It all began when I called a national car-rental firm and told the lady who answered that I wished to obtain her largest automobile for a trip from Denver to Newark. Thus, late in life, was my education launched in the reality of the open road.
My wife and I had flown westward to sell a house we had owned, but had not visited through 20 years of renters, most of whom obviously would have been content with a tar-paper shack at the local landfill. The place was little Beirut.
Mold coated the tiled shower; seepage in the basement had turned plaster on the walls to moon-dust; and powder beetles, which are sort of a Western surrogate for termites, had been lunching on the floor of the family room for two decades.
It took more than a week of our two-week vacation to clean up the mess and deal with the real estate person, and all I wanted was the next flight home.
Then my wife opened an all but forgotten storage room, locked away from renters since 1970. There, she discovered her grandmother`s Coleport china, several boxes of old high school annuals and enough ”heirloom” doodads to stock an antiques shop.
`Precious` stuff
”We can`t just give this to the Goodwill,” she said. ”This is precious stuff. We can`t fly with it, so we`ll just have to cancel the airline reservation and rent a car. We still have six days of vacation. It will be a grand adventure.”
”Precious stuff!” I snorted, vexed that my quick trip home was about to be frustrated. ”You haven`t thought of it since 1970. Most of it`s junk.”
She fixed me with the baleful glare that generally says ”stand by to repel boarders” and drove the words home like nails.
”These things were my grandmother`s,” she seethed. ”My grandmother did not do junk!”
Backing her words with action, which is what she usually does, she canceled our flight to Newark, which involved a change of planes in Chicago, and I called the woman at the rental firm.
My next words, uttered with the shriek of a gut-shot pocketbook, were,
”Fifteen hundred dollars! That`s outrageous!”
”For $1,500,” I told the rental lady, ”I can buy a car, and that`s just what I intend to do!”
I did not like the way she snickered when she said, ”Lots of luck.”
”Hold it,” my wife protested. ”What kind of car can we buy for $1,500? I want to drive home, but I also want to get there.”
A matter of trust
”Trust me,” I said. ”We`ll buy one that will get us there at a limp, if necessary, and if I can sell it for a couple of hundred when we get home, we`ll be way ahead of the game. Those rental car people can`t put one over on me!”
We had only two days to make our buy, so we frantically combed the classified ads and visited used car dealers, one of whom smiled so much like Father Christmas I never suspected he really was Joe Isuzu in disguise. He had, he said, a 1981 Oldsmobile diesel with 61,000 original miles which he regretfully would part with for $1,200.
”If you can`t sell this car when you get home for $500 more than you paid for it, I`ll eat my hat,” he said.
The car resembled the house we had just cleaned up. Its paint had gone the way of Gorbachev`s hair and it went from 0 to 60 in about an hour and 20 minutes, but once up to speed, it did seem to cruise nicely, and the plush interior was unsullied.
Still, I was dubious, until my wife slid into the passenger`s side, pulled down the sun visor and discovered a vanity mirror with lights.
”This is the car,” she said, much in the tone Brigham Young must have used when he topped the rise and looked upon the Great Salt Lake.
Brigham Young`s people didn`t argue with him, either. I took a deep breath and wrote the check. Already I had beaten the rental-car bandits by $300.
Precautionary tuneup
First, however, I felt it might be wise to take the car into a local dealer for a precautionary tuneup, just to make sure all would be well during our 1,700-mile journey to the Newark Airport where we had parked our car. The mechanic at the Oldsmobile agency presented me with a dour demeanor and a bill for $300.
”If this car has 61,000 original miles, I`ll eat my hat,” he said.
”It`s more like 161,000. It needs a new fuel injection system and the engine leaks oil like a sieve. We`ve tuned it up, but it would take another $1,500 to put it in top shape.”
”In your estimation,” I said, remembering the car-rental lady`s snotty snicker, ”will it get me home?”
”I guess so,” he said, ”if you watch the oil.”
Even-up with the rental-agency, and with a case of oil in the trunk, we hit the road. And hit it and hit it and hit it. Int. Hwy. 80 is a driver`s time warp, eventually connecting New York City`s George Washington Bridge with San Francisco`s Golden Gate. In between, there is Nebraska. If there is a more monotonous landscape, I have yet to find it. Nebraska, flat as a billiard table, is an eternal vista of identical cornfields, and, on I-80, signs that say things like, ”Next exit, 75 miles.” Thus inspired, the Oldsmobile began to knock.
”We`re out of oil again,” my wife said. ”You`ve got to pull over and put in some oil.”
”I can`t park here, on the shoulder of I-80,” I protested. ”An 18-wheeler could wipe us out.”
”I don`t want to be stranded with all this junk in a cornfield,” she wailed. ”Why don`t they put emergency telephones out here? What do they do with all this corn? Pull over!”
Wipe out
I did. I poured in five more quarts of oil and an 18-wheeler bound for Aldebaran at Warp 10 wiped us out. T
he slipstream nearly lifted the ailing Olds off the highway, blew my cap into a cornfield and what was left of my nerves into the dumpster.
Nineteen quarts of oil and eight hours out of Denver, we pulled into Lincoln, Neb., where the Oldsmobile gasped, hemorrhaged its crankcase, threw a rod and died.
Inquiries at several local garages produced the same answer: $1,685, plus labor (about five days worth) to replace the blown engine.
There was nothing else to do. We had to buy another car.
Happily, through the Yellow Pages, an oasis of integrity finally appeared in the wasteland of our spirits.
He was a jovial giant named Jake at Lincoln`s Speer Motor Co. and he offered us a single-owner 1977 Ford Thunderbird for only $2,675. He even agreed to guide us in an attempt to gain retribution against the Denver hat-eater, and stored the corpse of the Olds until the matter might be
resolved.
I now had $4,175 invested in my mission to beat the rental-agency people and their outrageous $1,500 fee, but at least I had a car that ran, and it did, like a dream, all the way home.
”Things can get so bad they finally become funny,” I said halfway through our journey as we moved into a motel room for the night. ”I can`t believe the beating we took on this trip.”
”It`s not funny any more,” said my wife. ”It`s terrifying.”
Blessing in disguise
She was staring at the television screen where the image of a DC-10, cartwheeling across the landscape in a ball of flame, was repeated over and over.
”United Flight 232,” she said, echoing the announcer. ”That was our flight. That`s the one we were supposed to be on.”
Relief and horror do not mix well, but both emotions swept through us like colliding tidal waves.
Suddenly, her grandmother`s ”junk,” the broken-down Oldsmobile, the ruptured budget and the tension of a Nebraska landscape with no phone in sight became God-given blessings to be be cherished with thanksgiving.
”Glad you`re back,” my colleagues in The Tribune`s New York bureau said in standard greeting when I returned to the job.
”So am I,” I said. For the first time in my life, the exchange was no cliche. –
