I remember my first car. It was a white Honda station wagon. 4 doors. A real chick magnet. It had survived for a long while as the main family car and the engine needed a rebuild. I rebuilt the engine in that thing with nothing more than a Chilton's manual and a sense of assured success driven only by my cluelessness about what I was doing. When I finished rebuilding the engine I had a coffee tin of parts left over. I remember thinking "that seems odd" but got into the car and started it anyway. Car ran for several years and confirmed my intellectual superiority to the engineers who designed that car with too many bolts and screws….and one other odd looking part the function of which I never figured out. But it worked. Why would I pay someone else to do this? My next car was a 1966 GTO. Rebuilt the engine in that too.
It was with this sense of accomplishment and superiority that I watched my dad back the family truckster out of the driveway and take it for an oil change. Ha! I thought smugly. All you have to do is get the supplies, slide under the car – in the gravel driveway – and take out the drainplug (probably getting oil on yourself in the process) and then weave your way down through the engine compartment to get the filter off (and another oil bath). Then reverse the process to get it all back together! How hard can that be?!? Pretty weak sauce old man! You're only 45.
I'm 47. I haven't done an oil change in 15 years. In my defense, it is a right pain in the neck to do an oil change these days. You have to be all "environmentally friendly" and take the oil to a collection center instead of dumping it. But we all know the truth: I ain't sliding under that car. Not for love nor money. My back hurts. I don't want oil on me. Forget it.
After the monster storm that never was came through this week I decided to go out and shovel the walk. About halfway done, I stood up and took a break from shoveling. As I surveyed the work yet to be done I noticed that my 2-doors-down neighbor had his snow blower out and was busy throwing snow all over the place. I snorted, "I'm a healthy middle-aged man I don't need any damn machine shoveling me walk…." and the car story above came blazing back into my head. It was 1982 all over again and I wasn't going to pay anyone to change my oil!
Guess I'll wait until it warms up and see if the Depot has a sale on snow blowers. Maybe they'll take bitcoins…
March 12, 2014 at 11:25 am
Andy,
Next time you need a snow blower, give me a call and I will loan you mine. I bought it when I turned 45.
March 12, 2014 at 9:18 pm
Birth, school, work, death. That is all.
March 13, 2014 at 11:59 am
Robert uses a snowblower. It takes him about half an hour. Using a shovel would take probably 5 times that much. If you consider his lost billing, it saves us about a thousand dollars to use a snowblower instead of a shovel. I say it's a bargain.