‘Pst! Hey you! Wanna buy a good used car, cheap?’ ~ July 18, 1985

David Heiller

 The heat is on to buy a new car, or at least a newer one than the 1979 Bobcat which we currently own.

The 1979 Mercury Bobcat.
Ours was red. Ours should have been dead.
The Bobcat had no heat, so the year I worked part time in McGregor, 
David wrapped baby Noah in a sleeping bag, and then
 we would tuck me in. He closed the gigantic door 
by lifting and pushing, and off I would go through the 
wilds of the Arthyde swamp. 
The return home was more complicated, since you 
did need a second adult to close the door.
It was a long and cold winter.

The heat is coming from my wife, from my family, from my wife’s family, from every direction but the car itself. You see, the car, Lucy, doesn’t have any heat. That’s one of her drawbacks. The heater hasn’t worked for two winters. But that doesn’t bother me, at least not now.

“Face it David, this car is in bad shape,” Cindy said as we headed Lucy down to Minneapolis for a family get-together last weekend.

“Bad shape?” I said, trying to make my voice sound confident, like an auto mechanic’s. “This engine’s only got 56,000 miles on it. I change the oil every 2,000 miles. I’d say—” here I paused, gaining momentum in my voice—“I’d say this car is in pretty good shape.”

“It’s a rusted-out piece of junk,” Cindy countered. “Look at the body. Rust all over.”

“There’s hardly any rust, for a 1979,” I said.’

“For a ‘79, it’s falling apart. The body has 148,000 miles on it. The tailgate doesn’t close, the fan doesn’t work, the heater doesn’t work, the driver’s door doesn’t shut.” Now she was gaining momentum. “I can’t even drive this car. I can’t get that darn door shut without help.”

The argument continued on, as it usually does, me standing up for Lucy, Cindy working to improve our lot. As usual, we held our respective ground. I said the car was in “good” shape, while Cindy said it was in “bad” shape.

Perhaps more than ever before, buying a new car is major investment. Some vehicles that pass us on the road, we say, “There goes 35 acres and a house,” because those certain cars and trucks are worth more than we paid for our farmstead four years ago.

Of course, not everyone needs to buy a new car. A good used one can be purchased for a mere $3,000 or $4,000.

When we arrived at my sister’s house for my family reunion on Sunday, I immediately sensed trouble. Lucy was out of her league. I backed her into a slot next to my brother-in-law’s 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass. In that same driveway was another new Olds, a new Honda, and a new Toyota van. Even my mother’s modest Dodge looked good next to Lucy. In the garage: three 35-acres-and-a-house vehicles, in the form of a couple Mercedes and Jeep Wagoneer.

All together, there was well over $100,000 worth of automobilia on that slab of blacktop.

No one paid Lucy much mind, until we were getting ready to leave. All the adults moved out into the driveway to mill around, hands in pocket, saying all those last-minute things that we forgot to say earlier. The men circled Lucy cautiously, like British police suspecting a bomb on some Northern Ireland street.

“I see you got new tires,” one remarked, recalling last Christmas, when I backed Lucy over a large rock and metal reflector on his lawn.

“Who made this one?” another asked, pointing to a dimple in the right front side.

“Aw, Cindy hit something,” I said casually, trying to separate that dent from the ones on the tailgate and left wheel well.

“Hey, doesn’t this tailgate shut?” someone asked.

I don’t know who, because faces were starting to blur as I fought to defend Lucy.

“Yeah, I’ve got the piece to fix it—got to do that one of these days,” I said with a fake laugh.

“What happened to the grill here?” another asked, pointing to a broken piece of imitation chrome.

“Oh that’s nothing. I have to put the screwdriver in there so I can open the hood. The cable broke for the inside lever release,” I replied.

Cindy senses the crowd mood like a pro, and spoke like Moses above the rumblings of the relatives. “Oh, but this car is in good shape, right Dave?” She said as she put the baby in the back seat.

“Well I don’t know about good, but it’s OK,” I compromised, sliding into the driver’s seat to make a get-away. “I think it’s got a couple more years left.”

I rolled down my window to say the final good bye. One of my sisters tried to shut my door for me. It bounced back open. She tried again—but it still didn’t latch. “Here, there’s a little trick to it,” I laughed, lifting the door up with both hands and crashing it into place.

I started the engine—thankfully it started—and we bucked down the driveway, amidst exhaust fumes and waves of good byes, and probably a few prayers that Lucy would hold up for our 150 mile trip home...

She did. I have complete faith that she will keep on being a “good” car, or at least OK.