House of Eratosthenes

There might be a little bit of a deluge of car stuff in these parts in the days ahead. We’re going to go ahead and try to save Bessie. It is out of the question for me to do the actual saving, but I have managed to find just a few gentlemen who feel up to the challenge of doing a transplant. The bad news is…and this is probably just an excuse on their part…they’re all gun-shy about the cost side of the equation, and the who-knows-how-long wait in line to get a working 4A-GE DOHC 1.6L EFI.

Excuse or not, that one factor has scuttled every deal so far. And who can blame them.

Real Wood But my research has landed me on a few pages worth bookmarking. There’s this guy…and this guy…and then a slightly-related engine transplant project, not exactly the one for which I’m looking, that made me chuckle.

Check out the broomstick hood suspension device here. It’s real wood!

We love a good engine swap around these parts, and, ever since the very first Project Car Hell, I’ve been interested in the Toyota-engine-in-Sprite/Midget idea. Not that I’d ever do such a thing, mind you… well, actually, I might! This site is a very well-written and carefully documented account of just how a ~~total raving madman~~ resourceful gearhead goes about stuffing a 160-horsepower Toyota 4AGE into a microscopic British car designed for 65 horsepower. Lots of good stuff here, engine swap fans!

As for Bessie’s second life…I dunno…I just don’t know. As popular as the old 4A-GE has been, well, that works on the demand side as well as the supply side. And they aren’t exactly growing on trees. Looks like a custom rebuild, and honestly, I don’t have the first clue about what that actually entails.

I got the Carfax report. Thirteen records. Most of them “failed emissions test…passed emissions test…failed…passed.” They seem to be under the impression I had 111k on her before I moved to California. But I distinctly remember that night I clicked past 100 on Greenback, between Madison and Main. On the other hand, it was fifteen years ago.

Toyota Finance Corporation found my record. That’s good. I need to resolve this title stuff before I can do anything…the release-of-lien is headed here, should be in hand by Monday.

Then I get to argue with the DMV. The Kah-lee-FOH-nee-yah DMV. My good friends…oh…hello, boys and girls. We just get along like oil and water, me and the DMV folks.

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The Greatest Betrayal of All
Thursday, January 31st, 2008

Via Kathryn Jean Lopez, via Neo-Neocon, an item that begs to be parodied, but cannot be…since parody demands an assessment of the level of absurdity in the real thing, followed by a nudging-up by a couple notches. Said notches being simply unavailable.

This comes from NOW’s N.Y. chapter and just has to be quoted in full:

“Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings.

“And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one). ‘They’ are Howard Dean and Jim Dean (Yup! That’s Howard’s brother) who run DFA (that’s the group and list from the Dean campaign that we women helped start and grow). They are Alternet, Progressive Democrats of America, democrats.com, Kucinich lovers and all the other groups that take women’s money, say they’ll do feminist and women’s rights issues one of these days, and conveniently forget to mention women and children when they talk about poverty or human needs or America’s future or whatever.

“This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women’s voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation - to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who ‘know what’s best for us.’”

Whining and complaining their way to global domination. Discriminating and hating their way to a discrimination-and-hate-free utopia. Championing choice, and refusing to let anyone anywhere decide anything any differently.

You do know what the etymology is behind the word “utopia,” don’t you? This is why we need NOW. They show us the reason why.

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2008 Election Campaign Theme Song
Thursday, January 31st, 2008

I’m getting so old. I remember when voters demanded to be told the truth…or at least pretended to.

Update: If one searches for succinct characterizations of the direction in which we have been heading, and where exactly we are now, one can hardly do better than this nugget at Phil’s site:

What Democrats Want

So last night our local Libertarian radio host asked the question, “What do Democrats want? I know what Republicans want, I used to be one. What do Democrats want? I want to hear from the Democrats.”

So the first caller calls in … I don’t remember his excact words, but these are pretty close:

“Well I like Obama because he makes me feel good and all that. But as far as what I really want, universal health care. …. And I’m just starting to pay off my college loans. I think there should be free college tuition for poor families.”

He couldn’t think of anything else off the top of his head, he said.

But that seems to sum it up pretty well from where I stand. Democrats want a President that will make them feel good and promise to give them stuff.

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The Perfect Wife
Thursday, January 31st, 2008

Better enjoy these while we can. Hillary just might win.

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The Force Unleashed
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

And now for some junk food…since I know, if you’re like me, this non-lightsaber-related crap is starting to bore you silly.

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Another True Believer Down
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

John Edwards is out of the race.

Last week I categorized all the candidates running as rock stars, wafflers and true believers. That is our new political divide, I argued, because the candidates weren’t running on platforms anymore — instead, they were selling us things, and the disagreement that separated them had to do with what there was to be sold.

Rock stars sell their names and their personalities. Let’s face it…none of Obama’s supporters can tell you his position on any more than a couple of issues. They don’t care. That isn’t what they bought. Ron Paul disagrees with his own supporters, on a great many issues. Issues aren’t important here. And Hillary…hell’s bells, nobody gives a crap about anything she says she’s going to do.

The wafflers sell their timing. They say the right things to the right people — but if they stuck to those positions as the audiences changed, they’d be dead ducks. And they know it. Their selling point is that they’ll “bring together” the “deeply divided” electorate, by “reaching across the aisle” on the issues you don’t really care about. The issues you personally don’t care about. But when they talk to the other guys…the story will be that they’ll do this reaching across the aisle, by jettisoning some other positions about which you care, very deeply. They change their tunes with the whistle-stops. Everybody knows it, we just pretend it isn’t so.

The true believers are true believers. If you disagree with them, they’ll admit it. Some of them will admit it in an “aw shucks, I hope I can still count on your support” kind of way…or, maybe their true beliefs have to do with you being the Hated Enemy, and they’ll tell you to stick it. But the important thing is that they’re going to stick to their guns.

Let’s give credit where credit is due. John Edwards has always been a True Believer.

Yes, it’s provable he’s a liar. He’s a rich guy pledging to close up the wealth gap between the rich and the poor — and nobody is even pretending to believe, even for a split-second, that any of his plans have to do with diminishing his own income and/or personal net worth. But you can be a hypocrite and a true believer. John Edwards has always had a true believe in a two-tier society, in which rich people like him get to stay rich, and rich people who aren’t like him have to be made poor.

I don’t mean to say let’s give him some respect for this. You can decide that for yourself. I’m simply pointing out what John Edwards really is…and it isn’t all bad.

In the post of mine linked above, I said…

The True Believer is the kind we all say we want, the guy who doesn’t vacillate. Positions driven by principles. And I’m afraid that the presidential campaign season in the United States has become a rather unhealthy ritual of weeding these guys out.

I think at this point where just about finished with that preliminary process, aren’t we? Who’s left? So we’re down to the rock stars and the wafflers. And January isn’t even over yet.

So Edwards would have been a horrible President, and was a truly awful candidate — on top of which, he never really had a chance at all, did he? Yet, his departure is still more a cause for weeping and groaning than for celebrating and cheering.

Wonderful…just wonderful…a nine-month mud-wrestling match among empty suits and two-face turncoats.

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An Idea, Unlike Any I’ve Seriously Considered Ever Before
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

The one True Believer with decent beliefs, who had a shot, dropped out…I got the news as I was affixing postage stamps to my voter registration form.

WONDERFUL system we have. Makes me feel so…well…enfranchised.

All my life, I have always selected from out of the available candidates, and chosen the one, from among them, that best reflected my beliefs and whose slate of pledged actions upon inauguration most closely matched what I wanted to see done.

Now, here, we have a situation where none of the listed candidates have much of an idea about what they would do. I’m tellin’ ya, something is going on here. I’m not that old. I remember when that was what it was all about. But we’ve become so obsessed with full heads o’hair, sparkly smiles, twinkling eyes, charisma-charisma-charisma, the gift of jibber-jabber and making people feel good…what the hell do I know about any of these people? I mean, really?

Well, here’s an interesting idea that I’m pondering for February 5th…pondering seriously…

That’s the sum of it. If you can’t bring yourself to vote for the offerings in your primary, or if the eventual nominee is somebody you can’t stomach, don’t sit out, and don’t vote for the Democrat. Write in Fred Thompson’s name.

Why?

By doing so, you send a message that can’t be mistaken or spun. It is a message that says:

“I am a Republican who wanted to vote for a conservative GOP candidate, but wasn’t able to do so. I can’t vote for a Democrat, but I can’t vote for any of the Republicans, either. So I’m writing in the name of the candidate I wish I could have voted for, because he is the kind of candidate I could support.”

They have to learn that if they want conservative votes, they have to nominate candidates conservatives would want to vote for.

Now, a preposition is something you shouldn’t ever end a sentence with. But aside from that, the idea makes good sense.

I was very excited about Fred because I was supportive of his ideas. His ideas…and I fully believe, my candidate was pitched out of this perverted fustercluck of a process not because the country is hostile to his ideas, but because the country has become hostile to the idea of choosing a candidate on the basis of ideas. Hair. Smiles. Magic lilt in the voice. Race. Gender. He Lights Up The Room When He Walks Into It. Oooh, look at that tie!

And once a President is sworn in, what inspires a nationwide panic that “we’ve got to get rid of this administration?” Uh…pretty much the same sort of crap we demand from candidates who want that job in the first place, right? Emotional instability. “Fire in the belly.” Hostility directed at exactly the right undesirable people. Whooping. Hollering. YEEEEAAAARRRRGGGHHHH!!! And the lying…don’t forget the lying.

The guy who actually got the job says Saddam Hussein poses an eminent threat…it gets re-worded as an “imminent threat” so people can call him a liar…and on the basis of that threadbare definition of lying, why, we just won’t tolerate that. But any one of the candidates seeking to succeed him, from either party, can tell big fat whoppers all day long and we just eat it up.

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Vote for Hillary, She’s a Lady, Running for President
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Did I mention she’s a woman?

Don’t watch this on a full stomach…

Un-believable. Two minutes in, before anybody says a single word about what the candidate would do. And, don’t wait around for anybody to talk about how it’s funded.

Lots and lots of talk about how “she can do it,” about how “we can do it,” but in my lifetime “it” has always begun with lots of campaigning and lots of talking about what you will do once you get in…and how exactly that would work as a solution to the problems you’re supposed to be trying to solve.

Uh, here’s a question for the Hillary camp. The Constitution says the legislative power is invested in Congress, and the executive powers are conferred upon the President. Congress makes the rules, the President enforces them. If we want this universal healthcare coverage so badly, how come we’re trying to get it by electing a President?

Yes, Presidents badger Congress into sending this or that bill across — well, I still get to say it, don’t I — his desk…at which time he signs it. It does happen. But Congress botches it all the time. Bills die in Congress, that Congress would piss rusty nickels if it meant getting the bills through. That’s just the way large groups of people work. They fail to do things they want to do. It’s really the one hope this nation has for avoiding an even larger healthcare crisis; Congress will try to pass some dreadful universal healthcare regulation, and fail.

Last time we had a plan on the table for universal healthcare coverage, we had a Congress and a President sympathetic to the idea, even enthusiastic about it. Then Hillary stepped in and messed it all up.

Thank God, people like me say. Maybe we’re outnumbered…

…but if that’s the case, I find comfort in these doubts you Hillary-people cast upon your own intelligence, and knowledge of how the government actually works.

Few others have the balls to say this out loud, so I’ll just come out and say it: I hope Bill Clinton’s affairs get a whole lot of attention. And no, I’m not trying to damage the intellectual credibility of the national discourse, as some might think…let’s face it, if that was my motivation, there’s not a whole lot more harm I could do in addition to what’s already been done. No, if we’re going to seriously consider this candidate, her sham “marriage” is quite relevant.

We’re supposed to be all about rejecting racism and sexism. But who on Earth could possibly be more sexist than a Hillary supporter? Think about it. What if we already had a woman President, and she screwed around on her poor husband constantly…cunnilingus from the interns…back room trysts with randomly-selected men during campaign stops…

…and eight years after she’s out, the cuckold wants to run for his shot? They’d tell him where to go & how to get there. That is, if things ever got that far. Personally, I think if a woman President did half the crap to her husband that Bill Clinton did to his wife, Washington would run her out on a rail.

How wonderfully European. The men can cheat, the women can’t.

There’s your feminist movement in 2008 for ya.

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Canada Abandons Durban
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

The Government of Canada has abandoned the United Nations Durban II anti-racism conference.

That’s not John Bolton…that’s not John Birch…that’s Canada.

The so-called Durban II conference “has gone completely off the rails” and Canada wants no part of it, said Jason Kenney, secretary of state for multiculturalism and Canadian identity.

“Canada is interested in combatting racism, not promoting it,” Mr. Kenney told The Canadian Press. “We’ll attend any conference that is opposed to racism and intolerance, not those that actually promote racism and intolerance.

“Our considered judgment, having participated in the preparatory meetings, was that we were set for a replay of Durban I. And Canada has no intention of lending its good name and resources to such a systematic promotion of hatred and bigotry.”

The 2001 World Conference Against Racism in Durban turned into “a circus of intolerance,” Mr. Kenney said.

One government official on Wednesday called the conference “a gong show.”

H/T: Boortz.

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Best Sentence XXIII
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Today’s Best Sentence I’ve Heard or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award goes to Ramesh Ponnuru, writing in the National Review Online, who writes about Caroline Kennedy’s Political Romanticism…

She says that Obama could be a president like her father. I assume that means that he’ll be overrated, not that he’ll bring us to the brink of nuclear war. [emphasis mine]

H/T: Hot Air.

Another award goes out to Mark Steyn, or rather his non-U.S. correspondent, whose offering is worthy of inspiring reflection throughout this long, long, oncoming year. It is the “model stump speech for this primary season.” We learn of it courtesy of blogger friend Phil:

My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you’ll join with me as we try to change it.

Har!

Ann Coulter earned an honorable mention last month when one of her many snarky snippet ricochets happened to hit reality dead freakin’ on…

Liberals lie and lie and lie and then, the moment conservatives respond, they shout: OLD NEWS!

That was a one in a million shot, Annie. I’ll bet you used to bulls-eye womp rats in your T-16 back at home.

Update: I’d read of this study before, but I thought Thomas Sowell’s sign-off deserved a mention in the BSIHORL awards. The implications are so ominous you’d like for it not to be true. But it is very true, and it might be our country’s biggest problem.

You should read the whole thing from beginning to end…but the final uppercut deserves an excerpt here:

Bottom line: Conservatives consider liberals well-intentioned, but misguided. Liberals consider conservatives not only wrong, but really, really bad people.

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Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XVI
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

…but it would seem lately we have become a flappy bird.

We’ve been popping up & down this scale like a whore’s drawers, but a flappy bird is a notch higher than our previous record…assuming that prior status as “marauding marsupial” was just some kind of fluke, which seems to be the case. We’ll take it.

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A Dowager Finds Rest
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

Reading about death is a relatively easy thing. This deals with mortality, which is slightly different, and considerably more difficult. This thing over here dies…that thing over there dies…but mortality is something we all have in common with each other. Death is an event, mortality is a condition. And deep down we all know we have it, and can’t get away from it. It’s part of us, and that’s the theme here — not for the timid.

I bought “Bessie” and drove her off the lot way back when she had 6.3 miles on the clock, and the maps were different. The Berlin Wall would fall in another four months. Hayden Panettiere was over a month away from being born. Batman had just been released, which inspired Bessie’s ultimate nickname — The Batmobile. The woman who would later be my wife, picked her out. I often joked this was the one choice that she made, ever, that wasn’t injurious to my prosperity…which wasn’t a joke. I’ve thought many times that when we split up and Bessie went with me, this was contrary to some master plan that was pursued much, and discussed little. I, and Bessie, represented a ticket to a “good life” for someone who had spent many years chasing it, but not honestly.

For Bessie to be at my side for so long, didn’t figure into my plans either. She was a leased vehicle, leased without any options. I just loved the way she coasted; when she was new, I used to take her out of gear and see how many miles would click on by, as the engine just idled away. It wasn’t until a couple years after that, when I was separated, neck deep in debt, during that wild and crazy summer of ‘91 when the collection agencies were kind enough to inform me my wife was hanging bad paper all over Seattle in my name, that I realized — hey wait a minute. Nothing is working out here, financially. My boss is late on his payroll, and I suspect he’s in Vegas gambling something, trying to earn my paycheck from two weeks ago on Black 17. Or maybe he’s given up…maybe I’m just laid-off and I don’t know it. Everything sucks. Only one thing has panned out here, and that’s this little black car.

The final odometer reading

And Bessie and I took on the world, like a lost soldier from the Civil War trying to find his regiment again, with his faithful horse. Us against the world. Seattle continued its slump, and when a new job prospect opened up in Detroit I was greeted by a rather wretched choice. Move away and turn things around, maybe, or see Mom a few more times after she got that tumor in her brain. There was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in our family over this, but pointedly, Mom was not participating in it. She could see people were putting life on hold for her, and she did not approve. Mom was all about life…yes, we should be together as a family, but we should live life first, as it is meant to be lived. Ultimately I did as she wished.

And that’s when this life we should be living, got really exciting — when I spent a year driving a Toyota in Detroit. Detroit, where the livelihood of everyone depends on the sale of American cars. They didn’t appreciate me. They let me know. Since that time, I’ve often commented that if I can do freeway lane changes in Detroit in a rice-rocket, I can do ‘em anywhere in anything.

The divorce came through in November of ‘91, and I engaged my two thousand mile commute. To work. Three time zones away, in Detroit. In Bessie. Bessie, whose 60,000 mile warranty expired 20,000 miles ago.

Well, there are other cities where more fun is to be had, than Detroit. But I wouldn’t know one way or the other. I lived the life of a man who had none, who was instead trying to put the remnants of one back together. Working, sleeping, working some more…paying some bills…maybe eating…occasionally drinking. Drinking more than I should. I did have some fun…I learned how to sky-dive in Detroit. Life was such an empty proposition during those months, I’ve often thought that the timing was a little off. Thinking back to the moments where I looked up, and saw my chute deployed properly after all, I’m sometimes unsure if that rush of emotion I felt really was relief.

Fate interjected again, when a contract came up out here. And so, toward the end of ‘92, this became my assignment: Sacramento. The family drama kicked into high gear by then, as Mom outlived diagnosis after diagnosis, but it was clear if she made it to the Christmas that was coming up, it would be her last.

Bessie was shipped out to me. This was a condition of my accepting the Sacramento assignment; I had planned for her to facilitate my journey home for the holidays. But it seems someone had been saying whatever needed to be said to get me off the phone, and had instead resolved to talk some sense into me at some later time. Which meant — on December 22, Bessie was not en route according to plan. She was in the Motor City. I was in Sacramento. Immobile. It was far too late to book a flight for Mom’s final Christmas…or catch a Greyhound…or…whatever. My reaction to this was not pleasant. Something had been building up in me during these previous two miserable years. And over the phone, I released it. I know not how. I know not what I said. I knew nothing but rage.

But I do know at 10:00 in the morning on December 24, 1992, Bessie was delivered, Detroit to Sacramento, one way.

I hopped in, gassed her up, and drove like hell. Bellingham, WA: 864 miles. Redding by two in the afternoon, Ashland by that early midwinter nightfall…somewhere up there I stopped for some grub, and reached Portland by eleven-ish. Welcome to Washington. Onward we go. Kelso. Olympia and Nisqually basin, deep into the wee hours of the morning…just drive…

What follows is a sickeningly-sweet Hallmark commercial, where the parents rise for Christmas morning at six, to find coffee being made by the wayward son who just finished an all-nighter to get home in time for Christmas. Mom hadn’t seen me for over a year by now. It was to be the last time.

For the funeral, once again, people tried to talk sense into me, and again I made the mistake of listening. I went by air. I left Bessie parked up in Reno, and took a thoroughly miserable three-leg itinerary up to Bellingham. It took twenty hours to do what I had previously achieved in fourteen…and this inspired a cynicism toward air travel that continued for many years afterward. After that, my point of diminishing returns was thrown WAY out there. A thousand miles or so. Up to that point, the travel agent could rest. Bessie would handle things for me.

And she always did…all those years, if the key turned, the engine would start — no ifs, ands or buts. It was shortly after Mom’s burial, which put some closure on all the drama taking place up north, when I began to settle into something of a normal life in the Big Tomato…where Greenback meets Madison in Orangevale…in the wee hours of the morning, late spring to early summer of ‘93, she crossed 100 thousand miles.

And I resolved to learn a bit more about her. The Toyota Corolla GTS was produced as a three-year family, from ‘87 to ‘89. The engine was a naturally-aspirated double overhead cam 1587cc inline-4 with EFI, a novelty back in those days. It was a third-generation 4A-GE, a popular one for refitting for auto racing. When the lease came to an end, I bought her out. She ran problem free, until — in the summer of ‘95, oil started to fall on the exhaust manifold. At 150 thousand miles, she got a new valve cover gasket. That is as close to the heart as any repair ever came throughout her long life — the only procedure ever performed on the engine, regular maintenance aside.

Then I got someone pregnant. About this time it had became trendy and fashionable for people, when they learned of such impending arrivals, to shove expectant fathers into their anticipated life-changes, celebrating the male angst and discomfort in the new role. They came from all over, zooming in like angry hornets, upon whatever parts of the former bachelor’s life he found most pleasing — and in my case they put Bessie in the crosshairs. And so one well-intentioned goo-gooder after another nudged, cajoled and coerced that I should “upgrade” towards one of those trendy minivans.

By 1998, as the boy completed his first year, I came close. But I demanded to see something to show me that the new vehicle for which Bessie would be exchanged, was to be as reliable, and peppy, and carefree, as she had been. The salesmen showed less than overwhelming enthusiasm to demonstrate this to me, and so we walked. Bessie became a family car, albeit an unlikely one.

By this time, we had our little adventure with wrapping Bessie around the tree, miraculously getting her back again. That was another instance of defying the odds. She wasn’t “wrapped around,” instead she was cut in half with the tree rammed square between the headlights. The engine was spared but the radiator was destroyed. It was that dreaded fool-behind-steering-wheel problem that comes up from time to time.

This was the start of a mild decline…although she did snap out of it, in a sense. New parts were found, and plugged in again — and we kept finding out the mechanics didn’t do it quite right. There was that adventure in Williams that we had after it became clear the new radiator had been plugged in all cockeyed.

Bessie continued to service our daily transporation needs, and we continued to service her. New timing belt at 216. New clutch at 238.

I remember during that dramatic breakdown in Williams, we were on our way to visit Dad. I remember we tried again, later that summer, and that was when Bessie crossed a quarter million.

I remember three hundred thousand happened just after “Kidzmom” and I had split up. We tried to keep the home together for the boy’s sake, but in the end, it just amounted to a wonderful lesson for both of us that all people cannot necessarily share their lives with all other people. We’d made our plans in late ‘03, during which time it turned out Bessie’s new radiator from the tree-wrapping incident was substandard. A pinhole, in the neck. I was far less distressed about depriving my son of a united household, than I was about doing the smog test to find out if it was worth getting a new radiator. Fortunately, it was…although by now, everyone was convinced I was nuts. February ‘04 came, the Mom moved out and took that dreadful stupid dog with her. Life got bleak. I saw very little of the boy over the next three or four months. And then I set up a new household and life got somewhat “normal”…June, his seventh birthday…and that August is when the Big Three Oh Oh happened.

At that point, the life of a single-dad began in earnest, and Bessie’s mileage demands skyrocketed. Fourth of July of ‘04 was unforgettable. It was the first father-son thing we did after the split. We piled into ol’ Bessie at three in the morning, and headed out to the Balloon launch. I think it was in Willits. Saw the new Spider Man movie, then waited up for fireworks. It was a good lesson in what a twenty-hour day is like when you’re 38 years old — not the same as when you’re 26.

Single parents treat their cars a little differently. When ya gonna pick him up. When ya gonna drop him off. You forgot to bring his coat. School needs you to pick him up. He wants to see you tonight. Are you taking him this week. This is your weekend. We can’t meet you, can you pick him up here. This one is not your weekend, but do you want him anyway. We won’t be home, can you drop him off over here.

Bessie, by this time, was over fifteen and she handled all these demands with less complaint than a brand new car would’ve. She handled them like she was expecting them. It was an amazing thing.

Looking back on it, I think the final decline came with a single event…the way it does with people who are blessed with longevity, you know? Grandma caught a cold a year before she passed, or she broke her arm, or she slipped on something…and from that point was never the same again. Well, that’s how Bessie went. I parked Bessie unwisely it turns out. Someone backed in to her, destroying the hood. The radiator was unscratched, but the bracket that held it in place was destroyed.

By this time, she was past 330. The insurance company of the woman who didn’t look where she was going when backing up, pronounced this latest repair to be well above the car’s worth. And this, at last, was fresh ground for Bessie. I had to salvage her.

The DMV sent me through this daunting process this last Christmas, and I was working to get it all tied up within the sixty days. She’d need a new set of plates. Little pain-in-the-ass things became items of concern, as they would have caused the inspection to fail. So it was off to the junk yards to get replacement parts for an eighteen year old car.

Bessie (left) lies in state, next to her replacement (right)

Well…

…it was exactly like something my mother would have done. Who knows, maybe that was her in there all this time — some otherwordly scheme for the Perfect Grandmother to actually see her grandchildren. Just like Mom, Bessie seemed to understand the trouble that was being taken on to keep her going, had risen above some threshold that was no longer acceptable. It was as if something deep inside her reasoned that while life was worth living, for her it came at the expense of others living less of theirs, and she cared not if this sacrifice was freely given or not — she would not accept it. If there was an awful choice to be made, and others would not make it, she would.

On Friday morning, the boy and I hopped in the faithful jalopy to drop him off at his Mom’s one more time. I turned the key and the starter eagerly pushed on the engine…

…and for the first time since the Soviet Union fell, the engine pushed back.

I realized immediately that something had just gone terribly wrong. I checked for the cheapest problems first, but the battery was full of life. You could feel the car lurch slightly when the engine was supposed to turn over. This was the first problem, ever, inside the power plant.

After “Kidzmom’s” new husband drove down to collect the boy, I gave it another whirl and she started right up. The repair shop was about ten miles away, and she was running alright now…except I saw coolant vapors in the exhaust. Not good.

I chanced it.

I made it part of the way. To The Spot. The spot, which I’d spent a decade wondering where exactly it would be…now I have my answer. Latitude 38° 38′ 38.40″N, longitude 121° 09′ 28.05″W, final mileage 341,092.3 — never an inch above that. The idle had suddenly lost what smoothness it had. And then the power fell away. The coolant temperature gauge began nudging treacherously upwards. I powered down one last time…and coasted to The Spot.

End of an era.

My son’s involvement in the salvage operation gave him a new understanding of how faithful this machine had been to us, and he had a tough time with it when he finally realized what happened. It wasn’t like losing a car at all, it was more like losing a very dear pet, or relative. The lectures I found myself dishing out were exactly the same…except for that bit about machines being machines, someday they’ll go, they don’t heal.

But really, are the machines so different. People are the same way. Just like machines. Built to fall apart. Born…terminally ill. We don’t live forever, we just live to see another day.

Bessie navigated her way through a stretch of time that had swallowed up so many other things. But — her time did come, and it will eventually come for us all.

In watching its pendulum
Swing to and fro,
Many hours had he spent while a boy;
And in childhood and manhood
The clock seemed to know,
And to share both his grief and his joy.
For it struck twenty-four
When he entered at the door,
With a blooming and beautiful bride;
But it stopped short
Never to go again,
When the old man died.

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5 Comments »

On Gas Prices
Monday, January 28th, 2008

I just finished a car-shopping experience for the first time in many years (more on this later), and I was pleasantly surprised about what’s available. I even had to eat a few of my own words about the newer cars; things are not the way I had imagined them to be.

The supply differs strikingly from the demand. If you want a car that gets 35 miles a gallon, you can have it right now. And you don’t have to sacrifice anything at all.

But that isn’t what people are buying. When I look at a highway, there’s really no way to misinterpret what’s going on there. Navs. Explorers. Hummers. Trucks that you can’t possibly call “pickups,” because a pickup is something that holds half a cord of wood and can be parked fairly easily. That simply isn’t what a “truck” is today. In this era of Inconvenient Truth when we’re all oh so worried about polar bears losing their ice, a truck is a gargantuan beast that requires a stepladder even if you’re Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. And nobody bats an eyelash at you for driving to work in one, five days a week, with no cargo in tow whatsoever save for a possible “chocolate bar” cell phone.

But the gas prices, they are to ruin us are they not?

A Wall Street Journal reader writes in with a dose of badly needed perspective…

In 1960 cars got an average of just over 14 miles per gallon and gas cost around 31 cents per gallon, making for a cost per mile driven of about 2.2 cents. Today with gas around $3 and cars getting an average of 22 miles per gallon, it costs nearly 14 cents per mile to drive. But from 1960 to 2006 consumer prices went up around seven times, which means that 2.2 cents in 1960 now equates to more than 15 cents.

Virtually nobody talked about “high” gas prices in 1960. Today, alas, that is all we hear from all too many people, even though driving is actually cheaper.

I do have to take issue with part of this — the logic depends on the improvement in gas mileage over those 48 years, to 22 miles a gallon. Now, I think 22 is a reasonable estimate of the average rating of what I saw in the lot over the weekend, available for my purchase — it is not a reasonable estimate of the average of what I see prowling the highways. Don’t believe me? Try it yourself. Go to a shopping mall. Okay maybe that’s not fair…those people expect to carry something home.

So just go to work. Go to a place that employs a couple hundred people, and go to the employee parking lot — see what’s there. Now, you take that 1960 average of fourteen miles a gallon. Would that be out of place among the gleaming metal beasts you see parked side by side? It looks to me just about dead-on, as a ballpark average. Sure, some of the “mid-sized” vehicles get 19 or 20. There are far more that get 11. Some get 8.

But the letter still makes an important point, one not commanding all the attention it should while we bitch about gas prices. The size of our cars is decisional.

We make conversation with each other by pissing and moaning about gas prices.

Our cars are freakin’ huge.

They aren’t all necessarily built that way. We buy ‘em that way. For the purpose of carrying…no freight. None at all most of the time — very little, some of the time.

Clue?

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7 Comments »

Memo For File LII
Monday, January 28th, 2008

Item!

Caroline Kennedy has been looking for a candidate like her father…and by doing so, one would presume, speaking for millions.

OVER the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.

Her reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and all three are intertwined. Hmmmm…

I’m fascinated with this passion for selecting one candidate over another, coupled with a seemingly blissful ignorance and apathy about positions. This editorial is ten paragraphs long, and every single syllable is about mood. Nothing, the all important make-me-happy issue aside, about what this candidate will do that that candidate will not…or what this candidate can do that that candidate cannot.

And that isn’t just my interpretation. Second paragraph from the end, Caroline comes right out and tells us what she wants in a President:

I want a president who understands that his responsibility is to articulate a vision and encourage others to achieve it; who holds himself, and those around him, to the highest ethical standards; who appeals to the hopes of those who still believe in the American Dream, and those around the world who still believe in the American ideal; and who can lift our spirits, and make us believe again that our country needs every one of us to get involved.

A President with the capability of telling us what we want to do.

Fox guarding the henhouse if ever there was one.

Item!

Gerard Van der Leun cites a parallel between Brave New World and the…uh…malaise:

Electile Dysfunction: “The inability to become aroused over any of the choices for president put forth by either party in the 2008 election year.”

Quick, break out the Soma!

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On The 4A-GEThursday, January 31st, 2008

The Greatest Betrayal of AllThursday, January 31st, 2008

2008 Election Campaign Theme SongThursday, January 31st, 2008

The Perfect WifeThursday, January 31st, 2008

The Force UnleashedWednesday, January 30th, 2008

Another True Believer DownWednesday, January 30th, 2008

An Idea, Unlike Any I’ve Seriously Considered Ever BeforeWednesday, January 30th, 2008

Vote for Hillary, She’s a Lady, Running for PresidentWednesday, January 30th, 2008

Canada Abandons DurbanWednesday, January 30th, 2008

Best Sentence XXIIIWednesday, January 30th, 2008

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XVITuesday, January 29th, 2008

A Dowager Finds RestTuesday, January 29th, 2008

On Gas PricesMonday, January 28th, 2008

Memo For File LIIMonday, January 28th, 2008

On The 4A-GE
Thursday, January 31st, 2008

The Greatest Betrayal of All
Thursday, January 31st, 2008

2008 Election Campaign Theme Song
Thursday, January 31st, 2008

The Perfect Wife
Thursday, January 31st, 2008

The Force Unleashed
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Another True Believer Down
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

An Idea, Unlike Any I’ve Seriously Considered Ever Before
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Vote for Hillary, She’s a Lady, Running for President
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Canada Abandons Durban
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Best Sentence XXIII
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

Not In It For The Attention, Mind You… XVI
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

A Dowager Finds Rest
Tuesday, January 29th, 2008

On Gas Prices
Monday, January 28th, 2008

Memo For File LII
Monday, January 28th, 2008