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Goodbye, old friend

I’ve been holding off on writing about this because it makes me sad.

About a week ago, I was driving home from work, and I noticed that my car was making sort of a clicking noise, and it wasn’t accelerating very well. It was also idling really badly. Mark and I were leaving town that night, so I didn’t think much about it until Monday morning, when I took it into the mechanic. He told me the engine was “just about shot” and didn’t really elaborate, but charged my ninety bucks for the diagnosis. So I then took it to the good mechanic (the one I should have taken it to first), who took only a few minutes to tell me (at no charge) that I had a burned out valve, and that replacing it would cost eight or nine hundred dollars.

My car is a 1991 Toyota Corolla, with 175,000 miles on the odometer, peeling paint on the exterior, a broken key stuck in one of the doors, and bad shocks. Some of you may remember when I bought it, over eleven years ago, following its predecessor’s disturbing death by arson. I love this car. It’s taken me on two round trip cross-country journeys (one in 1997 and one in 1998) and another one-way crossing as well. It survived numerous break-ins in San Francisco, and took me to Fresno and back many weekends in 2001 and 2002, before Mark and I cohabited. We’ve been everywhere together, and it’s given me almost no trouble at all, aside from a big scare which turned out to be a minor thing in central Texas in 2005. I thought it was indesctructable. But it’s not. And I can’t justify spending so much money (probably more than its current book value) on this repair.

Which means that my Corolla is about to go to car heaven. Its tags and insurance (conveniently coming due on the next month or so) will not be renewed. I’m going to run out its last tank of gas (I filled up the day before the calamity) driving back and forth to work, since I’m comfortable walking home from there should it die on the road. And then, I’ll either scrap it or donate its carcass to a worthy cause and take a tax deduction.

I drive my cars until they die. I’m glad this one didn’t die a slow, lingering death like my Firebird and my Duster, nor a violent death like my Scamp, my Tempo, and my Cavalier. I’d like to go that way myself when my time comes.

I’m really going to miss this car. I’ll probably never have another one that will compare.

Myrtle

Today would have been my grandmother’s 100th birthday.

The photo above is from about 1926, before she married my grandfather and gave birth to my mom and three aunts. I can’t help but think that photo pretty much defined my grandmother’s perception of herself for her whole life; she had a lot of that Scarlett O’Hara “belle of the ball” thing going on.

Grandmother (she did not liked to be called “Grandma” or, heaven forbid, “Granny”) was a generally very pleasant lady, and one people liked, despite her numerous quirks. She loved her children and grandchildren and was willing to fight for them and do what needed to be done, although to call her “selfless” would be a bit of a stretch. She sometimes tended toward passive aggression, and I’ve always wondered if she weren’t much better suited to the role of grandmother than to that of mother.

Other quirks included her propensity for painting upholstered furniture (and I mean the upholstery itself, not the wood trim), gluing lamps and other things to tables so they wouldn’t move, and asking her 12-year-old grandson change light switches without turning the breaker off. She was definitely a character, and not your typical sweet little old lady.


Easter Sunday, 1968.

She led a colorful life, marrying three times and divorcing twice, at a time when doing so was unheard of in the south. During the Depression, she worked in cotton mills and ran cafés that were probably better described as roadhouses (while living upstairs). She travelled quite a lot over the course of her life, crossing the country at least once, and the ocean more than once.

Until her death, she rented “light housekeeping rooms” in her house to single men who otherwse might have lived in fleabag hotels, a practice fairly common among a generation of widows in the south, but one she also practiced while married and raising her four daughters. Into the 1990s, her front door was never locked, so that her “roomers” could come and go as needed. She ran the place with something of an iron hand (no alcohol, no male or female visitors upstairs, etc.) and without fear, although her daughters were sometimes nervous about the arrangement as she got older.


72nd Birthday, 1980.

Her three-story house was enormous: 4084 square feet of heated area, says the county, and I’m guessing that doesn’t include the top level. I spent a lot of time there as a child, interacting with the roomers, placing newspaper ads for her and screening callers on the phone. I rummaged through her attic, and spent nights on her sleeper sofa. She loved “Sanford and Son” and “The Gong Show” and hated soap operas. Later, when I was in college and still living at home, I’d sometimes housesit for her, offering me much-needed independence and a place for doing things with other boys that Grandmother probably wouldn’t have approved of.

Independent as she may have seemed, she never learned to drive, a bit of “helplessness” she often used to her advantage when she was in her passive aggressive moods.


One day prior to her death, 1991.

Grandmother died in 1991, a few days after her 83rd birthday.

Olympic protests

San Francisco Olympic torch preparations spokesman David Perry on the likelihood of protests agains the event:

“I’m concerned when anyone would fear that here in San Francisco that someone who might disagree with them might cause them harm,” Perry said. “That makes me sad.”

…

“I like to think in San Francisco we know how to do a protest,” Perry said. “Here in San Francisco, we’re not the type to jump on people in a wheelchair to try to snuff out the flame.”

No, they’re just the type to block streets so emergency vehicles can’t pass and people can’t get to work, in the name of anything from stopping war to defending the rights of cyclists to take over the streets. If there’s jumping to be done, it will be on cars rather than on wheelchairs.

I don’t really have a strong opinion on the Beijing Olympics and the related protests; I find human reights violations as revolting as the next guy, and an Olympic boycott may or may not make an effective statement. I find it notewothy, though, that the only US appearance of the Olympic torch was scheduled for a place where a major protest was almost guaranteed. In San Francisco, protest is a way of life, almost a profession, which is why I contemplated starting that consulting business several years ago.

Deten el chancro

Random thoughts for a Monday evening:

  • In case you thought Winston-Salem was some southern backwater, I offer the photo above as proof that it’s not. We’ve gotsyphillis prevention ads in Spansih on the backs our buses just like they have in the big city.
  • Now that I’m a member of the American Library Association, I get email advertising things like discounts on microfilm scanners. And I find that vaguely exciting.

I’m sorry. I usually try for a minimum of three, but two’s all I’ve got tonight.

Weekend

Did you get threatened with a frivolous lawsuit this weekend?

I did.

I also took a much-needed day off on Saturday and drove to Lynchburg, Virginia. Mainly because it was there. I don’t envision a repeat performance anytime in the near future, though, exciting as it may be to visit the place where Jerry Falwell died.

Storm a-brewin’

I was just thinking this afternoon about how long it’s been since I’ve hung out in the basement. So tonight, I did. Mainly because I was surrounded by tornadoes and assorted funnel clouds. Really close ones.

I think it’s over now, but this is one of the biggest (and longest) storms I remember in a long time. It’s been going on really intensely for an hour or more. My street is completely flooded, and the gutters have just sort of given up. It just keeps coming. And now they’ve extended the tornado warning. Maybe I should just sleep downstairs tonight.

What a creepy night.