The Greasemonkeys Daughter

We never did have a new car when I was growing up. Dad was a mechanical engineer, of sorts. My father did not hold a degree. He had barley made it through the eighth grade of a one room Finnish/American school house. Wilmar would come up with bits and pieces off other machinery and design a completely new mechanism. His biggest invention he made most often though, was do.

The automobiles we drove were often made up of miscellaneous parts of cars he would scavenge. Dad was a genius when it came to putting together scraps of machinery and turn them into running machinery. He built tractors, harvesting equipment, and once a prosthesis leg for his war veteran friend. The cars we drove were always a work in the making, and often needed a little help. Mufflers, that if you drove for too long and too fast, would fall off, or stick shifts that would take two hands to maneuver, for instance.

That might be why, when my last jeep was laid to rest, I bulked at the notion of setting foot into a car dealership. In my mind, there was no unfixable automobile. So what if the back end of my wagon was gone, there was another half of an unscathed junker that could be married to my beloved blue jeep. I just couldn't find the man willing to take the time and do it.

On the other hand, in this modern day disposable world there are a trunk load of those willing and eager to sell me a new one. "I don't want a new car", I repeatedly told my husband, who was on his mission of loving provider. "I know how to start a truck with a pick-axe. I can make do with a used model."

Hubby didn't like the idea of me stranded because of car problems , late at night, on the side of the road while he was out of town. I told him I could also protect myself with same pick axe.

For valentines day Hubby bought me a nice shiny new red jeep. It will do. I wonder how he will use the pick axe I bought him. And if in some wreck yard, somewhere, the pieces of my old jeep will make someone else happy.