Tag Archives: automobile

The Life of a One-Car Family

With the launch of Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of Homelessness it’s been a crazy week. That is perhaps the understatement of the year.

If you haven’t bought a copy yet, please do.

Our car has been making funny rattling noises for months and today was finally the time to check it out. Not actually take care of it, just find out what it is. This is the extent of the craziness that is my life. I have to move mountains to schedule an appointment just to find out what’s wrong with my car. Actually fixing it will require moving an entirely separate mountain.

This is what it took today:

Wife leaves for work with the car. Child #1 leaves for school. Me, child #2 and #3 take the bus to go get the car from wife’s work. We drive the car to the mechanic. The mechanic drives us back home. The mechanic drives the car back to the shop. Oil changed, tires rotated, weird noises analyzed, enormous estimate written. Different mechanic comes to pick us up in the shop’s truck because he can’t drive a stick and didn’t realize we needed the carseats. He goes back to the shop and gets the carseats out of our car. Comes back to our house and I install them in the backseat of the truck. Mechanic, me, child #2 and #3 drive back to the shop. I take the carseats out of the truck and put them back in the car. We drive the car to Abby’s work and leave child #2 there. Me and child #3 drive back home. After a nap (not for me) me and child #3 go pick up child #1 from school. Go back home. Me, child #1 and child #3 drive to wife’s work to pick up wife and child #2. The whole family, together for the first time all day, drives home.

Tired yet?

That’s the life of a one-car family. If we could afford it, I’d be tempted to put an end to that and get a second car. But then we’d have twice as many choke-worthy estimates to worry about and suddenly today’s mountain-moving insanity doesn’t seem so bad.

Model T at the Post Office

1917 Model T FordI pulled up at the post office today and saw this. It’s a 1917 Model T Ford.

I snapped a bunch of pictures (which seemed eerilie like what my father would do), but I wasn’t the only one. While standing in line at the post office a steady stream of people were going out of their way to check it out, standing around gawking and taking pictures. My favorite was the college-age girl snapping a picture on her cell phone. Stereotypically not who you’d consider to be a car buff, though who knows.

The car was quite the attraction, and you can see why. The owner said he had just rebuilt the engine and drove it in a neighborhood parade and car show. Compared to a modern vehicle the thing is ridiculously simple. It’s hard to tell from the picture, but there aren’t a lot of controls (yes, that’s the battery sitting in the middle of the dashboard). It even has a starter crank.

I remember in middle school when I learned how an internal combustion engine worked I commented to my dad that it seemed like most of the systems in a car were just complications to deal with issues with the way an engine works (either making things easier, safer or more efficient)—radiator, starter, alternator, transmission, muffler, power steering, brakes, suspension, shocks, etc. You don’t really need all of that (though it sure helps). And this thing is proof. Never mind the creature comforts—seatbelts, airbags, window wipers (heck, windows), climate control, radio, brake lights, a paint job, etc. Though it does have a horn! I didn’t ask the owner if it was a classic ah-ooh-ga sound. I also love the real wood paneling. Even the wheel spokes were made of wood.

In the end it’s not much more than an engine. And that’s really just harnassing a controled explosion. Incredibly simple when you get down to it (if you can call controlling an explosion simple). Amazing how far we’ve taken the basic automobile.