Auto Despair

Back in the late ’60s, my daddy Jabo Jowers had an employee who we called Halfwit Bill. Well, truth be told, we called him Bill to his face and Halfwit Bill whenever he was out of listening distance.Bill, who couldn’t talk plain but was eager to please, was just about smart enough to go get things we needed and throw away things we didn’t need. He wasn’t good for much else. But Bill worked cheap, he kept Jabo’s metal shop clean, and he didn’t cause much trouble. His biggest problem was that he didn’t have a car.So one Monday morning, in an act that included a little altruism but mostly selfishness, Jabo went out and got a car for Bill. Jabo told Bill that he’d found the car at the side of the road, which is what Jabo said about everything he stole. Appearance-wise, the car was nondescript. All I can remember now is that it was black, and it was probably an early-’40s Ford product.The car, like Bill, wasn’t quite right. Jabo drove the car home from wherever he found it, but the driving was a challenge. Sometime during the car’s life, somebody stripped it for parts, concentrating his efforts on gizmos that went through the firewall. The car’s choke linkage had been replaced by a straightened-out coathanger. The throttle linkage comprised several coathangers, artfully twisted, bent and soldered together, and clearly the work of Jabo.Anyhow, to get the car’s engine started, one had to manipulate the coathanger that controlled the choke. Once the motor was running, the driver had to reach under the dash, grab the coathanger that replaced the throttle linkage and pull on it until the car started to roll. This, of course, meant that the driver had to drive one-handed. Or if he had to adjust the choke to keep the engine running, he’d have to drive no-handed, and steer with his knees.As it turned out, Bill had some savant skills. He got the car started, got it rolling, then drove it a mile to the post office and a mile back. “Mister Jabo,” Bill called as he stepped out of the car, “how much do I owe you for this car?”“Five dollars,” Jabo said. “I’ll take it out of your pay on Friday.”Knowing that Bill wasn’t sharp with numbers, Jabo took five dollars out of Bill’s pay every Friday after that.Once I got old enough to drive, Jabo served me up two legitimately purchased American automobiles. The first was a 1966 Corvair, which Jabo returned the same day he bought it. That’s because on my test drive, the Corvair’s deadly ass-end-leaves-the-pavement-first oversteer kicked in and spun the car into the weeds. Jabo took the Corvair back to the car lot and came back with a sturdier and straighter-driving 1965 Impala Super Sport.Soon after that, Jabo dropped dead while trying to bugaloo. Just a few weeks later, I destroyed the Impala by smashing it into a utility pole. I was seventeen, and I had to buy my next car all by myself. I didn’t know where to start looking, but I did rule out checking the side of the road.Lucky for me, one of my musician friends had a neighbor who was trying to sell a 1966 Chrysler Town & Country station wagon. So I went to my friend’s neighbor’s house, confirmed that the wagon would start up and move, and then I bought it for a hundred dollars even.That was the car I had when I started courting wife (then girlfriend) Brenda. One spring Saturday, I drove the mighty Town & Country to Columbia to meet Brenda, and I found out that the car had a noteworthy flaw. It wouldn’t go into reverse. No matter how many times I pushed the backup button on the wagon’s oddball pushbutton transmission, the car would not go backwards. So I left it parked on the street until the next day, when I tried to make it back up again. The transmission worked. After a few days’ study, I learned that if I drove the wagon for no more than an hour, and if I left it parked for at least eight hours, I could make it back up.Then, on the way home from Columbia, I discovered another flaw: a little leak in the radiator. Again, after some study, I learned that if I kept eight one-gallon jugs of water in the wagon, and if I topped off the radiator every half hour, I could drive forward for eight hours, then park for eight hours, back up once, refill the eight jugs and start the whole routine over again.Which brings me to this: The hundred bucks I spent for the Town & Country will now buy one tank of gas ($65) and one oil change ($35) for my van.Not to go all nostalgic, but there’s something to be said for simple cars that can be rescued from the roadside, repurposed into short-haul machines and kept in service with coathangers, jugs of water, a little studying and savant skills. If Halfwit Bill were alive today—and it’s a good bet he’s not—he could siphon 1.25 gallons of gas out of a roadside donor car and buy himself a new set of wheels.