What do I think?

Car troubles, alias, and I never thought I’d see . . .

by Barry Bauer

You do want me to talk about car troubles, don’t you? Okay, you got it. We had to pay for the replacement of a lower intake manifold gasket on our 1999 Pontiac Grand Am SE just after the car went out of warranty. “Isn’t there an extended warranty on that,” we asked? “Nope,” they said. 600 and some odd dollars later we got our car back.

After that we learned of a class action lawsuit against Dex Cool whose product ate our gasket all to hell. We joined that suit in May, 2008; but we weren’t sure anything would come of it. Just recently we received a settlement check for 2/3 of our cost to repair our car.

Our excitement was short-lived.

Whenever we took our car in for service we complained about noisy brakes. They kept telling us it was normal. Even when we got new tires last year they told us our brakes were fine. Well, the truth is they weren’t. They were noisy and stopped the car like mechanical brakes do. That means we had to stand on them.

We took our car in for an oil change and asked them again to check out the brakes. That’s when we heard a lot of bad news. The brakes needed fixing, the rear coil springs were broke, and our struts should be replaced. The cost for all of this quickly ate up the settlement check we just received and then a whole lot more after that.

We bought the car brand new with the idea that it was going to be our retirement car. It only has 37,000 miles on it, and it still looks good. Hardly a car that needs to be replaced even though it would be a good time to buy a new car.

It looks like I might have to un-retire just to pay for our retirement car. As Chester A. Riley used to say, “What a revoltin’ development this is!”

* * *

We’re at the age when we’re starting to think about where we want to be buried. It’s not a morbid thing; a lot of people are doing it nowadays. It’s a way of taking the burden off the family’s shoulders by pre-planning.

The next thought came up, what about a headstone? Seeing as we’re trying to cut corners Betty came up with a great idea. We’ll buy an alias headstone. Now I know I’ve got you wondering . . . I think. An alias headstone is one that somebody ordered and for some reason never came back for it. It won’t matter if it says, “Here lies Sam and Blanche Smith or Jones.” The monument company will be willing to sell it cheap, and we’ll save some bucks.

If we’re lucky it’ll have a nice picture of a farm that Betty would like, or maybe a golfer on the golf course just after he hit an errant shot into the woods. I’m famous for that.

We’ll be forever remembered as alias Smith or Jones.

* * *

Things I thought I’d never see:

My 21st birthday (when you’re sixteen, that’s a long ways off.)
Man landing on the Moon.
A President as dumb as George W. Bush.
A Federal government that scares the hell out of me.
The closing of Federal-Mogul in St. Johns.
The possibility that General Motors will fold.
The real possibility of another Great Depression.
A Russian economist predicting the collapse of our economy next year (Wow!)
$4 a gallon gasoline (in my day they had gas wars in Ovid and gas was 27¢ a gallon.)

Happy St. Patrick’s Day Tuesday!

Until the next time . . .