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I have an angry car.

Long before a tv show made the model famous, I’ve been driving a 1967 Chevy Impala.   Bought it many years ago from a farmer who was torn between restoring the Impala or a classic Stingray ‘vette he also had.  He kept the ‘Vette, and I bought the Impala.   Was one of those things Meant To Be;  the asking price of the car was exactly what I had in the bank account at that time.   (the car cost me three grand - a steal.)

The Impala and I have had many happy years together.  Many crazy, real-life adventures, many true cop-stories.  ( I’ve been pulled over more than once, just because the cop wanted to know what I was driving.)   The car also has it’s quirks; it’s ran when it should have been impossible. Started in 20-below weather after sitting idle two months, and conked out for no apparent reason other than temper, more than once.  

During the past couple years, the Impala and I have grown apart somewhat.  It started innnocently;  gas prices were getting high, and the Impala is a hungry beast.   It eats gas and oil in huge quantities.  More often than not, I started driving one of my beaters to work and left the Impala to decorate the driveway.  I took it out on the weekends.

Then, it seemed after sitting for a few days, I couldn’t take the car out on the weekends without having to put air in the tires.  The tires are fairly new, but the weight of the car is such, that it just sits there, on it’s wide rims, and does a slow squish.  And to keep the fuel economy decent,  and to keep the long tail of the car from bouncing around, I had to put air in all four tires once a week.  Not a big deal, just a pain if I’m in a hurry to get somewhere.

Naturally, sometimes I took my other car instead, on the weekends.  Can you see where this is starting to go wrong?

For revenge, the Impala started to lie to me about how much gas and oil it had, at any given time.  My fuel gauge was suddenly inaccurate. 1/4 tank could mean empty, or it could really mean 1/4 tank.  I found this out when I ran out of gas with 1/4 of a tank showing on the dash.  Nice.

The oil gauge was worse.  Per the oil tach, I had oil.  The car would run as if it was out of oil.  I’d check the dipstick - oh man, I’d better add oil, looks 2 quarts low.   I’d add oil…and suddently the tach reads WAY too much oil and the car is smoking it all out the back.  @#$%&*.   How is there nothing on the dipstick - I mean NOTHING -  and 4 quarts be in the crankcase?!  GAAAAAHH!!!

So I drove the car even less, because now I had to add gas, and maybe oil, in addition to checking all the tires for air, before going anywhere. 

Ah, but the Impala had other ways of communicating to me, other ways to get my attention whether I was driving it or not.  Next trick:  the spewing of transmission fluid.  Yes, my car can throw up at will, while sitting in the driveway. 

I kid you not.  Every drop of reddish-pink tranny fluild will suddenly be coating the driveway.  Not every day.  More like, once every few days, at random.  I’ve had two mechanics check out the tranny, the gaskets look fine, they tighten a few bolts, can’t see anything wrong.  They add tranny fluid, test the car, shifts fine.  Looks good.  They give me back the keys, and I drive the car a couple days.  All’s well.  I park the car, and drive the other one to work as usual…and then after a couple of days…BLORP!!   I come home, and the driveway has a huge, wet stain.  The Impala is standing over it.  The tranny fluid is gone.   Not a slow leak as much as a spontaneous hurl.  Mechanics can’t figure it out.  My friends are scared of the car. 

A few weeks ago, I put tranny fluid in the Impala, put air in the tires, filled up the gas tank, added a quart of oil, and thought maybe I’d go for a ride.  Just for the hell of it.  The car ran fine, for about fifteen minutes.   Then, it started making rapid, ticking, whiffling noises under the hood.  Oil was fine…tranny fluid was fine…but now the car sounded like it was about to….well, you can imagine. 

I took the car to the garage.  They put in a new manifold gasket because they couldn’t find anything else wrong.  The frantic ticking remained.  I indulged in a primal scream.  I parked the car, took the other one to work, and the next day the tranny fluid was all over the driveway again. 

This last weekend, the weather was nice, so I thought I’d try and reconcile with my moody Chevrolet Impala.   It gave me the antenna, so to speak, and refused to start.  Period.  Nothing doing.  I looked under the hood and saw that the battery cables had corrorsion all over.  Wan’t there before.  I’ve even got a preventative goo I keep on the cable ends so that doesn’t happen.   Happened anyway. 

What’s sad though, is I knew that car wouldn’t start, for whatever reason, before I tried turning the key.  I just had a feeling.  My steel-sided companion decided it was dying. 

I took a long look at the car.  The many years of my hard driving in all conditions had not been kind to it; it needed some minor body work, needed repainting, needed weather stripping replaced in every window.  It had a taillight that didn’t work.   Nothing that made it undrivable, but that, plus the growing laundry-list of mechanical repairs, never got my money or my attention anymore. I had other cars - beaters, truth be told - but they got better gas mileage and didn’t require an altar sacrifice every outing. 

Yet I felt a guilt for how things now stood between us.  I had made choices to drive something else, put my priorities elsewhere - where they had to be, maybe, but….there was something seriously wrong here.   This was the car that 10 years ago, made my heart stop when I’d found it for sale along a country road.  My life had changed a lot since then, and the Impala had been an important part of those changes.  Then, corporate life sort of took over, it seemed I had very little time to putter around and deal with the quirks of this car, and….now, this great joy to me, sat silent and motionless.   By my choice. 

I felt a sorrow I couldn’t really explain.  Sure, rationally, it was “just a car”….and yet, that’s not how I look at it.  For all I’d accomplished in the past few years, I’d become neglectful, of something that really mattered to me.  My priorities are out of whack and this is the boldest proof imaginable.