Has it really come to this?

When it comes to cars, I have come to accept that mine is less than straight-off-the-lot new. In fact, mine is falling apart. But it’s been a good car. It gets me where I need to go with little or no difficulty. However, its appearance is lacking. Quite a bit lacking in fact. When I took it in to have the oil changed I could swear I heard those guys laughing about that state in which my poor Jeep is in. I’d like to see them try keeping a car that’s 12 years old rust-free in Central New York where salt is a season all it’s own.

Anyway, the oil change went off without incident, or so I thought until I got to D’s place and noticed that one side of my hood wasn’t latched down. How I didn’t notice this on the ride there, I have no idea. So I lifted the hood to see what the problem was. Turns out that the guys were a little rough with my baby and broke the bolt that attaches the latch to the hood. Granted, that bolt was probably close to rusted through, but really, with a car this old, you have to be gentle.

I couldn’t really do anything about it at D’s so I ignored it until my drive home when it became more than apparent that it wasn’t exactly safe to have the side with the broken latch flapping in the wind. I had visions of the hood coming up in my face like in that scene from Tommy Boy. If you’ve seen Tommy Boy you know exactly what I’m talking about. Thankfully, those engineers at Jeep know a thing or two have a safety latch in the middle of the hood so I really wasn’t in any danger of this happening.

When I got home my dad and I had a little chat about what to do about my hood. Since it wasn’t the weekend and we didn’t have the kind of time it might take to fix this, he came up with a temporary fix.

Now I’m not one to care much about appearances. For instance, I can accept the fact that my doors are sort of rusting through…


I can even accept the fact that my wheels are not what you’d call shiny….


But when there’s a bungee cord holding the hood of my car down, I feel the need to hide my face with the embarrassment of it all…


I guess it could be worse, at least it’s not duct tape.