Car Wouldn't Start

My car wouldn't start again this morning. I had all those cats, fixed yesterday, to return also. It was frustrating. The battery was dead due to a malfunction in the ignition switch, which didn't turn off. Then the brake pedal for some reason totally locked. It wouldn't move, down or up. I've never had this happen before when the battery is dead. Usually, to get it out of park, if the car won't start, since there is a safety measure in most cars so that you can't put it into gear or neutral if the engine isn't running, I usually touch the brake petal, with the key turned, which allows one to take it out of park without the engine on.

Didn't work this time, because the brake petal wouldn't move. So, I finally called Toyota, who told me to use a screwdriver and flip off a little hidden chamber and push a white button, which disengages park lock. I did so and got it into neutral so I could push it out of the garage to somewhere another vehicle could get in to jump it.

The old man from HTN came over. I had one of his cats anyhow, needing to return her. The torti, now spayed, and ready to go home. He had, in the meantime, trapped the last unfixed cat at the colony, the black longhair, and I needed to pick her up. So he came and jumped the car.

I got to get the ignition switch fixed somehow or this will keep happening if I'm not careful.

What one can do, to make sure, is to remove one battery terminal cable, so the battery can't drain at night, if need be.

Anyhow, lots of fixes needed on that car. It's got a hundred thousand miles on it. I've never had any maintenance done. I know the struts are soft, too, and I haven't checked the axle boots for holes or grease leakage. It's hard to do. I don't have ramps. I should have changed the transmission fluid and filter by now also, but I haven't. No ramps, no proper tools for it.

I need to get a little auto mirror again on extendable handle. Not only are those useful in cat trapping, for looking into house foundations and under things, without laying on your belly, but they make checking axle boots, etc, easier on a person with a bad back.

I did change the oil and air filter about three weeks ago. Air filters aren't cheap either anymore. Nor is changing one easy on a Scion. You have to detach a couple of hoses that just are not easy to detach. One was held on by a metal hose clamp with a cheap aluminum bolt that has deteriorated significantly, to the point it could not be turned without a good dose of WD-40 and pliers. That's sick.

These cars these days are made out of plastic and cheap materials. You're hard put to find much solid metal on them. When I replaced the door locks one of the times I've had to do that, due to break ins, I was rather horrified, at the extremely thin metal layer of the door, after removing the cardboard/plastic interior panel, which is all that separates you from another vehicle, should you be T-boned. The interior door panel is held in place by plastic fasteners that, in a short time, turn brittle and break off.

I lived without a car at all for a long long time. I couldn't go anywhere and knew no one really with a car. My life was limited. Dismally limited. I finally bought an old Fairmont off a lying bitch who lived at the low income hotel where I lived for $200. She lied about everything wrong with that car. In addition, she used to make her companion dogs live in it and there were pools of dog urine under even the spare tire. It was disgusting.

No working gas gauge. I would write the odometer mileage on a piece of duct tape, when I'd gas up, and stick it on the middle of the steering wheel. I knew the mileage the car got per gallon. When I'd gone about ten miles less than I figured I could go, on the gas I'd bought, given the mileage, I'd get some more gas and replace the duct tape with another marked with the odometer reading. It had no working heater. Differential was failing. Brakes needed replaced. Wheel bearings needed replaced. Driveline and transmission also barely functioned. I was always in a state of rewiring the dash to try to get something crucial to work.

I took to carrying a couple pillows with me. They were my emergency air bags, so to speak. I figured I could grab one off the front seat and get it between me and the steering wheel if I had even a moment before a wreck. The front bench seat's mounts also were weakened with corrosion. The car finally died altogether, but I was forced to learn a lot about doing minor and some even major repairs in order to have wheels. I was always breaking down somewhere along a road, with cats in the car, and then could be seen flipping through a well used repair manual for that model by flashlight, on my back beside the road, with a few dollar store tools strewn around.

The cops harassed me endlessly when I drove that old Fairmont. And the Corvallis cops especially had no mercy when it would break down or wouldn't start and would demand it be gone in five minutes or they would write me a ticket for working on a car in a public place and have it towed off. Something like that. You'd think they could have a heart.

I had some desperate times with that car and the cops. I loved having a car for a change. The car meant freedom to finally get out of Corvallis now and then. It's like the cops must have thought everybody was Mr. and Mrs. Moneybags or something. Or maybe they just liked harassing me.

Well anyhow, it was late today, when I finally got it going and got the cats back to their locales. I didn't get much else done.

Tomorrow my brother has a guy who will be here to do some repairs, and hopefully get the trees contained for the cat yard. After that, I will just have to finish my human rototilling of the yard. Yes, I have been rototilling the yard by hand, with a shovel. I almost got half done, before my nights turned sour. I'd wake up with my right leg and lower back screaming in misery. My sleep went downhill and I have not finished the shovel rototilling job, because of what it did to my back.

This landscaper guy, real old now, whom I trapped a bunch of cats for, told me I could make my lawn grow ok by rototilling it before planting the seed, then to mix in some mulch, which I have from the compost pile I made last summer. But it's been a little more difficult than it sounded like it would be. I"m getting there though, and once the grass gets up two inches, after I plant the seed, then the cats can go out. It won't take the grass long to grow two inches either.

I built a small garden bed, too, a few months ago, but I don't have much dirt to fill it up with. It's for my vegetable garden to be. I have to find some dirt to put in it. I have some mulch but I need some dirt.

I figure I'll go out one night and pretend I'm digging a grave, which won't attract any attention at all around these parts. And I'll just fill up old cat food bags with the dirt, cover the hole with berry vines then leaves, and one day some asshole will fall in that darn hole. Or, I'll return in the night and fill in the hole with used cat litter. Just kidding there. I'll find somebody with some dirt to spare.