Thoughts on Car Use and Father's Day

My brother is considering buying a motorcycle, for use at work, rather than drive his truck or car for all his business meetings and errands associated with his business. He is a certified rider as am I. I think it's a great idea. He'll save tons on gas and insurance.

It's Father's Day. I don't recall having a father. My father was someone I feared, who put me down, who emotionally abused my mother until she cried every night, retreating into the bathroom, after his comments always led to her fleeing the dinner table. He'd laugh then and I wouldn't know what to do. I'd want to comfort her, but I was also one of his targets. And when I was a pre-teen, he began backing me into a corner of the kitchen, almost nightly, to fondle me. There was no escape. A father? I did not have one. Everyone supported him, however, and I went into the mental health system, depressed, suicidal, and still, I thought my father's behavior must be normal. I had been so isolated as a child, in a tiny little church community. My older brother acknowledges what went on, used to rail over his treatment of women and my mother, but now has a little shrine in his house to our father. When I saw that last Christmas, I shrank inside.

Still, no one cares what his behavior did to me. I still feel like what happened to me in my life, and what I went through in that house as a child, matters to on one else on earth.

It is difficult, isn't it, to want to have family, but the only family you have, two brothers, supported a child molestor and still wave off as irrelevant, the effect that man had on the life of his daughter. And on their mother. Difficult dancing with that.

I never had a car as a teen or in my early college years. I couldn't afford to buy one. What I drove was an old Suzuki 250 X6 motorcycle. Back in the 70's, it wasn't that common for a woman to ride a motorcycle, but I could afford it. I got the bike for almost nothing and it got 70 or more mpg and the insurance, almost nothing.

I even rode it back from college in California once, although that was some trip. It was a very small bike for riding long distances. Top speed--60 mph, but the vibration at that speed was significant! Rain hitting my face on that trip home, felt like rocks pelting me. And the wind, man alive. I rode the coast route, Highway 1 in CA, highway 101 in Oregon and the wind was so strong, I'd be half laid over against it.

After that, on a series of living times in Alaska, I had a small pickup with canopy and it also got very good mileage. Older cars got better mileage often than the new cars of today. The Geo got astounding mileage. Vega's, even with their lousy motors, got great mileage. I suppose it was the light weight relative of today's cars. But some of the older cars of yesteryear were far more efficient than even the heralded gas saving cars and hybrids of today.

After I sold the pickup, I lived for almost two decades without a car at all. Sure, life was confining and I never went anywhere. I got around solely by city bus, foot and bike. I had a few small jobs now and then and used my bike to get to and from work. These were the years of despair, when I was locked away in the mental health system without any hope at all.

Then, when I was in the process of leaving the mental health system, I bought an old Fairmont off a crazy lady at the Julian. It was disgusting. She lied about everything. She'd locked her companion dogs inside it a lot of the time, turns out, and there was dog urine even pooled in the spare tire well.

The car often broke down with me in it and by flashlight, I'd be trying to fix it, along the road somewhere, often with cats in traps inside it. It had a great engine, a straight six, and I learned so much about cars after getting that junker. I had to. I had no money for mechanics and knew nothing about mechanics. So I had to learn. I even replaced the driveline once, packed wheel bearings, learned how to change brake calipers, rewired the dash, all sorts of things. You do what you have to do.

When the transmission failed on that car, I sold it and got an old Corolla, that had been sitting in a yard unused on the coast for ten years. The mechanic at first check of the car expressed concern that there was clutch material in the transmission fluid. That proved to be an omen for distaster. After two years, the transmission failed, along with the valves.

The brake caliper also froze once, when I was coming down a windy steep hill between Salem and Independence, following a woman who had showed up at the FCCO clinic in Salem, desperately seeking help for a cat hit by a car in front of her mother's house in Indepedence. The cat had crawled, injured, into her mother's garden. She couldn't find anyone to help her, so had showed up at the Humane society of the Willamette Valley, seeking help. They could not help, but we were holding an FCCO clinic there that day, so I agreed to follow her back to help her catch the injured cat.

Suddenly, without warning, coming down that hill, I pushed the brake pedal and nothing happened. Nothing. No brakes! Boy, my life flashed in front of my eyes.

I knew that hill road ended at a stop sign and a T with an oncoming road and that this road did not go beyond that intersection. If someone was coming on that other road, there was going to be a crash. And I knew I was going to crash anyway, because I would be unable to make that 90 degree turn at the bottom, even if I could make all the turns on the steep hill down without brakes.

I used the emergency brake to slow me down. I could smell smoke, too. I shifted down. I made all the turns on the steep hill down and there was no one coming either way on the intersecting road. And yahoo, there was a huge pile of gravel in the turn out, opposite the stop sign. I hit that. The brake caliper, frozen from rust, had also caught fire from the friction and from leaking transmission fluid. I had had an axle replaced and they had down a lousy job of it, so tranny fluid was leaking, which is what caught fire. But I had baking soda in my car which I sometimes used on cat bites and scratches, if I got them, and put out the fire using that.

I had to leave the car there, and proceeded on with the woman I'd been following, with my net and a carrier. I netted the injured cat and we took her to Corvallis Cat Care. She had a broken pelvis and actualy belonged to someone who worked in the althletic department at OSU. They were really not very interested in saving their own cat and did not reimburse any money spent on saving her. She needed confined for a couple months after her injury and whether they did that or not, or killed her, I don't know.

I bought brake calipers and changed the caliper there where the car sat in the gravel at that intersection. The woman whom I had followed to her mother's house, had friends in the local sheriff's department who drove by and checked on my car until I could get back to fix it, which I did, that evening. It was my first time changing calipers. The folks at Napa Auto Parts gave me a crash course in instruction when I bought the calipers there. The instructions were very good, I thought.

But in the spring of 2004, the car was failing. I took a trip to Tacoma with some cats a young couple had found homes for, after doing a rescue of about 60 cats of a former Corvallis woman, who had been forced out of town, due to having about 120 cats, then moved to Fall City, where she was soon evicted also. The young couple who rescued the cats however were not much better, and even ended up abandoning some of them when they were evicted for failure to pay rent.

Anyhow, they claimed to have homes for a bunch of the cats in the Tacoma area but for some reason, would not take them up themselves. I forget their lame reason and stupid me, decided rather than have the cats languish at their place, not well cared for, I'd take them up. They claimed to have checked out the homes and everything. They claimed they would be home and could be reached by phone should I have any trouble at all.

I had all sorts of trouble. The car began to fail. After a hundred miles or so, it just would not function. Teh engine would run, but it wouldn't go anywhere. I made it to Tacoma and the home there for one cat, was at a low income slum. I became suspicious when a car full of hoodlum types kept circling me. I had called from about twenty miles south to let them know I was almost there with the cat. No one answered the buzzing of the apartment and those six or eight young men in an old car, were circling me. I figured this was a big fat setup, a scam pulled by someone hoping to rob whomever was delivering the cat to them, in an unfamiliar area and city. I got the hell out of there. From a rest area, angry they had not really checked these folks out, I called the young couple.

They were not really at home, as they said they would be. Later they told me they had planned on going to a festival in Eugene that weekend for a long time, and lied to me. They were matter of fact about it.

On I went with the other cats. I delivered them to four other homes, but had to wait on one home, east of Seattle, taking in three ferals, and instruct them on relocation. It was a nice man, however, who knew mechanics and told me, after I described what was going on with my car, that it was the clutch friction plates failing and I would be lucky to get home. He told me I needed to drive thirty males, then pull off and wait for them to cool and that otherwise, I probably wouldn't make it home. I again tried to call the young couple, but no answer.

It took me a very very long time to get home. I still had the Siamese, who was to have been adopted in Tacoma, in the car. We slept together, along the road. But I got home. It was only a couple months later the car failed completely. I sold it. And then was without a car. This was difficult, being a couple miles outside Corvallis, without laundry facilities there, and because I had to use bottled water, due to the bad well. I needed to fill water bottles somewhere. I would hithhike into town with my laundry and water bottles. That was the only hard part really, the laundry issue and the water hauling. Otherwise, I actually enjoyed the freedom involved of living without a car. No car meant I couldn't work, not at my usual cat trapping job. But I also became isolated as a result, had no human contact and became cabin fevered.

It was at the time Brooke Wilberger disappeared, which drove me nuts, since it happened so close to where I lived. And I wanted to find her. I hated seeing her parents so desperate on the news, which I watched too much of, being confined without a car. I called in too many useless tips to the hotline, but they would seem significant to a person totally confined to her own thoughts, late at night.

I didn't know how I would survive long term without a car, being so far out, and this played on my mind. Then one day my brothers arrived, both of them, and said, "We're going ot to buy a car." I was astounded and actually just loved the fact they were both there, with me. I didn't even care that day that we were going to find a car I was so delighted to have the company of my brothers.

My older brother had control of my father's living will money and said he was buying me a car. We looked at Toyota, at the new corolla, called the Matrix. But we kept looking at a Scion there, the very first Scion's out. I sat in it. I had the bad back then, the chronic sciatica. The Oregon Health Plan would not even pay for diagnostics on my back. I could only walk about 400 feet before my right leg would scream and my knee would go numb and I'd be stranded, unable to walk.

I was accustomed to pain by then, accustomed also to telling myself I was not really important and the pain, so severe, that I should endure it, and not consider that I shouldn't, that I wasn't truely worthy of medical care, or treatment for the pain. I was resigned to it, as I had been so often in the past. The Oregon Health Plan rep whom I talked to repeatedly about my back issues, trying to get resolution, only confirmed my low self-esteem, that I didn't count. She said OHP would pay for a class in dealing with chronic pain but not for diagnostics to find out what might be wrong. I had said, defensively, "But what if it's curable, treatable, and cheaper to treat it, than if I end up in a wheelchair?"

So the Scion was particularly attractive to me because it so unbelievably comfortable for someone with spinal cord issues. You don't have to climb down into it, nor step up into it. The seat is so comfortable it feels like sitting in an easy chair. That sold me on the Scion versus the Matrix and the Scion was mine. The Matrix was more expensive, more solid, but got lower gas mileage.

Since it was one of the first Scions in town, I got made fun of by strangers who called it "a matchbox", who said it would tip over in a slight windstorm, and one really nasty man told me "a toddler must have designed that". I ignored them all. I was so proud to be in a decent car, and also I felt a little guilty, like I didn't deserve this. I felt embarrassed around my poor friends. However, they were happy for me.

I love the Scion to this day, even though it now is beat up, broken windshield, rear hatch lever duct taped on, 100k miles on it, and it needs some repairs badly. I have had 23 cats in traps in the back. It has served me and my work unbelievably well. And it has consistently gotten 30 to 34 mpg while I'm doing it.

I've taken one long trip in it, to SF, for a feral cat conference, an ill planned stupid trip that was an endurance drive. I didn't have time to really plan the trip and didn't know it would take 11 hours of driving one way. I just went. I used all the change I'd saved up to pay for gas, drove all one day to get there, which killed my back, slept through the one day conference and drove home. Ill conceived. I don't know what I was thinking.

Anyhow, I finally got back surgery despite Oregon Health Plan. For some reason, suddenly, the windows of heaven opened up and God himself intervened. Suddenly, I was reviewed by social security, after decades on only SSI, which meant I was on medicaid, which meant in Oregon, I was on the Oregon Health Plan. It was suddenly determined I worked enough prior to my disability, that I should have all along been on SSD. This was a ploy by the government, trying to kick people off the more expensive medicaid and onto medicare which is less expensive because the recipient has premiums and copays to purchase.

But, the change to medicare as primary, without being on an HMO, at least not for six months, gave me options and one of them was an MRI back diagnostic, which showed a extruded disc crushing my right leg nerve. Surgery was scheduled. Then my mother went downhill into near death and that whole horrible drama right before surgery. I also lost any nerve reflex in my right knee and that, my doctor said, might never return. I had surgery three days after my mother died. Recovery, alone, was difficult, let me tell you, but I recovered. I still have problems with my right knee especially. Within a couple months after surgery, I was forced into a medicare HMO under Good Sam also, but that six month window had opened for me, where I was not under Good Sam's HMO thumb, and I got that surgery that saved me from life in a wheelchair. My leg nerve was dying from the crush of a disc hardened atop it. My leg was saved and I still believe heaven opened up for me and gave me relief.

I'm also really grateful to that skilled neurosurgeon. I do think about the papers I received afterwards from medicare, denying payment to a surgeon who assisted him in the surgery. Then there was a second denial. I saved those papers and I look at them and that name and I feel bad. I've meant to write that person a letter, apologizing for him not getting paid, and also thanking the surgeon for changing my life and taking away such horrible pain. The pain was so severe I can't even describe it. Besides being in my back, the pain in my knee, that ran along my calf, and into my upper ankle, was well, there is no way to describe the severity of that screaming white searing pain. The surgery took most of that away. I could walk again afterwards. It is likely the original injury that spawned this occured clear back in my teen years in an ice skating accident that broke my tailbone and lower vertebrae. Those injuries will come back to haunt you.

Anyhow, I have utmost respect for American taxpayers, who paid for this surgery. I volunteer so many hours in many respects, to pay back what I can, for what has been done for me, by strangers. I think about that, too, about the ordinary Americans working so hard, paying taxes and I'm taking their taxes. I have to give back for that. I believe everyone should.

I have guilt over being taxpayer supported. Lots of it, hounded into me by my father, who hated anyone on welfare, called them all deadbeats, and yet, when I went into the mental health system, due largely to his failures as a father, to keep his hands off a daughter, he had all sorts of justifications. While calling everyone else losers and deadbeats, he'd tell me at least he was getting back something for all the taxes he paid, by me being on social security. This did not assuage my guilt at all. In fact, it only made me feel worse about myself.

Well anyhow.

I have a Scion, beat up now, but I love it. It was paid for by money from a now dead father, who probably does owe me and maybe society something, for his failures and illegal behavior towards a daughter.

I lived a long time without a car. People can just go right ahead and scream at me for driving it. I don't care. If you want to scream at me for driving, first you go live twenty years without a car, then get one, and spend your days driving it only in volunteer work. Then you scream at me for driving it, ok, and maybe I'll listen.

My brother and I were also talking about steam power and wondering why that could not be used as an option to power cars. It once was. Do you remember the Stanley Steamer? And I bet we could power a steam car's boiler using something that would not pollute.