If you don't own a thirty year old plus automobile it's sort of hard understanding how much a pain in the ass it is to keep it running, especially if you're not a rich dude who can plunk down money to get an old car restored like it ain't no thing. I bought my car ten years ago about and put a new engine and transmission in it and thought that once I was a rich and succesful professional I'd just finish it and be done with it and then rub it lovingly with a soft cloth diaper. Well, my financial aspirations haven't quite worked out as I hope, and that's partially a fault of the cosmos and partially my own fault. Unfortunately it has an effect on my vehicle restoration goals, which haven't worked out quite as I hoped. My bug, while seemingly mechincally OK (I have to take it in soon to get it looked at before the winter and change all my window seals and replace the muffler), still looks like an old POS, which isn't fair to the car. I'm sure, like any other lady in her thirties, she'd appreciate a little nip and tuck where ever it's possible so I really have to get on the ball with that. Basically, this all leads me to the point I was going to make about my car, which is the pressure I get from lots of peope, most in my own family, to just get rid of the car since it's a financial and emotional drain.
This brings me back to the main point I was going to make. I don't want to get rid of my car because, a) it's a piece of history now. As you can probably guess from the way I dress, talk, feel, and mostly live, I sort of have a neo-hippy attitude at life (ok...not always and especially not lately since my karmic energies have been on the seriously negative side) and this car gives me a physical and emotional connection to the original hippsters that populated our world many many moons ago. The baby-boomers that danced naked in a mud-pit at woodstock, now currently voting republican because their tax rates are low. I don't want to call them sell outs, since it's easy to sell out when you have privat school they have to pay for their kids and stuff like that. I can at least voice my disappointment however. Anywho, it's sort of like, when I listen to the classic rock station and a particular song comes on the radio, I can sort of feel like my car is saying, "yeah..I remember when this song was first on the radio, and we were driving to an anti-nuke rally with Moonbeam and Rainbow with some hash hidden in an old guitar on the back seat...". I'm sort of an anachronistic throw-back to that time and while clubs like the SCA like to re-create the Renaissance, no one is out there recreating the late 60's and the 70's. Well, maybe Ben and Jerry but that isn't enough.
The second reason, is because my car makes people happy. It just does. Last night was another example. I was hanging with some friends and near totally out of gas I stopped at a station to fill up (now costing me $15 to fill up my 8 gallon tank...it never cost me $15 dollars) and this dude in front of me just came up and told me I just totally made his day because when he was younger he bought a car that looked just like mine as his first car, and we got to talking and stuff like that. I get that a lot. I get all kinds of stuff like that...people telling me about a beetle they owned or their parents or their favorite aunty or something and how it ties into one of their favorite memories. I totally dig how it brings people happy memories. And no one ever plays Punch Buick...no one does...it's Punch Buggy...and it's becoming hard since there aren't that many left around. Punch Buggy may potentially die off as a cultural icon if I don't help to preserve it...how much of a bummer would that be?
Anywho, I figured that since I was up so early on a Sunday morning and since there wasn't much else to do I'd post this little story. Keep on truckin' and have a good day. Peace
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