A Lifetime of Experience - Rebirth and Resurrection

[UberGoober]

I arrived back in the United States just in time for July 4, 2001. It was a nice day, but I spent most of the celebration crashed out in my old bedroom at my mom’s house, occasionally waking up to talk to those few nieces and nephews who took the time and made the effort to come and disturb me.

Its tough to come back and pick up the strings of your life, but there I was in the same bedroom I had grown up in, surrounded by the few things I hadn’t been forced to sell during my prolonged period of unemployment. Of course in my absence what little I had left had gradually been pushed to the back of the shelves and the room had been converted into a guest room. To be honest, it didn’t really feel like home anymore.

More than just the room, the whole atmosphere of "home" had changed. After a few lonely years on her own, my mother had remarried. The man in question, Guy, had dated my mother years before while they were still in high school and, after learning a year or two after the fact that my father had passed away, he had called to express his condolences. That first call led to more, then a visit and eventually marriage.

After some discussion about where they would live, Guy sold his farm in Missouri and moved out to Washington. They were a good match and he really was (and is) a nice man, but the downside of having a new man in the house meant that I felt like an intruder in what had once been my own home.

Ostensibly I was waiting for the final confirmation for the government job I had been conditionally offered while I was still in Japan. I had passed all the tests, taken and passed the physical exam and even cleared the background check, but the final offer had not come and so I was stuck in limbo. I had been afraid this might happen, but knowing that my paid return ticket and $2000 bonus from GEOS language systems depended on giving four months notice prior to departure, I had gambled on when I would get the final offer and gone ahead and ended my contract in Japan. Despite my best guess, I had missed the exact date and now found myself back at home – unemployed, but thankfully not broke like I had been the last time.

Since I was convinced I would be called to Washington any day, I was able to put off getting my own car by talking my mother into letting me use my late father’s Oldsmobile. The days turned to weeks and sometime in mid August I got word that the last entry seminar for the year had been filled. With the earliest possible class several months away, it was obvious I was going to be at “home” a lot longer than I had planned. I needed a job and a car ASAP.

Despite all the problems I had finding work after I had graduated from college, the job turned out to be easy to get. I had planned on trying to parlay my Japanese into a job at a hotel, but after a chance run-in with an old friend in a supermarket, I took a job working in the warehouse of a local furniture store. The car was a little tougher. I had been burned by buying too much car before and, this time, I was determined to be as cheap as possible. So, with that in mind, I headed out to Highway 99, between Everett and Lynwood, where cheap used car lots abut one another for miles, to find some decrepit piece of junk that could hold together for a few months.

I set aside a whole day to go looking and early in the day came close to paying $1200 for a 16 year old Toyota Supra that seemed like it might fill the bill. The car was well worn but in good enough shape. Still, it had made a loud buzzing noise when I test drove it and, although it may have been something as simple as a loose heat shield, I was worried that it might be something in the transmission. Weighing my concerns, I eventually decided that I could always come back if I couldn’t find anything better and decided to keep on looking.

After a few hours, and with the many miles of cheap car lots on Highway 99 fully searched, I headed over to Monroe to see if I could find anything at one of the two or three small lots there. I stopped in front of one especially small lot in the downtown area but almost drove on when I saw that most of what they had was priced higher than what I wanted to pay. Still, knowing that the kind of cars I was looking for would be closer to the back of the lot, I decided to go in anyhow.

As I stepped in among the cars and started to look around, a sales guy emerged from a small trailer at the back of the lot and locked on to me. As we looked over the very last row of cars, we talked about what I wanted and what they had on the lot. The conversation was pleasant and the salesman, who turned out to be the owner, seemed pretty forthright as he told me how this car or that had found its way to this particular lot.

Satisfied that they had nothing I wanted, I was getting ready to leave when something caught my eye. Wedged in behind the back bumpers of the last row of cars, just along the back fence at the rearmost corner of the property, I could see the quarter window of a small grey car. It looked like an old Nissan.

(A 1986 Nissan 200SX Turbo - not mine, but in similar condition)

[UberGoober]

I threaded my way between the tightly packed cars and found a 1986 Nissan 200SX turbo. The car was all there, but looked ugly with its oxidized grey paint covered in a layer of pine needles and dirt. It had been a fancy little car when it was new, aluminum wheels, sun roof, and a turbo package backed up by a five speed. Against my better instincts, I considered the little car. “What’s the deal on this Nissan? I asked.

“Oh,” answered the owner, “I took that thing in trade on another car to help some people out. I thought it might work out OK but it turns out its not something I can sell. Right after we got it I realized the turbo was burned out. It also needs an alternator and is generally pretty skuzzy inside.”

He added, “If I fixed it up right, the repairs would cost more than I could sell it for and if I just patched it up and sold it I’d get a brick through my window when it broke down. In a small town like this, it just isn’t worth the trouble. If someone came in here and offered me $500 for it, knowing what’s wrong with it, I’d sell it on the spot.”

A light came on in my head. “Will it start?” I asked.

The owner moved some cars around and another guy appeared from nowhere to help push the little Nissan out from its would-be grave. He slapped the battery charger on it for a few minutes and then started the little car. It fired easily and ran well. I changed places with the salesman and slid behind the wheel.

The interior of the car was a mess. Unloved and overused by its previous owner it smelled of thousands of cheap chain-smoked cigarettes and of even cheaper stale beer. Still, dirty as it was, it was all there; not even the radio had been changed. The car even had that glorious Nissan digital gauge package and push of a button confirmed that the salesman had told me the truth when he had said the alternator was not working. The turbo wailed like a siren when I zapped the gas pedal. It wasn't pretty but, I thought the unthinkable, just maybe…

It was a risk, but for $700 less than the comparable Supra, I knew I could spend a lot of money on repairs and still come out ahead. I decided to chance it and I struck the deal. I took my father’s Oldsmobile home and by the time I got back to town the lot had switched out the car’s dead battery for a fully charged one. Cautiously, I headed for home to see what could be done.

The trip was eye opening. The car had idled OK but on the road it shook and backfired. Perhaps it was the turbo, but the siren like wail seemed to indicate that the turbo was still at least turning so maybe it wasn't. I just wasn’t sure, but I was confident I could figure it out once I got it home so I grit my teeth and pushed on.

Once home, I got the hood up and took a good hard look at my new acquisition. It was odd. As rough as the car was on the in and outside, under the hood it looked pretty good. The plug wires, all 8 of them, were new and it looked like the alternator was too. Why didn’t that work? I ran my hand down to check the wiring and, at the first caress of my fingertips, the main power wire came away in my hand. Someone, it seemed, had replaced the alternator but had not made sure the wiring was fastened tight. I set that right in less than a minute with a one cent wire connector and a crimping tool. With the wire now solidly attached, I restarted the engine and checked the voltage meter again. I couldn’t help but smile as the readout showed a stack of green digital bars in the 14 volt range. A sign of life where there had been none before.

It seemed my car’s former owner didn’t know much about wires and, as I looked at the obviously new plug wires draped so carelessly over the engine, a sudden thought crossed my mind. I checked the firing order and, after some careful tracing, found a couple of misrouted wires. I corrected the problem and took a quick spin. The engine was silky smooth and willing to play - my old dog still had a puppy's heart.

After changing the oil and filter, a move that eliminated most, but not all, of my turbo charged siren’s song, I called it “good enough” and closed the hood.

Inside of the car, a good vacuuming netted a couple of dollars in change and a carpet shampoo helped take out at least a decade’s worth of grit and grime. Cheap seat covers made the seats a nice place to sit again and used CD player from a pawn shop transformed the sound system from 20 years out of date to just 10 years out of date. Next, a wash, a good buffing with some TR3 and finally a nice coat of wax put a little of the gloss back into my new-to-me ride’s paint.

Over the next few months, it was a lot of fun racing to and from work – usually as fast as I could go - and the little Nissan ate up everything I could throw at it. One unexpected problem did rear its ugly head however, a leaky power steering seal. I solved this problem the simplest but least ecologically friendly way possible – frequent refills from a gallon jug of cheap power steering fluid.

In the end, after several long months of waiting and one false alarm, I was eventually called to Washington and sold my Nissan before heading east. The young guy who bought it was thrilled. Obsessed with the 1980s (probably because he was too young to remember them) he wanted the car the moment he saw it. With my future finally assured, I let him have it for what I had into it, $600 and I felt good as I watched him drive off into the night, his smiling face illuminated by the green glow of that outrageous dashboard.

I still feel a special bond with that little car. We both came of age in the 1980s and by the end of the 1990s had both been through a pretty rough patch. As the new millennium swept in, we were, despite our outward appearances, both still ready to go out and take on the world – all we needed was a chance. I’m glad we got them.