Putting Down the Family Car

Over the weekend, I had to put down the family car. Figuring out why I would hang on to a 16-year-old VW Golf well past the point when any of its dashboard panels worked, guessing your speed and gas reserves, would probably require years of therapy. Still the decision was painful. It might have something to do with the fact that my first car was a 1965 used black VW convertible that I drove back and forth across the country after college any number of times. This was the car on which I had learned how to gap points in the distributor, adjust the valves and ultimately rebuild its engine, until many, many moons later, I pushed it into a mechanic’s yard and traded it for a 1948 Ford pickup truck, which I drove from California to Greenville Maine for my first forestry job. Now when I look under the hood of a car, I am clueless as Ross Perot.

Our car-care expert had told me he could no longer issue an inspection sticker, and thus it was time for the little red Golf to pass quietly out of this world—or should I say shuffle off its mortal coil? He even suggested an appropriate resting spot and considerate undertaker out in the hinterlands where coffin-like carcasses litter the scrapyard.

I had gotten the Golf from my aged father-in-law for $600 after he was no longer able to pass his mandatory driving test. A World War II veteran, his Golf came equipped with all manner of army surplus survival gear for when you might break down some night on a lonely stretch of highway, miles from nowhere, and need to bivouac. I solemnly unloaded his army-issue poncho that could double as a tent in a pinch, a road atlas of American highways, a first aid kit complete with congealed ointments and tattered bandages, a box of flares and a fold-out entrenching tool for digging out of mudslides or snow banks. You just never know.

Laying out Grandpa’s gear did put me into mind of one of the longest nights of my life, when an errant son called while driving on his way back to college late at night from an abbreviated courtship event in Montreal. His chosen route took him over the narrow Kancamangus Pass in the White Mountains, whereupon it began to snow. And snow and snow and snow. He called when he was beginning to realize he was desperately short of options, including running dangerously low on gas. The snow was already up to his front grill and he was literally plowing a wake in the powder to keep going. He was afraid to stop because he did not have enough gas to keep the heater running (a bad idea, anyway, I told him, because of the potential of carbon monoxide poisoning) and he had no blankets or sleeping bag, nor even boots for that matter. In fact, he only had a light windbreaker on. Besides which, he could not tell where the shoulder of the highway was and worried about being hit by one of the huge plows that he had seen struggling up the grade in the other direction and would likely to turn around at the top of the pass.

Hmmm”¦. I vainly tried to recall that stretch of I-93, which I had not driven in several decades. What was the name of the last exit he had passed, I asked? Did not know. How far back was it? Well, he had been so intent on trying to stay on the road and not be trapped by the rapidly increasing height of the snow, swirling in the blinding glare of his headlights, he could not really be sure, but thought maybe five or six miles back. That was good, I said quickly, as the exits are generally about 10 miles apart—I made this part up—and he needed to keep going for another four or five miles and look for an exit and then call me back. Which he did. He had made it off the highway and had pulled into an all night gas station, but the automatic pump would not accept his card and he had no cash.

Hmmm”¦. Which direction should he head—east or west, he asked? I got Grandpa’s road atlas out of the back of the Golf and told him the closest town looked another couple of miles to the west, where he should head and call us. He called back when he got to the town, but all the gas stations were closed. Okay, I said, you have to find a motel and hole up for the rest of the night and call us back. He reported back to say there were only two motels, one shut for the season and another with lights on, but absolutely deserted in the storm.

Hmmm”¦. Well he would just have to try all the doors and windows, I told him. But wait”¦you won’t believe this, he said, while casing the establishment, there is a pool room (as in swimming) and the door is unlocked. Better yet, it is actually warm inside, which is important because his feet, without boots of course, were by now quite badly frozen. I told him to soak his feet in the water to get some circulation going and look for towels to dry off and sleep under. Which he did until daylight when the roads were reasonably enough plowed for him to make it back to college.

For Christmas that year, we gave him a little emergency kit for the back of his vehicle, just like Grandpa carried around in the Golf, with a small shovel, first aid kit, extra gloves and hat, flares and the like. He left it in the garage on his way back to college.

Maybe that is why I could not bear to put the Golf down.

Philip Conkling is president and founder of the Island Institute based in Rockland, Maine.