Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Requiem for Jedi

We own a really old Volkswagen that my husband uses as his beater car. He calls it "Yoda" because it's an old, green Jetta (cue strained laughter at dorky pun). Our kids just call it Jedi.

We bought Jedi used in 1999. At that time, I was driving a beautifully restored 1972 BMW tii. Unfortunately, the BMW was a freak accident magnet. Park it on a deserted street and someone would appear out of nowhere, drive too close and knock off a mirror. Park it on a tree lined street and a branch would suddenly fall off of the one tree it was parked near and ding the hood. Case in point: one weekend, as I was driving to a friend's house in Western Massachusetts during a rain storm, the driver's side windshield wiper suddenly flew off completely. I was able to pull over at a car dealership, and someone there put the remaining wiper on the driver's side so I could get my car to its destination. 5 minutes down the road, the second wiper flew off and I was driving in the pounding rain with no wipers. AND... wait for it... because it was a 1972 model, anything required to repair even the most minor issue had to be mail ordered to our house or picked up from a specialty store in New Hampshire. Long story short, it just got too exhausting to manage the BMW, lovely though it was. When I was rear ended by an SUV while stopped at a red light and the entire back end crumpled up like tissue paper, we decided to get a sturdier car. Enter Jedi.

Jedi's been a good car with relatively few maintenance issues over the years. We bought him used and at a good price and we definitely got our money's worth. There was a two year period when something was gravely wrong with the AC unit and the car floor periodically swamped up with water (prompting my friend Chuck to dub the car "Swamp Thang"), but it was otherwise problem free. It is the car we used to bring both our babies home from the hospital, and the car Jim drove the babies around in at night when we couldn't get them to sleep.

In the past year, however, Jedi's been showing his age (and mileage). It started out with a couple hundred bucks a few times a year and then escalated to the point where every time we took him in for service, we could pretty much guarantee at least a $500 bill. As long as Jedi remained safe to drive, we didn't mind. And then, about six months ago, we got the news that some major part of the undercarriage was getting very worn. No, I have no idea what part it is because I know nothing about cars, but I know it's dangerous if it breaks! Our mechanic gave us two options -- pay about $1000 to fix it or keep Jedi off the highway. We kept him off the highway, but it was kind of like learning that Jedi had a fatal disease. We knew that the end was only a matter of time.

Yesterday, Jedi's brakes got really, really soft and Jim really worried about getting home without crashing. He took Jedi to Midas this morning and got the bad news this afternoon. There are so many things wrong with the brakes that it will cost at least $900 to repair them. Our new options are to either spend the money or get another car. We told the mechanic not to do the work. I took Jim over to pick up Jedi after work today. When he opened the car door, the car alarm went off and he could not get it to stop for about 10 minutes. I think Jedi knows that we are putting him out to pasture this time. I followed him home to make sure there were no problems, and it was a little like driving in a funeral cortege.

Alas, poor Jedi, we knew him well.

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