That meant I couldn't get real plates for it (unlike in New Jersey). So I altered the cardboard temporary tags to look like they were still valid. Then I got towed for having altered tags. Then I borrowed someone's car for a day till I could scrape together the money to get my car out of the lot. But that night, on my way home from the night shift at the factory, I ran out of gas on the freeway, half way between two exits which are about 7 or 8 miles apart.
It took me a week to get my car back, which cost me (unbeknownst to me prior to this experience) a big chunk of change for letting it sit in the impound so long. Naturally, I didn't have the money.
So I let it sit some more. When I got it out, I got another temporary tag and tried to pass the emissions test by dropping the idle and taping up the hole in the exhaust. But the tape didn't hold well enough, and ended up burning and smelling like a dead animal. Plus, the idle was too low to generate enough pressure to pass the test. I had to replace the exhaust system. Naturally, I didn't have the money.
So this time I decided to just play the dice and let it ride. Instead, I got a ticket for not having an emissions test sticker. The ticket was for about $75. Naturally, I didn't have the money.
Eventually, just as the summer was ending, I sort of caught up with the cycle and actually had the money for the exhaust system, the tickets, the court appearance, and the inspection itself. So I decided to get away for a week on a road trip. I figured I'd ask my mom if we could trade cars for the week while I was gone and she agreed, since hers was a good deal newer than mine.
Well, when I got back, the car was nowhere to be found. All that was left was a great big spot of smelly, burnt oil in the garage that led down the driveway. I said, "mom, where's my car?" (It was a Chevy Sprint 5-speed manual transmission hatchback punkrock dream, and it ran like a champ. This thing got 42 miles to the cash-strapped gallon and I had practically lived in it for a good deal of the summer). Mom said that it broke and she sent it to the junkyard-- translation, she ran its little three-cylinder engine on absolutely no oil (I probably forgot to fill it up before I left) for eight days and several hundred miles before it started smoking and banging really loudly. That's when she figured that the OIL light probably meant that something was wrong with the car that whole week.
So, I was out $2K, which as an 18-year-old kid is a lotta fucking money. Hell, it was half what I made that summer. Well, maybe a third-- I had had a good summer at the factory. But that's what happened to me the first time I owned a car. If I had just taken a day or two of my own time to go out of the way and follow the law to the very letter, to the very semicolon and dotted "i", I would have been fine. But, instead, I tried to cut a little corner somewhere there at the start, or I just didn't seem to have the time to break away and take care of that boring car shit, and before I knew it, I was about $4K poorer than I was at the start of the summer, and short one beautiful little hatchback.
Did I mention the time I blew out one of the tires and bent a rim dodging a dog on the way home from school? I think everyone is jinxed with their first individually-acquired used car.
- Bill Evans
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