You can call it a car if you want... Date Wednesday, April 17, 2024 - 07:18 PM PST Topic Experiences Ok, so we bought a car, we joined the motorized masses, and we can now officially do our part to blow a hole in the ozone; with a vengeance, might I add. It's a diesel. It was born in nineteen eighty-two. It's a Mercedes Benz with more power than god. You know what all that means? It means it's a beautiful old car with all the bloody problems of an old car of any appearance. Now don't get me wrong, cars rock. Having a car means we don't have to walk a mile in the cold to catch a bus and sit behind urine man while psycho lady in front of us blathers on about how the aliens are trying to bring back Kennedy clones to take over the rock and roll industry. It also means we had to fork over six hundred fifty dollars just to drive her off the lot, and then another hundred dollars to get her checked out and another hundred dollars to get the mildew smell out and... well, let me tell you a little story... I was really enjoying the day I bought the car. I walked out of the house, rode the bus into town with Callei while we talked about how this was going to be the last day we rode the bus by necessity, and how much fun it would be to park the car and hop on the street car when they finished building it sometime in 2025 or thereabouts. We talked about cars in general and the coming winter. Here in New Orleans, winter only truly lasts about two months, and we don't get any of this gentle cooling thing that seems to lock half the US in snow for six months out of the year. We get either hot and sultry or warm and cozy for ten months out of the year, and then for two months, we get concentrated ninth circle of Dantean hell with the devil singing the blues and water pipes bursting faster than you can say "civil-bloody-engineering". But I digress. So my morning went well, I cruised by a few lots on foot and saw a nice shiny jet black Volvo with an unfortunate mortar blast hole in the motor. I saw a beautiful silver and gold Mercedes which had had a few important bits removed, you know the ones, the drivers seat, the floor underneath it, and of course the steering wheel. I saw a few absolutely beautiful Jags that I would have sold limbs and children for. Not my children mind you, I have none to sell, but I'm sure I could have found a few to hawk on E-bay. Well, I would have followed this course of action had I not been aware of the fact that Jaguars, while beautiful, are often more trouble than a cat high on amphetamine cat-nip in a locked and running shower stall. So I left the lots of the ditch and infamous and went looking elsewhere, ironically enough, elsewhere involved a short bus ride. By now I was ready to admit that I had my heart set on a Mercedes. Callei and I had owned one previously and it had run like a dream. I had hit a hundred and twenty going up hill once and only my friend pointing this out to me made me notice. So I walked the requisite half-mile to the nearest bus stop, hung around for half an hour, walked another half a mile thinking I would surely get to my destination before the bus could get to me, and then caught a passing bus so that I could ride the thing for an entire two blocks before hurriedly pulling the bell pull and walking backwards a block to get to the next lot. Here I found the car of our dreams. It was, and still is for that matter, a gunmetal gray (no, not primer gray, gun-metal, as in it gleams.) 1982 Mercedes Benz diesel Turbo behemoth that probably weighed more than the parking lot on which it loomed. I waited about half an hour for a salesman to approach, this should have been a hint, finally someone noticed me sweltering in the late October heat and sauntered over to ask if they could help. I arranged for a test drive, and after they had jump-started the car, I happily pulled the car into traffic and promptly fell in love. This car had power; you could feel it growling under the hood. It steered like a dream and when I hit the brake it stopped right where I told it too. I promptly offered the guy a quarter of the asking price and waited two hours for him to contact his boss to OK my offer. Finally, I wrote a check, took the keys and drove away, after another jump-start. The guy reassured me that it was just the battery running low on juice and after running the car for a few minutes it should start again just fine. So I took him at his word, drove around for five minutes, stopped at a gas station to refill my seriously empty tank, and the car started right back up happily! The car even started happily half an hour later after I parked it near the place where Callei and I work, waited for her to get off work and then drive us home. It didn't start after we got out of the store, a half a mile from home, at seven at night with both arms full of groceries. In a fit of pique, we gave up, grabbed our laundry and headed for home, in the dark, tired, frustrated and determined not to be beaten by this. The next morning we got some scary grease-monkey/checkout bagger to give us a jump-start, took the car to the shop, and took the bus to work. As it turned out, it was not in fact the battery being drained, or even dead. The battery was fine, great even, the alternator on the other hand...well, let's not talk about the alternator, let's talk about the fact that once we got the alternator fixed, the car wouldn't stop. No, don't get me wrong, the brakes worked fine, although they were getting a bit stiff all the sudden, but when you turn the little key counter-clockwise, the car is supposed to stop, or at least that is my understanding of automotive physics. In my case, the only effect turning the key, removing it from the ignition slot and putting it in my pocket achieved is that when I began to drive again thinking that this was kind of nifty, the steering locked which evoked a hurried and somewhat panic struck search for my keys so that I could unlock the wheel and drive out of the middle of the road. So back to the shop we go, back on the bus got I when I realized that I had run out of checks, and worse than that I had run out of money in the bank account. So, I hopped on the bus, walked half a mile home, grabbed my checkbook, walked half a mile back to the bus stop, caught the bus back to the shop, waited an additional two hours with no water or booze, and then proceeded to dribble the check into their cash register. Strangely enough, the bank cashed it and just asked not very politely that I reimburse them fifty bucks for their trouble. In the meantime, the car still won't stop, well, technically it will. I just have to pop the hood when I park, open the hood and press the button on the engine clearly marked "Stop". Silly me, why didn't I think of that? Well, actually, in my automotive imbecility, I did. I thought I could somehow divine the mysterious cause of my car's tenacity by looking at the engine with the age old puzzled expression of car illiterates the world over. In this case I did not find the cause, but the solution was a clear as the candy apple like red button on the engine marked stop. So I held my breath, took my life into my own hands, leaned into the running engine and pushed the button. When no sirens started, the universe continued to appear solid around me and miraculously enough, the car stopped. I stood up again, rubbed my hands together in satisfaction, rubbed them again on the seat of my pants in disgust, and went to go tell Callei that I had bought a car. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=616