It is a cold, rainy Saturday in June and I’ve waited long enough. I wrote the check, I figured out the paperwork, I got the insurance, I found someone with a trailer.
I don’t know how much this is going to cost me, or how long it’s going to take, but it’s time to start.
We stand around for a bit in the driveway of the house on Mitchell where the car has lived for the last quarter century. I wonder if it will be sad to leave, or glad to see the sun again.
We clear away some of the stuff that’s been stored around the car and Annette finds the keys to the lock on the gate.
The man with the trailer pulls up in the largest Ford truck I’ve ever seen. He will also be the mechanic who gets this car back on the road. This is the first time we meet, in the driveway there at the house on Mitchell. He seems nice enough, talks a good game and works cheap in the hours around his day job. He doesn’t flinch when I ask if it would be okay if I follow him back to the garage so I know where the car will be. “I was going to offer,” he says. “I’d want to know, too.” “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” I say. He nods. And I do trust him.
I’ll find out later that he has his high school car neatly tucked away in his shop and he’s every bit as sentimental as I am.
He patiently puts three of the four wheels I bought from a guy on Marketplace onto the car. The fourth will have to wait until we find the lock for the lugs on the only wheel that still exists from this car’s former life. In minutes, the car is off the jackstands for the first time in a very long time.
I get into the drivers seat and the others push the car out of the carport. White enamel flakes off of the gigantic steering wheel and onto my jeans. Replacing that wheel shoots to the top of my to-do list.
I follow my new friend and my new car to Warren, just south of St. Helens. I205 to 84 to 5 to 30 and then a left turn into a little strip of farm country. There are cows across the fence and we find a tiny frog in the gravel near where I park the Jeep. This seems like a nice place to come back to life after a long time in suspended animation.
We poke around at the car a bit more and I find the thing to unlock the lug on the oddball wheel, safely tucked into the glove box with a stack of old registration and insurance papers and a couple cassette tapes. I don’t want to leave, but I don’t really know this man and it seems weird to loiter here. Over the coming weeks, I’ll make at least a half dozen trips here where I hand off mail-order car parts and he shows me something else that needs to be fixed before I can take her home. Somewhere along the way, she becomes less “Carrie’s car” and more mine. I thought it would take a lot longer.
August 4, after several near misses, I go to pick her up and bring her home.
***
New gas tank installed. New fuel lines run. New fuel tank sending unit installed along with new fuel filler hose and fuel pump. New fan shroud and radiator installed. New front seat lap belts installed. All locks and ignition rekeyed. New ignition switch installed. New timing chain. Carburetor rebuilt. Heater core replaced. Thermostat and spark plug wires replaced. So many hoses and gaskets replaced.
New steering wheel installed.
And a handwritten list of the things that will need work next.
***
“You don’t have a horn. Or a parking brake. And you have to hold the stick up for the right turn signal. It will blink, but you have to hold it up. Once you unlock the door with the key and open it, you can’t press the button again or you’re going to have to crawl out on the passenger side. The alignment is off, so you need to get that looked at. And the brakes? Go ahead and use both feet. You can’t expect to run right up on somebody and still be able to stop. If it leaks too much, bring it back. Press the gas pedal down a couple, three times before you turn the key.”
A few weeks later, after the alignment has been sorted and I’ve had a few miles behind the wheel, I will lock myself in the car and then will flood the engine when I try to restart it. I was warned.
octoberthoughtspdx 