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Sun had a hard time dispelling the mist this morning.
It seems to be a daily thing nowadays, no doubt another sign of climate change.
In retirement I had a complete change of mind about weather conditions.
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In the days when I had a long commute, ice storms were what I most dreaded, far worse than snow because you were much more likely to find yourself suddenly on a crowded highway with no traction whatever and sliding without any means of stopping.
That was my all-time most frightening drive, worse even than driving 30 miles home without brakes which wasn’t much fun either.
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My father detested driving under any circumstance and in retirement, he used the excuse of a minor accident to give it up. His car sat gathering dust as my mother became frustrated at having to shop using taxis.
To placate her, or to put an end to her complaints, Dad had the brilliant idea of sending the car to me in New York. Considering that it was in Barbados this took some doing, but in due course my father’s unwanted Datsun was loaded onto a northbound ship.
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There have been many cars in my past and I am no longer certain of the exact sequence but I think at that time I must have been driving a Ford Falcon. I liked it well enough but on my way to work one day I was side-swiped by a tractor trailer that rather seriously damaged it, though fortunately not me.
In any event, taking possession of Dad’s car seemed a reasonable option.
There were just one or two problems.
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Before I could even begin to discover them, there was the small issue of getting the car through US Customs which would have been less problematic if I had had paperwork containing my father’s signature.
Somehow I did not. So I embarked on a life of crime and forged it.
With said document in hand, I presented myself to the appropriate office in the World Trade Centre.
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Necessary clearance in hand, I proceeded to the Brooklyn dockyard.
It was November and very cold.
I have no recollection whatever of driving the car out to Long Island, yet I must have done so, with some trepidation.
The Datsun was that it was a right-hand drive which was not a huge problem but certainly took getting used to.
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The issue with having a right-hand drive was gaining access to the staff car park which involved inserting a card in a narrow slot, on the left hand side.
Inevitably, there was a queue of cars behind me.
A trivial annoyance, like the fact that one night I was stopped on the way home by a policeman. I groaned and wound down the window, but all he wanted was to look at the car.
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The first sign of real trouble occurred when I was in the middle lane of a parkway, on my way to work.
Clouds of steam suddenly rose from under the hood. It was a Sunday so traffic was light and I was able to pull over but it was in the dark ages before cellphones, so getting unscrambled from that fiasco was slow and tedious.
Then came the bad news.
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In those days I never had two pennies to rub together which was why my father sent me his car in the first place.
So towing fees were already a set-back. But then I learned the nature of the defect.
The Datsun had been built for use in the tropics. Additionally, when the car was loaded in Barbados, the radiator was not drained. Why would anyone have even thought to do so?
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Remember, I said it was very cold? The car had sat on the dock for several days in which the radiator froze and cracked.
As I was driving that day, the whole thing disintegrated.
Fabulous. The car needed a new engine.
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What I did for a car in the meantime is another lost memory. There were a few things back then I prefer to leave forgotten.
After some time though, the Datsun was declared serviceable.
Until the brakes failed, late one night in almost the same place the engine block had shattered.
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Some months had gone by when we experienced a particularly wet spell of weather.
As I recall, water got into the gas tank which would be why suddenly the car stopped going, which is slightly problematic when you are once more on that damned parkway.
Perhaps that was it. I should have found an alternate route.
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But water didn’t just get in the gas tank.
Before long I began hearing a strange sound and it didn’t take much working out. The doors were filled with water.
Slosh, slosh.
That was the last straw.
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Next in my sequence of trial cars was a second hand Ford Capri. It was my sort of shape and size. I liked it.
Until the bolt holding the driver’s seat broke and I had the unique sensation of drifting about as I drove.
At that point I took out a loan and bought a new Pontiac Astre which was fine. For a while.
I only ever owned one diesel car and I drove that over to Germany in the middle of Winter. The next morning it would not start. To cut a long story short the fuel had frozen. In Germany Winter diesel is sold from November to February and it has an antifreeze additive. UK diesel, at the time, did not!
Ah! The joys amd miseries of cars long gone. interestingly (to me at least)I have just been writing about cars and art from Matisse to Hockney with many omissions everywhere.
You should have got the parkway exorcised, or may got sprinkled holy water in the car! 🤣
Ha ha. Yes!
Driving without brakes? Oh my, then it must be VERY bad to have to drive in an ice storm. I haven’t experienced either of these two, but I certainly don’t want to. Wow, with your history of cars, you could easily be a wonderful guest on the TV show Top Gear. I wonder: Why should a car always give problems on a highway and in traffic?