Sitting
down for dinner that night, I told my family about my new #tenant.
“I
just don’t know about Ray,” I said, reaching for the mashed potatoes. “I think I might be making a big
mistake. He’s pretty sleazy. You should see this big old station wagon he’s
got. It looks like it’s on its last legs,
not that that’s anything to do with anything.”
“Worse
even than our old station wagon?” asked
Andrea.
“You’ve
got a point there,” I admitted. “I guess
I shouldn’t judge him by the car he drives, should I?”
The
girls laughed. “No-o-o.”
A
few months after immigrating to the States, Albert and I were forced to buy a “new”
car because the floor on the driver’s side of the little Volkswagen Rabbit he had
bought for a mere $500.00 had rusted through.
It got so bad that we eventually placed a cookie sheet over the
hole, otherwise the driver’s feet might very well dangle through the hole like in Fred
Flintstone's car.
I
used to be a big fan of Eight is Enough and The Brady Bunch, so
when we were in the forecourt of a shady
used car dealer and I spied a big, cream-colored station wagon, complete with
brown, wooden stripe along each side, I absolutely had to have it, and nothing
would sway my decision.
The
station wagon lasted for three years. During the
third year, it started stalling at every stop sign and traffic light. I had to open the hood, take the cover off of the air filter, wedge a stick in it to hold the choke open, get back in the car,
start it, get back out, remove the stick, and screw the lid back on the air
filter. Having become quite expert at
performing this maneuver, I once performed the same seemingly-miraculous feat
for a woman whose car had stalled in a pharmacy parking lot. She was grateful but very surprised,
especially since I was dressed in a business suit and high heels at the time,
having just come from a sales presentation.
As
if the stalling problem were not bad enough, humongous explosions began to burst
out of the tail pipe whenever I turned off the engine. The eruptions were so powerful that they blasted a two-foot-long scorch mark on the tarmac. It was very embarrassing being forced to ignominiously announce my
arrival every place I went because the explosions sounded loud enough to rattle
nearby windows.
“Heard you arrive,” my co-workers would snigger behind their
hands when I walked into work in the mornings.
The
neighbors in my apartment complex were not happy about the loud backfiring,
either – especially on weekends, when I usually arrived home at four in
the morning after a night of dancing with my girlfriends. I took to stopping the station wagon in a side street close
to home and turning off the engine there so that it could backfire in relative
anonymity. I was hopeful that if I released the
pressure of gases, or whatever it was that was building up in the exhaust pipe, it would
not backfire so violently when I turned off the engine again a few minutes
later in my parking lot. Unfortunately, it made not the slightest bit of difference.
When
I had the car examined by a mechanic, he informed me that there was a blockage of
some sort somewhere in the exhaust system. After idling the engine for a few minutes, he showed me how the entire length of pipe, from beneath the hood to
the end of the tail pipe, was glowing a bright, cherry-red color.
Great! Now, whenever I drove the station wagon, I
would be very aware that beneath my seat was a red hot pipe which could burst
into flames at any moment. I warned my daughters to be vigilant for smells of burning or signs of smoke.
As
soon as Albert finished paying off the monthly payments on the station
wagon, I sold it to another mechanic for $200.00 and bought my first brand new
car: a sporty-looking Chevy Cavalier.
