You, my loyal readers, have suffered through four years of complaints about my cars—between the soggy love affair with the Scout and the love/hate relationship with the Taurus, you’ve glazed over during my tirades, love letters, repair bills and sob stories. Age and rust have caught up with the Scout, rendering her muffler-less last August during our move to the country. She sits in the driveway, waiting for the Big Bag Of Money to drop from the sky. Meanwhile I’ve sweated through two years of increasing unreliability from the Ford as the transmission slowly ground itself into a spinning nubbin, praying to the Sky Bully (new favorite phrase) to get me home without breaking down on the shoulder of I-83 or somewhere along North Avenue. Yesterday afternoon, I was treated to three unscheduled stops on the side of 695 after being forced to slow in traffic quickly; each time the transmission decided it had had enough and forgot where second gear was. Meanwhile, the heater must be run at full blast to keep the engine from starting a car-b-que.
So it is with great pleasure that I announce a new vessel in the Lockardugan Home Fleet: a 1998 Jeep Cherokee. It has about eight of the ten things I was looking for in a replacement vehicle:
| Wants | Gots |
| Cargo space (preferably a pickup) | Not a pickup, but more room than the Taurus |
| 4-wheel drive | check |
| 4 doors | 2 doors |
| V6 engine | check |
| good gas mileage | (shudder) 16 mpg |
| Toyota | (shudder) Jeep |
| dual airbags | check |
| stick | automatic (drat!) |
| working A/C | check! |
| Inexpensive | check |
It is also with great pleasure that I announce we have met our first neighbors aged under 70, who sold us the truck. M and S have two young boys, live in one of the houses I’ve lusted after from afar, and strike us as genuinely nice people. We’re looking forward to getting to know them over for dinner this summer.
At the risk of spitting in the eyeball of Providence, it kind of came together perfectly. S put signs in the windows and parked the Jeep on the street last Friday morning; I saw it while limping the Tortoise home that evening, and Monday night we were test-driving. Superstitious fool that I am, I hope the Jeep serves us as well as the Ford (say what I will, that car paid for itself, every penny) and that our new neighbors don’t run screaming into the hills when they get to know us.
Encapsulated Reviews. To the 5 Boroughs: Same as it ever was, like a new version of Hello Nasty. Velvet Revolver: Slash Temple Pilots. Modernized 80’s metal. Shuggie Otis: trippy 70’s funk. A soundtrack to your own personal selfsploitation movie. Big Star: The original. A blueprint for most garage bands that followed. The Killers: Retro-disco rock, not unlike your Franz Ferdinand.