Once upon a time there was a dog named Musky Da Husky who is still alive and sheds enough hair to upholster 3 or 4 minivans with a nice layer of Fido Fluff. The family who adopted him has been driving a brand new, 2001 Chrysler Town & Country minivan for a little over 5 years. There was nothing special about this vehicle, but it served the family well and it became known as “The Mutt-Mobile” because it was the only car in which Musky Da Husky was allowed. And boy howdy did he do a good job of shedding all over the seats. Holy Dog Hair, Batman!!
Riding in the summer was always interesting, because the only air conditioning the Mutt-Mobile employed was the old reliable 4-60 (4 windows open at 60 MPH). When it was a nice sunny day and the windows were first opened, a very visible swirl of Musky’s Mop Fibers would dance around the interior of the car. Sometimes the fluffy tufts would brush past our nostrils or mouths; which would commence an interesting round of “ptoo!” “Flarf!” and maybe “Pllleethhh!” in vain attempts to expel the fibers from our air passages.
We became pretty accustomed to the fuzzy cyclones for the most part. Because the van was not exactly pristine, we could really give a rip about the status of the seats, etc. Once in a great while we’d embark on an outing with friends, and because we had the largest car I would have to break down and spend an hour or so with the shop-vac to try to get a few bales of hair out. Husky hair is amazing stuff, though, and it seems to burrow into the upholstery. Therefore, no matter how much one tries, there are always some residual strands that seem to jump out and cling to your friends’ coats as they take their seats.
Ah well, they love us unconditionally. I think…
When one buys a used car with 130,000 miles on it, sooner or later some trouble can be expected to surface. We had to take care of normal stuff like tires, exhaust, serpentine belt; you know, stuff like that there. However, during these past few months some much nastier automotive demons have reared their ugly heads. One of our “favorites” was that age-old problem that seems to plague many Chrysler products: the transmission started to flake out. Our friendly service person at Z Transmission Service was able to give it some extra life for a whopping $80; but he warned me not to drive it too far from home. That was about 3 months ago; and even though it would act silly it got us where we wanted to go. But we are not completely naive, and we vowed that the next big repair bill would signal the demise of the Mutt-Mobile.
So there we were, minding our own business, on our way to have dinner with friends, when the Mutt-Mobile she cough and snork and sputter and now I think my engine will die and you better get over to the side of the freeway and no I’m not gonna start no more I’m dead I tell you, I’m dead already, and sure go ahead and try it, ha ha on you the battery is crap, don’t you remember you didn’t want to replace it but you need those extra crankings now you silly man and it doesn’t matter this piece of Dog Doody ain’t gonna go no more so nyaa nyaa na boo boo; and those of you who read this silly blog thing were maybe wondering if Kenny was ever going to slide in another run-on sentence so there you go and wow it was a long one!
Our wonderful son came to our rescue, and after unsuccessfully trying to jump the van; we all hopped into the alternate Mutt-Mobile (my brand new 2003 Racing Corolla) and the 3 humans met our friends for dinner while Musky Da Husky slept in the car. After dinner I got on the phone with a towing company I’ve used for years; and $75 later the Mutt-Mobile was parked in our driveway by the nice wrecker driver. Just before he left, he asked, “what year is that?” “2001,” I replied. “I might want to buy it for parts if you’re just gonna junk it.”
Well that’s nice!! So I told him I’d go to www.damagedcars.com and see what they would offer. Their price was a whopping $230, which included pickup. I talked to several friends at work about the ordeal, and they said, “you can get more than that from a scrap yard!” But then of course I’d have to get it to the scrap yard somehow.
As it turned out, my wife knew the nice man who delivered our dead Mutt-Mobile to our driveway. Well she knows his wife anyway. If he can use the van for parts, it’s a win-win situation as far as I’m concerned. Sure I could have finagled a better deal… maybe. But we are firm believers that what goes around, comes around. More is not necessarily better. In other words, we were very aware that all the events to this point made it very clear that The People Upstairs were taking care of us. It was only right that we should help someone else if we could. So the fact that we were able to get $200 was, in reality, pennies from heaven.
At least, that’s my two cents.
So just to emphasize how old I am, here’s one of my favorites. Well OK, two of my favorites… the song and the singer!