Runnin’ Down a Dream

Contrary to California myth, I did not get a car at the moment I turned 16. I do not know why I missed getting signed up for driver’s ed, though if that were The Year of Three High Schools, that would explain it. At one point my stepfather tried to teach me how to drive, but my indelicacy with the clutch stressed him out and we did not get far. Later, I had private driving instructions with a patient man in one of those cars with a second brake on the passenger side and I eventually got my driver’s license, setting me free — in theory — to cruise the El Camino with the radio on. 

Since I didn’t have a car, said cruising took place in other people’s cars, my friend Heather’s late model convertible Mustang, that’s what I remember most. Her father was a mechanic; memory tells me there was a Delorian in their driveway, that he was a kind wiry man with dirty hands, always dressed in blue overalls, while his daughter’s car was white and shiny. I took the bus and rode my bike well into college. I had a boyfriend in college who loaned me his car when he traveled, and an ex-husband with cars, but I did not have my very own car, one I chose and bought and paid for, until I was 30. 

My brother had cars — I guess boys got to have cars? There was a plum colored four door Volvo that I drove while he was on foreign exchange; I got t-boned by a guy who ran a red light and the car was totaled. Before that he had a giant blue International Scout, an enormous car that I think gave him nothing but trouble. He also had a tiny Honda hatchback that was his girlfriend’s at the time. 

I used the Honda a lot, my brother was not territorial about it. It was surprisingly roomy inside, though a bit unpredictable. Sometimes the rearview mirror would drop off when you slammed the door too hard. One hot summer we drove it to Disneyland with two Swedish friends of his and on the return trip, it broke down in the central valley in the middle of the night. I still have a clear vision of the four of us standing under the only light available at a rural crossroads, me in tie dye and shorts, these two towering Swedish boys in the Mickey Mouse ears we insisted they wear at all times. We got a room at a cheap hotel in Tracy, California while a mechanic acquired and installed the new alternator that allowed us to get the rest of the way back to Palo Alto.

My mom and my stepfather were uptight about a lot of things but they let me drive their cars. My mom had a Fiat Spider, silvery blue, that I took to the beach often. Once, while my stepfather’s mother was dying, my brother and I took the Fiat to a Tom Petty concert miles away from home and found we’d locked the keys in the trunk. My friend Heather, she of the Mustang, picked up the extra keys in the middle of the night and drove up to rescue us, the sole car in the parking lot as the sky started to turn to daylight. I think we flipped a coin to decide who would call home; my brother lost. I can not hear a Tom Petty song without remembering the crew checking in on us before driving the last two trailers of gear up the hill and out of the Concord Pavilion parking lot. It was a good concert, very good, Tom Petty had been touring with Dave Stewart, the guitarist from the Eurythmics. 

Sometimes when I hear a Tom Petty song, I listen for a lyric that catches the joy of seeing an artist you love on a California summer night and then watching that feeling drift away into the night as you realize the keys are locked in the trunk of your mother’s car. But you do not want to call home for help  because you know your stepfather will fly into panic if the phone rings. So you flip a coin and then wait for your friend’s headlights to appear on the long slope into the parking lot. 

I bought a new car. I am 60 years old and this is my fourth car. I replaced my 2007 Pontiac Vibe, a four door hatchback with 160,000 miles on it. Prior to that, I had a 1985 Toyota Tercel, a four door hatchback with 120,000 miles and a failing head gasket. I bought that car used, off the street, three blocks from where I’d been living at the time, for $1200. I drove the Tercel all over the West, up into Canada and down the California Coast and over the Rocky Mountains. Before that, I had a 1982 Toyota pickup with a broken gas gauge. That car got stolen multiple times and I eventually got rid of it, going for several years without a car at all.

The dudes at the dealership all did that “Wait, what?” thing when I answered their standard conversation starter question about what I was replacing. “You got your money’s worth,” the finance guy said. “Oh, yeah, that was a fantastic car, that car,” another one said. The finance guy told me that they’re coached on “New every two.”

A new car every two years? My Pontiac Vibe was the only new car I’ve ever purchased. I was at the dealer to pick up a 2022 hybrid with just over 10,000 miles on it. I had been trying to replace my car for three, almost four years. First, I couldn’t quite figure out what I wanted — should I go full EV? — and then, there were supply chain issues and there was no inventory.  I chose the car I got — a Kia Niro — based on reliability and efficiency ratings and because I had a chance to interview a car tech expert for a story right in the middle of my research. I told her what I wanted my car for and she said, “Oh, I’m sorry to say this, but we don’t have the infrastructure yet. Get the hybrid.” 

About three months back I was heading to the beach for a long weekend and I took a rock to the windshield. The windshield repair guy stood in my driveway on a rainy spring day and told me to take my car to the shop rather than having him do it. “Your car is kinda old,” he said, “and it’s better to have more hands on the job to make sure they get the seal right. Has it leaked before?” It had, a lot, and the last time I had to have them redo it three times. At the shop, the guy assigned to my job looked at my car and said, “Skip it. Don’t do it. I’ve done five of these recently, and three of them had rust. If I find rust, I can’t finish the job and you’re screwed. Don’t do it.” I was grateful for his candor, it’s too rare. 

The Vibe had a few other minor issues. The passenger side door lock stopped working and because I could not get a replacement part, I had a Toyota Matrix lock installed; it uses a different key than the ignition, the hatch, and the driver’s side. It’s got a bit of shredded trim near the front tire from that time I scraped a too high curb and a little wrinkling on one panel from some asshole at a downtown parking garage. There’s a light out behind the dash. I meticulously maintained it but it had just gotten kind of janky. I mean, it’s a 2007 with 160,000 miles on it. All this pushed me to make a decision about a replacement. Plus with the election, I have some anxiety about supply chains and tariffs. 

The second or third day I had the new car, I sat in my driveway, starting and restarting it because I could not figure out how to make it go. My old car was a five speed manual, it did almost nothing automatically; this car wakes up from a sleep state and folds out its rear view mirrors when I approach it with the key fob in my hand. It has an enormous touch screen display for the sound system or the map or the powertrain animation or whatever else I have it set to. It has automatic seats and windows and cruise control and anti-theft software and who knows what else. A lot of these features are standard now, they are not even luxury considerations, they’re just what has happened to cars since 2007. I am an automotive Rip Van Winkle, waking into a new decade of transportation technology after a 17 year nap.

It is possible to live where I live without a car but it gets inconvenient quickly. Bad weather does not deter me from riding a bicycle, but I’m the living embodiment of the “last mile” problem. It’s almost exactly a mile from my house to the supermarket, the express bus, the dentist, my favorite cafe. It’s two miles to a bunch of other useful things, the vet, my doctor, the hardware store. I do not commute, I have an almost religious objection to doing so, but even with that, I live a life in which a car is an extremely handy tool for living. 

Also, I love road trips; they bring me endless delight. I love to see you in the passenger’s seat, my dog snoozing in the back while you look up where we should stop for breakfast. I’m okay alone too, stopping in town to get coffee, to eavesdrop on the next table. I love the mirage of the airplane boneyard way out there on the horizon. I love checking into some mid-range hotel and getting Thai food delivered, slurping noodles while watching film noir classics on TCM. I love the low end of the dial, the community radio stations that appear when you’re either in some remote rural town or on the edge of a big city and the dinosaur rock stations you get when there’s only that and hellfire to choose from. I love the self-contained escape pod feeling of an ice chest on the back seat, the double yellow line in the windshield, and the openness of heading just, you know, that way, until I pull up outside your place in San Francisco or Salt Lake City. Or the rental in Moab or Twentynine Palms or the Washington Coast or your mom’s place in the Coast Range. For that, I need a car. 

People congratulated me on this new major acquisition. I feel mixed about it. In a different existential era, I would have preferred to delay this decision indefinitely, until my 2007 car failed, until it had been driven into the ground. I’m an ambivalent consumer on a good day; a major purchase like this fills me with… dread is too strong a word, what sits between dread and resolve? Resentment, perhaps? Some guilt? Car culture is wildly destructive in all kinds of ways. There’s no morality under capitalism, yadda yadda, and here I am participating in one of the worst aspects of it. “Fifty miles to the gallon babeeeee!” said the young man who handed me the keys to my new ride. “You’ll get fifteen years out of this thing, easy,” said the guy behind the desk. 

I rationalized all these things, took the keys and got behind the wheel of my new car. Tom Petty was in my head. “It felt so good, like anything was possible. I had the radio on. I was driving.” I turned right out of the dealership and punched the gas.