"The Move"

The rain is not heavy, but comes periodically in steady, even showers. It is easily enough to incapacitate the old Sable, which has decided it will not run when there is any moisture about at all.

Thanks to the weather, the dark spectre of actually spending money to replace my aging auto hangs more heavily over me today than yesterday. The rusted old hulk is irrepairable with a shot frame and the damned inspection sticker runs out in two weeks.

Though I'm at work and ostensibly going through the motions, my mind is elsewhere in tortured agony, mulling over various equally distasteful scenarios. Either I will have to part with considerable parchment from the old shoebox under the bed for a new ride, ....or eventually I will end up walking and/or shelling it out for the shoddy livery that passes as cab service in these parts. Hey, it's not easy being a skinflint!

I'm spoiled, no doubt, having driven a fairly long succession of hand-me-down cars bequeathed to me by my dear old dad. Fortuitously for us both, his vehicular surpluses of the past several years seemed to coincide perfectly with my eager and willing consumption of the same. Inevitably, having enjoyed such a bounty of father's largesse for so long, my conception of "automobile expenses" has become somewhat skewed.

....Alas, due to father's current age and circumstances, no longer will my motoring pecuniaries be reckoned merely in gas, oil, and registration fees. It looks like the old kid is actually going to have to drop a little scratch this time, just to stay in the game.

Realistically, the only viable alternative to financial upheaval is to scour around and find another disposable vehicle––a $400 or $500 bomber that might take a sticker for a couple more years, ....hopefully without too much additional expense. A later model? Buying new or almost-new isn't even in the cards, seeing as how I basically just need a ride to work, not a second fucking job.

....Or, ....there's Paulson's Caddy. Admittedly, two grand is more than I'm looking to spend, but nonetheless, I'm intrigued by the thought of it. And she's not even a plain DeVille, but a fancy-schmancy Fleetwood Brougham, no less! According to Paulson, the interior is mint and the clock has an original 60 something thousand on her. The tires are decent, too, he says. Oh, ....and Paulson assures me she's not dark blue, but a sweet, light shade, ....almost gray like a gunmetal.

On the way home after work, I endure fifteen minutes of enervating harangue from the old lady, castigating me for being such a cheapskate. She's tired of carting my ass around every time it rains, she says (even though we are enduring the worst drought here in forty years), and it's high time I did something about the car situation ....Will you think less of me if I admit she's right?

What the fuck's wrong with me, anyway? Changing cars shouldn't be this traumatic. My poor addled brain feels like it did twenty some odd years ago, ....pumped right up full of coke and booze and God knows what all, in some throbbingly loud, sleazy nightclub, ....i.e., about ready to explode!

The pictures of the '83's I pull up off the internet are sweet––she's a boat, alright, maybe not as big as some 70's Cads, but big enough to make any puny Geo's quake in their boots. She's got the signature Cadillac vertical tail lights, too. I never even realized how much I loved those gaudy ostentations until right now.

Though my good buddy Lonnie, a long-time technical jack-of-all-trades and a gifted, naturally-born mechanic, has told me that the particular Caddy in question sports the dreaded HT4100 engine, I am already slipping into the death grip of "Caddy Fever." Lonnie recalls that the 4100 was considered poison in the trade and is still widely acknowledged as the ringer of the death knell of Cadillac's luxury car supremacy. Lonnie does not recall working on 4100's personally, but the lore is still strong and not yet completely an historical statistic.

In spite of Lonnie's rational voice of experience and prescient sober warnings, not to mention the old lady's dire admonitions against buying an eighteen year old relic, Paulson's bug in my ear has managed to burrow down deeply into my tiny brain and it is festering there ....vigorously.

Several days and phone calls later, Paulson assures me the old boat is indeed a charmer. Per my instructions, Paulson has test driven the Fleetwood, and to quote him verbatim, he says that, "....I couldn't go out and spend $30,000 and find as nice a car as this one!" She's tight as a drum. No shakes, rattles, or rolls, Paulson reports, ....or black smoke, either ....and she ate up old Dumont Hill, slicker'n snot. "She's barely broken in, man!"

I go to bed, ....still on the fence, but dangerously close to slipping off. Sleep finally comes, reluctantly, after endless tossing and turning and agonizing indecision, bringing with it the now inevitable Caddy dreams of the past couple of weeks.

In the morning, the rains have returned. The Sable sits smugly in the gloom and wet. She's not going anywhere today, Darling, ....don't even ask. The threshold at last exceeded, I dial the toll-free 800 number with conviction and clutch the receiver with an infantile nervous anxiety.

"Chase, Chase, and Chase. Scott Chase speaking."