A Tale of Two Cars
Shortly after my mother died I purchased (thanks to a modest bequest) a new automobile: a Hyundai Ionic 5 EV. My preference would have been a plug-in Prius, but when the local dealer informed me that the wait list for that car here in the Midwest was two years, I decided to take the leap to a climate-friendly all-electric.
This will most likely be my final purchase of this nature, since I don’t envision driving past the life of the Hyundai. I practically had to wrench the keys out of my nonagenarian parents’ hands, and both Trina and I are determined to spare our son the same internecine struggle. But the last car in my life brought to mind the first, which makes for an interesting story that begins with my parents’ marriage in 1947.
Either shortly before or after Bill and Nancy exchanged vows in a Topeka Kansas minister’s parlor, Dad bought the couple’s first vehicle: an olive drab two-seat Willys-Overland Jeep. I doubt that my mother had much to say about his rather idiosyncratic choice of transport, but her husband had become enamored of the Jeep during his service in World War II.
Numerous grainy photos of his deployment in combat-ravaged eastern Germany and Czechoslovakia depict a youthful second lieutenant leaning against his set of Army issue wheels, with the name “Zona” (his first wife) emblazoned on the hood. Although he never adorned the new civilian Jeep with my mother’s name, it remained with our family for the next twenty years. Hardly suitable as a family car, after my two siblings and I entered the picture it served mostly as a utility vehicle on the two small farms on which we eked out a livelihood.
By age twelve I had mastered the art of shifting the balky gears, but by that time the side-view mirror and windshield were both cracked, and the finish was in such dismal condition that my father decided to spruce things up with a fresh coat of cobalt blue enamel. The speedometer jittered so much that it was hard to tell whether one was traveling at 45 or 55 mph (which didn’t make much difference since the old crate struggled to hit 60).
In addition, the fuel gage no longer worked, and rather than scouring salvage yards for a replacement, Dad simply stuck a sawed-off yardstick down the supply channel to measure how much gasoline remained in the tank. This was how matters stood in 1967 when, the farm having been sold, our family relocated to sleepy Naples, Florida, the sad-sack Jeep in tow behind a new red Mustang.
At that point the Jeep, to which I attached surfboard racks and drove both to the beach and off-road through the pines and palmetto of the Big Cypress, became mine. Since it sucked fuel like a semi, I was careful to keep at least two inches worth of petrol in the tank. After a few months I also had a new girlfriend, Trina, who didn’t seem to mind being squired around town in this rustic chariot – until the day we drove to Fort Myers for a movie.
Upon returning, we were on the outskirts of Naples when the Jeep coughed, sputtered and, as I moved to the shoulder, slowed to a stop. My calculations had proved faulty and we were out of gas. I don’t recall what happened next, but somehow I got Trina home, now worried about the status of our relationship. Fortunately, the experience proved not to be a deal breaker, and this past year Trina and I marked the fiftieth anniversary of our marriage.
But since that day, she has insisted that when our car’s fuel gauge registers a quarter tank, it’s time to fill up.
