember my car by is $55 in my pocket, and the Buick badge I pried out of the steering wheel. The car knew it was over, though. The last couple times I'd driven the car the front brakes took to squealing all the time, not just when I'd use them; and the rear passenger window mysteriously imploded--luckily no one was in the back seat at the time. All that, and last night I went to take the stereo out (it's worth as much as the car) and found the rearview mirror lying on the console--the mirror had fallen off the windshield. I think the car was just trying to make the break-up easier on me; Much like a bad relationship, the car abused me as I tried harder and harder to make things right. I tried to bring back the good times we shared zooming through the forests and cities, but I sensed the end coming and as much as it hurt, I saw it through. Farewell, dear Century.