The Writer's Pen
Deals and Steals
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Recently my wife, Rita, and I decided to start looking for a new car. It isn’t that anything is wrong with our old car, but we think we want an SUV instead of the sedan we are driving. Our Toyota car is seven years old, has 90,000 miles on it, and has nothing wrong with it that a $9 car wash won’t fix. We do regular maintenance, have replaced one set of tires, but it rides comfortably and gets great gas mileage.
So, why do we want to buy another vehicle? It’s complicated!
We try to be savvy when we buy vehicles, even though we realize that there is no way a consumer can come out ahead of the game. We’ve bought and sold a lot of vehicles in the past, and some were good deals and some were lemons. We usually look at ads in newspapers and online, decide on a price and model we can live with, and then contact a dealership. At times that works well, but it seems like a better deal always shows up after we sign the paperwork.
A problem we’ve had over the years is trying unsuccessfully to avoid that first scratch or dent. I bought a new Chevy Nova a couple months before we got married. Rita already had a good used car, so we thought we were set for a while. When we got married, we moved into a small rental house in Orleans, across the street from the south shore of Spirit Lake. Our first winter there was challenging to say the least.
There was a barbed wire fence separating our property from the neighbor, and our driveway was right beside it. Having two vehicles meant a lot of extra shoveling when the wind and snow came blowing off the lake. The driveway sloped down from the road, so we had to build up speed to get out, and conversely, drive slowly when we came in. To make a long story short, I slid into the fence with my new car and badly scratched the driver’s side by the time I got it out.
A few years later, we bought another car to use as a second vehicle. It was a Chevrolet economy model that had a four-speed transmission and a hand brake. Rita was working at an Iowa Lakes Community College office in Spirit Lake, near East Okoboji, and I had been hired to mow their grass. We had owned the car less than a week when I took it to do some yard work at the office. Two of our kids, Justin and Hillary, rode along. When I was finished, I loaded the kids and lawn equipment into the car.
We were about to leave when some good friends stopped to say hello. I got out of the car to visit, and Justin jumped into the driver’s seat. Hillary was strapped into an infant seat in the back, when all of a sudden the car started to roll down the hill toward the lake. Justin tried frantically to put on the brakes, and Hillary was screaming hysterically. My friend, Steve, and I raced down the hill, but couldn’t catch the car. All of a sudden, Justin must have turned the steering wheel, because the car spun into a turn and wedged itself between two trees that were about 10 feet away from the water. The car was banged up pretty bad on the passenger side, but the kids were all right. However, it was a long time before either one of them asked to go swimming at the lake.
After I retired, we bought a camper with the intention of spending more time in the outdoors with our family. The problem was that my pickup wasn’t big enough to handle the camper, so we looked around and found a Ford Super-Duty. I was able to use the pickup for operating my lawn business, as well. Not long after buying it, I pulled into the driveway of one of my customers and unloaded my mower. I had barely started cutting the grass when I heard a loud bang – my elderly customer had backed into my pickup. It seems I was parked where she always turned around after backing out of her garage. I examined the damage to the vehicles and decided I could hammer out the wrinkle behind the back tire. She was driving a Lincoln, and I couldn’t find a scratch on it anywhere. She said I could fill out an accident report with the police and insurance company, but I figured if I did she might lose her license. I decided I would just park somewhere else when I worked on her yard.
The car we are thinking about trading is just the second new car I’ve ever owned. We had gone a long time without scratching the car when a farmer in a pickup backed into it as Rita was driving down the street, ramming his trailer hitch into our front bumper. A couple years later, we were visiting Hillary and her family in Kansas City. I tried to merge onto Interstate 435 in heavy traffic, and dropped into a large pothole on the side of the road. I got off the interstate to change the tire (something I don’t need to experience again) and took the tire to a repair shop. They informed me both the rim and tire needed to be replaced and it would take a few days. Since we had reservations at a resort near Branson, we borrowed our son-in-law’s pickup for the remainder of our trip.
Now that I look back on everything, I wonder why on earth we would ever want to go through the hassle of buying an SUV. Unless a good deal comes along, maybe we should keep the car and pickup we have. We’d just scratch or dent the SUV anyway.
Roger Brockshus and his wife, Rita, live in Spirit Lake. They are mostly retired, but volunteer in their church and community. They enjoy spending time with their kids and grandkids when time allows. Roger is a member of the Hartley Writer’s Group and Poetry Group.
