A Most Favored Tool (Meaning Implement)
By Sarah May Clarkson
Let me be plain. My identity is not tied to my cell phone or my clothes or my home or my
car. All those things are necessary and useful, sometimes even delightful, but they are
meant to be used for good and positive reasons, for the good of the cause so to speak.
They are all, in a way, tools.
This segment, then, is a kind of obituary because I just had to say good-bye to my old,
and beloved, 2008 Ford Escape – a vehicle to which, apparently, I had an emotional
attachment, despite what I just said.
We bought that car used, in Pennsylvania, at a cracker-jack business that only sold late-
model used cars. No dickering. A trade-in would be calculated, but otherwise, the price
was the price. Our 2008 Escape was a beautiful shade of royal blue, had leather seats
(very fancy for us at the time), had a robust all-wheel drive transmission, a sun roof, and
a 6-cylinder engine.
That car came into our lives in 2011. We used it to move at least one son to college, it
carried us and the dog across country in 2015 when we moved to Idaho, we used it on
adventures in and around the state, I drove it to the Hummingbird Roundup. By the time
we said good-bye, she had just south of 140,000 miles and had lived a good long life,
but it wasn’t a surprise when she gave out.
As time went on with my car, a quite regular oil leak developed (evidence on the
driveway), electric windows failed, I had to employ a YouTube hack to shift it into gear,
and a year ago the entire exhaust system came loose from the chassis (luckily in town)
and cost us a cock-eyed fortune to have fixed. The last, and fatal, straw was at the end
of January when the water pump seized, polluting and fundamentally compromising the
engine. It was grave and it was fatal, alas.
Here’s the thing: I need a car to start, to be predictable, to be safe, to be warm in the
winter and cool-ish in the summer, and for the windshield wipers to operate properly. I
don’t think of a car as an investment though they’re certainly expensive enough to be
considered one. A car has to help me get things done. It is a tool. I don’t need flash, I
don’t need fancy, and I sure don’t need expensive.
The prospect of car shopping was enough to give me serious heartburn, though I mean
no disrespect to car salespersons. We found our way to a local car dealership with a
new / used car in mind. There was a car on the lot that fit the bill for us and we took it for
a drive. Our previous car was so old that it bore NO resemblance to the one we test
drove; new cars are way more technologically complicated.
This particular car was just fine: much newer, the right number of doors and the
appropriate height, good gas mileage, all the rest – we approved, we wanted it. After
that test drive, we made a decision. Not a lot of hand-wringing or agonizing, no need to
test drive other cars. If only that was all we needed to do.
What followed was the stomach-churning part – securing the funds to actually buy the
car we chose. After what felt like a lot of time, we got the loan application submitted.
Which bank, what rate, what are your credit scores? Ugh. Finally we sat down and
signed what felt like a thousand documents – insurance, registration, loan agreement,
extended warranty, sales integrity. So. Many. Documents. We now have a car payment
again after many years of not having one. The amazing, and horrifying, upshot of this
financial transaction is that our monthly car payment is only $6 less than our monthly
mortgage payment. How, I ask you – how? – is that possible? And we made a
significant down payment. When car payments are close in cost to house payments, my
head spins.
We were able to drive the new-to-us car right off the lot that day. Phew!
Our new car is another Ford Escape and it is so high tech that it makes my brain hurt.
Everything is crazy electric: the seats, the windows, the lift gate. It took me fully 45
minutes to figure out the “radio,” which is actually an audio system. Like my cell phone, I
will probably only figure out about 15 percent of what the new car can do. I will say,
though, that I am appreciating the heated seats during this cold weather and even the
steering wheel warms up. Whoa.
But all the gizmos and gadgets and engineering are just more things to go south.
Whatever happened to crank windows? Can’t go wrong with crank windows. No more
CD player – bleh. I will miss putting a favorite album on in the car, especially during
summer with the windows down. In the old car, you just pulled up on a latch and could
move the seat forward or back, change the seat back tilt. There is lots to be said in
praise of simplicity, much as I am grateful for the new car.
Because we knew our old beauty was headed to her final resting place, we asked about
what we might get for her in salvage. Hardly any money. So we donated her to KISU
and the public radio Vehicle Donation Program. We made arrangements online, they
contacted a towing company to pick it up (at no cost to us), and then confirmed that it
had been sold at auction, for which we can claim a tax deduction. I don’t know where
she is right now, but to me she is in car heaven, providing salvage parts to other old
Fords and contributing to the good work of public radio.
So my most favored tool is gone – kaput – and I sure miss her. I might say that a car is
just a tool, but I think our royal blue 2008 Ford Escape was more than that to me. She
was a tool, but a gem of a tool.
