Exploring the road
Posted by Leah Hemenway on Nov 14th, 2007
I’m in the Ford Explorer, banging around on the way up the hill. This car is getting old. It moans, groans, and bumps around. Periodically the Explorer locks and unlocks the doors, randomly turns on and off the radio, and rolls down the windows. I can’t decide what to do about it. Should I buy a new car? Or can it go another 200,000 miles? I can’t remember the time when the Ford Explorer wasn’t sitting in our driveway. We’ve had it for 12 years. I guess I need a new car or maybe not. Cars aren’t important. They don’t define the person who drives them. Right.
My very first car was a l961 black VW Bug. I got it in l973 for $250 and had it towed to the shop where I paid another $100. This car was great. I drove back to Oberlin, Ohio, where I had my first real job as a high school French teacher. It was heavenly not to be pestering family and friends for rides, not to be hitchhiking places. I felt on top of the world. The bug was great for snowy weather, but often I had to push it downhill to get it started.
The next year I was going to be a city girl and live in Washington, D.C. I was saving for a better car. I bought my second VW bug from my mother for $750 It was a l969 with only 60,000 miles. This car carried my worldly possessions all over the country for the next six years. It was so new and the heater actually worked. I drove from D.C. to Cincinnati to South Carolina to Kentucky and everywhere in between.
I was young, just starting out and that VW bug was me. Later after I got married in l981, the floor of my bug had rotted and there was a “small hole” near the gas pedal. Once my husband was driving the bug home after class at the University of Kentucky.. He waved to one of his student and suddenly his feet fell through the floor and hit the street. He looked like he had disappeared into the ground. The seat had lurched backwards through the floor and he had to lay forward to make it home. Bob and a friend replaced the floor with pieces of sheet metal welded to the car frame. It lasted another two or three years.
Eventually we got a Ford station wagon to accommodate us and all the kids. This station wagon (used, of course) was probably my all time favorite car. It was huge and you could be driving along and know that the kids were in the back-back yelling and screaming, but you couldn’t hear them very well or stop them. It was also a “woody” — a station wagon with wood paneling. I felt like I was driving a really fancy car. The wagon was great for the drive-in. We put down all the seats, brought sleeping bags and coolers, and opened up the back end. We even had kids on the roof.
For a second car Bob found a green, little Plymouth for $450. The mileage was a little high and the gas gauge didn’t work. I drove the Plymouth for a while and then our oldest daughter (my step-daughter) drove it to high school. She was supposed to buy gas every Sunday, but on numerous occasions she spent the money on something else. We’d go rescue her regularly when she was out of gas..
Eventually we were forced to replace the Plymouth with a brand new Mercury Lynx. This little grey car was beautiful. It was new! We drove that car for ten years. It didn’t really bother me that we were a little crowded. Two years later we moved to Oklahoma for a new job and we sold the woody. I was sad, but we realized that the woody might be strained by the long drive. We then bought a used VW Van for a second car. We fitted it out with new seats and eight seatbelts. I handpicked the seats at a beautiful VW junkyard.. This place had streets with wrecked VW’s from various years, all classified by types. I found an old VW with perfect seats and replaced mine. Then I had seatbelts installed. From the inside, this VW was big and beautiful This was my first experience with a car where the driver’s seat is up high. I loved it.
We had one family vacation in the van that came right out of “Little Miss Sunshine”. We were near Tenkiller State Park ( a real state park in Oklahoma) and the van was struggling and sputtering up a huge hill. Bob was getting desperate so he made us ( 5 kids and me) all get out of the car and run up the hill to meet him.
I drove that car all over Oklahoma for the next three years. We moved back to Kentucky with the VW and the Lynx. The VW had seen its best days. One cold evening it stopped permanently on the side of the road. Bob and I got out of the car. Bob stood there in his tux and helped me limp back to the country club in my high heels where we had just attended a fundraiser. We sold the old van and leased a brand new Dodge Caravan. Meanwhile the Lynx was still with us except for a mysterious water leak when it rained. We had two working cars that crossed Lexington back and forth to soccer games, band practices, baseball practices, and various activities. I spent two or three hours in the car every day. I had a caravan and things were going smoothly.
When we moved to Kansas in l995, the Caravan broke down frequently. By this time the lease was up and we had actually bought the car. We had sold the Lynx in Kentucky since Bob’s job in Kansas provided a car. We sold the Caravan and bought the Ford Explorer in l995. This is my current car. This car has lots of memories of kids and fun trips. It also has memories of various wrecks. Now we weren’t new to teenagers and their little wrecks. The Dodge Caravan had hit the only other car in an empty parking lot. It had also slid on ice into another car and scraped a building in downtown Lexington. You may notice how the car got itself into all of these predicaments. The drivers, always teenagers were sad and penitent, but it was always circumstances beyond their control.
The Ford Explorer had some similar experiences: a teenager who tried to save his chili and bumped a car, a teenager who didn’t see a parked car in a dark park. Unfortunately a teenager in another car actually slid into the Ford Explorer for its final wreck over five years ago. We also bought a CRV for a second car when the Ford Explorer was taken over by one of our kids for a few years.
But the Ford Explorer has been intimately involved with our plans for the past 12 years, even recently when we all met at a state park in South Carolina. The older kids and our grandkids flew from various parts of the United States. I drove the Ford Explorer which carried two portable cribs, a large tent, coolers, thirty towels, board games, sleeping bags, groceries, and other necessary equipment The Ford Explorer has always been there for back-up.
The Ford Explorer has moved the contents of many, many apartments all over Lawrence, Lincoln, and Iowa City. It once took the entire contents of a dorm room in North Carolina— a semester’s worth of dirty clothes, refrigerator, chair, rug —and transported it the 20 hours home with the windows down. The Explorer has held TV’s, microwaves, small refrigerators, futons, easy chairs, coffee tables, bedside lamps, and all kinds of important items. It can easily hold four bicycles of various sizes and people.
The Ford Explorer has always been ready. It has taken many trips back and forth to International Falls, Minnesota, where Arna went to camp. We spent many memorable hours in the Explorer listening to Harry Potter novels, having huge arguments, and enjoying tense or comfortable silences. When Myrle (my father-in-law) recently moved to Lawrence, the Ford Explorer made several pick-ups in Boulder, Colo., loaded with household goods, including an old shotgun that lay on top of boxes, coffee tables, and a l970’s gigantic TV. This array must have been impressive because a policeman pulled me over on I-70 to ask what I was doing with all this stuff.
We’ve had great times together, the Explorer and me. I look at my vehicle and I think of myself as a mother, a grandmother, a mover, and a hauler. I don’t know if we’re ready to separate and move on. With the seats down, this puppy measures slightly more than 7 feet long and almost five feet high. We’ve worked many jobs together, big jobs. We’ve been through many challenging situations. I get out my tape measure and the Explorer can do almost anything.
So I feel like it’s not just a car I’m replacing. Our family has stopped moving so much And now the kids have to hire movers or rent U-Hauls. Meanwhile we’re stuck together, me and the Ford Explorer. We both have lots of miles on us, and need tests. Our parts aren’t what they used to be.
So I’m thinking about buying a new car, maybe changing my image. When we bought the Ford Explorer our youngest son was in elementary school and the other in junior high. The older kids were in college or just out. In the last 12 years, everything has changed. Our youngest kids have more than doubled in weight and age. Our older kids have acquired husbands, wives, and 8 grandkids.
Back to the car. I pull up in my new red convertible Miata. I struggle with the small trunk (I haven’t had a trunk in 20 years) and pull out some gorgeous paintings I picked up on my travels. I whip off my scarf and enter my home. I make a luscious dinner of almond encrusted salmon (my husband has given up beef) and several exotic side dishes. We sit down to a candle lit dinner. We discuss our vacation plans to Phoenix where we’ll both play golf.
Now wait a minute. Do I recognize these people? I get out of my Prius after a long trip across country where I’ve been conducting research on wind power. I brag to my assistants about how little gas I used. Stop. I think I’ll just drive the old Ford Explorer a little longer. Last night it suddenly went into 4-wheel drive. I figure that the Explorer was just reminding me that winter is on the way. At least I don’t have to get out and push my VW bug. Hey, maybe that’s what I want, a new VW bug. I wonder what’s going to happen in the next 12 years?
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