A Long Drive

Alyssa’s car has been acting up lately. Tom thinks it might be the fuel pump. Sometimes, it just won’t start. The battery is fine, it has a spark, it just…won’t start. After a couple of tries, it usually fires up but it can be very frustrating when you’re somewhere that is not home and your car isn’t starting.

I supposed it’s a rite of passage to have to deal with an unreliable car. We’ve all been there, right?

My first car, a 1975 Gran Torino Elite was a wild ride. By the time I finally retired that thing (around 1990) I had to have a bottle of gasoline in the backseat of the car so I could prime the carburetor each time I wanted to start it. I couldn’t fill it up with gas because there was a hole in the top of the gas tank and every couple of days I had to top off the power steering fluid.

Yeah. Those were fun days.

But…because we can, we’re looking for a different car for Lyss. She has a lot going on and we want her to be safe while doing all the things.

Tom started searching on FB marketplace. He found a car with 90,000 miles that was for sale for a decent price. It was in Huntington. He contacted the seller, who told him there were no issues with the car. He gathered some cash and away we went.

Okay, that sounds simple enough. It wasn’t quite so simple. We left at about 5:15 on a Tuesday. Olivia and I had already done her social studies homework and her spelling homework at home. But we took her math worksheet with us so she could finish it in the car. We had a 73 mile trip ahead of us.

I sat in the backseat with Olivia so I could help her with her homework. For what it’s worth, she did it mostly by herself. Go Liv!

Alyssa sat up front with Tom, who drove. Even though he’s very familiar with Huntington, Tom had Lyss use the GPS on her phone; which was the first mistake.

Wait, the GPS was the second mistake. The first mistake was even bothering with this car, though maybe that’s not fair, the pictures posted on FB marketplace were excellent pictures, they just didn’t tell the whole story.

Anyway! We drove, Olivia did homework, Alyssa studied for two exams (physics and anatomy) and I sat back and enjoyed not having to drive.

We followed the directions given by Alyssa’s phone…sort of. Tom did make poor Siri recalculate the directions a couple of times. But whatever.

We finally made it after driving for an hour and fifteen minutes. Tom pulled into the driveway of an out of the way farm. There were about a thousand chickens running around along with at least fifty cats and kittens.

There was only one dog loping around with a woman and two men. One of the men was in filthy shorts than hung to below his knees, socks that came up to mid-calf and a greasy T-shirt.

Tom got out of the car to go talk to the dudes about the Fort Taurus they had for sale.

The girls and I watched the chickens. At one point, a rooster attempted to accost one of the hens. Olivia saw the action and said with glee, “They’re going to do it!”

Let’s remember, she’s 13 and so is surrounded by 13 year old boys. Yikes.

The hen did not consent and so nothing untoward happened beyond the rooster making overtures that were firmly turned down.

After about twenty minutes Tom and one of the dudes got in the car that was for sale and went for a drive.

It was at this point that I realized that Tom had taken the keys to my car with him.

Let that sink in. He drove away with a stranger (neither of them wearing a mask!) with MY keys. The girls and I were left in my car with no way to leave if the need to leave happened to arise.

I told the girls to lock their doors. We continued to watch the chickens and the kittens. One chicken hobbled toward the car and we realized she was missing most of her right foot. It was so weird and creepy.

The dude in the filthy shorts stalked around the farmyard. The woman and her dog went about their evening business.

The car continues to get hotter and hotter. It wasn’t exactly hot outside but with three of us in that enclosed vehicle, breathing our hot breath and occasionally laughing because of the insanity of the situation, the windows steamed and the interior temperature rose.

Tom and Dude 1 came back. They talked a little more. The girls and I cracked our doors open, scaring some chickens and getting fresh air.

Tom came to the car and told Alyssa she should drive it.

Then Tom and Alyssa got in that sketchy car and drove away, WITH MY KEYS AGAIN. This time, they left just me and Liv in my car, in that farmyard with BOTH of the creepy dudes hovering.

I felt like we were writing the first few pages of a horror story.

We locked the doors again and waited.

And waited.

And I got antsier and antsier. Olivia announced that she had to pee but she was going to wait until we got home to do so. Smart girl. (Spoiler: we took her to a grocery store in Huntington; she didn’t have to wait another two hours to relieve herself.)

Tom and Alyssa FINALLY got back from their little drive. Alyssa returned to the car, where she declared, “It’s a no.”

Tom continued to talk to the dudes, who tried to convince him that this car was totally a most excellent buy for our teenage daughter. It had a WOOFER in the trunk.

Tom told them Alyssa wasn’t quite the woofer type.

Then he told them that the pictures they’d posted did not show dents in the hood, the broken cruise control or the weird cobbled dash.

They argued that the cruise control being broken didn’t make the car undrivable.

Okay. I mean, that’s technically true but when you’re thinking about spending money in the four digits, you want something better. Or, if nothing else, you don’t want to feel like you’d been taken by some well-angled pictures.

Tom finally pulled himself away from the owner (though, apparently, the guy selling the car was actually the grandson of the owner…which…okay…that’s sketchy as hell) and his mechanic friend (that was the dude in the filthy clothes) and made his way back to the car.

We left as quickly as we could and made our way to town where we all used the facilities in the local grocery store and then went through the drive-thru at McD’s.

Tom drove into the McD’s parking lot and started to hand Alyssa a pad of paper, telling her to write down exactly what she wanted.

I offered, “You want me to do the ordering?”

He took me up on that offer so fast you’d think he was shy. Nah, dude just really hates ordering at the drive-thru.

So he took my place in the backseat, I took the driver’s seat and ordered food for my family without a single word being written down.

Tom was stunned by the low, low price of the food but then realized I hadn’t ordered anything for myself. My jaw had ached all evening and I just couldn’t bring myself to eat anything. I offered to drive us home so he could eat.

We made it home safely and were in bed a half hour later. It was an exhausting trip, is what I’m saying.