I felt wrapped in a cloak of invincibility the day the insurance adjuster’s report arrived in my email. All of the repairs I had been postponing on my rental house, for lack of funds due to job loss, were covered.
A devastating storm had produced huge hail balls that rained down on my house, destroying all of the aging roofing, gutters, and the dilapidated shed. This storm also dinged and dented all of the cars on the Airport Motor Mile up the road.
I was driving a high-mileage Mazda MPV that I had purchased as a repo from my credit union for $2,000.00 a week. This vehicle came after the high-mileage pickup truck that I had been driving for ten years lost its transmission in the Burger King parking lot.
All of these occurrences, after being canned from a job that I liked and needed, seemingly presented an upswing in fortunes, a metaphysical yin after the wang of the yang. I didn’t know how long my prosperity would last. In the foolishly optimistic nature of the human spirit, I believed it had to last. I thought the hail that brought my good fortune would produce one more benefit: a slightly dented vehicle with a very good price tag. I bought a Kia Sedona, used, but with very low mileage. Trading in my Mazda MPV for $2,000.00 provided reinforcement to my feeling of euphoria. And so the downward slide began.
Parking the van at home, I used the key to lock the car door. A buzzing noise emanated from the vehicle. I was so impressed that the makers provided a warning that alerted me to the locking action. I only had a single key, and I knew if I didn’t get a spare, I would surely lose it. Lowe’s didn’t have a blank for a Kia. I hesitated, not wanting to go to a dealer where it might be more expensive, but there was no choice. When the key-maker tried the new key in the door, it didn’t work. He had to cut another. The second key slid into the lock. He turned it smoothly, and the buzzing noise began.
He turned to me, shrugged, and said,” The door actuator is worn out; you should have that replaced.” It was then that I realized the buzzing was not a good thing.
The key, however, was surprisingly inexpensive.
I thought it would be fun to take a road trip now that I had a low-mileage, reliable vehicle. A drive to Key West had always been something I wanted to do. I proposed the destination to my lady friend, Ruth, and she agreed. We planned the trip, determined our route, and booked our rooms through Hotwire.com.
A week before our trip, the “check engine light” popped on while I was in Asheville, North Carolina; $664.36 later, the light went off. I asked the mechanic “Is this repair normal for a Kia with such low mileage?” The reply gave me pause.
He shrugged his shoulders and responded in a doleful voice, “Well, it is a Kia.” Not yet discouraged, I considered this a fluke. We proceeded with our plan, confident that the trip would go well.
We had planned the trip not as a marathon driving excursion, but as a leisurely tour through the hinterlands with stops along the way.
Our first stop was Apalachicola. The morning after we arrived, we went to a Saint George Island beach. It was the year of the great Gulf oil spill. Tourists were almost nonexistent. There were three people within our sight on a nine-mile beach of soft white sand, and mine was the only head bobbing up and down in the warm, massaging waves.
After a sweltering day on the beach, we got into the car to go back to our hotel. I turned the key in the ignition, and the engine started smoothly, but when Ruth turned the air on, the blower motor didn’t run. After grumbling a few expletives, my calmer attitude prevailed, and I used the time traveled from the beach to the hotel to diagnose the problem.
Sitting on the curb next to the hotel, paging through the owner’s manual, I found the section explaining which fuse matched each function of the vehicle. I opened the fuse box cover and found the little fuse puller gadget. As I pulled it out of its little clip holder, it flew out of my hand, immediately swallowed by a myriad of wires, pulleys, and other mechanical equipment, never to be found again. I located Fuse Number 23 and began to wiggle it with my stubby fingers, then prizing it with the ignition key. It became dislodged from its slot. After inspecting the fuse and determining that it wasn’t defective, I reinserted it into the slot. After starting the car, I wiggled and tapped on the fuse, and cool air started flowing from the vents.
