The Story of the Free Car

For a large portion of this summer, we were a one car family. When our old faithful Volvo wagon developed a brake problem that was worth more than the car itself, we retired the Gray Ghost aka the Rumblebucket. This left us with our Isuzu Trooper, which is an awesome vehicle, except the air conditioning had bit the dust and it sports a pretty serious electrical issue that to just diagnose would be more than we could afford, let alone fix. (It clicks. It’s kind of like driving with crickets chirping on the dashboard.)

To ease the driving load, Lefty took to hauling his bike to work on the back of the Trooper (where I would drop him off) and then riding it home. He liked riding his bike, but this is not a bike friendly town and I worried about him riding in traffic every single day. We couldn’t really afford to buy a second car and were unwilling to take on a loan so we trooped (haha) along with our one car doing the best we could.

Enter the free car. At my previous cushy office job, during one uneventful staff meeting my boss (Aside: did I mentioned I was working as church secretary and that my boss was a United Methodist minister?) mentioned that his Uncle Bill who was well into his 90’s was getting rid of his car an older Geo Metro. My boss said, “I am going to just give this car away as is. Do we know anyone who would be interested?” A college sudent who attends our church was mentioned as were a couple of other people. We would check around.

As it turned out, the car was just too old or aesthetically displeasing and no one, not a soul wanted it! Enter us with our clicking electrical anomaly and our no AC (south texas, folks!) and Lefty weaving through crazy five o’clock traffic on his bike. So I casually mentioned to my boss, who was tired of having the-little-car-nobody-wanted in his driveway that you know, if there wasn’t anyone who had a greater need that we, we would be happy to take it.

And we did. While it’s not the shiniest or hippest vehicle we’ve ever had, it’s the one that came to us with the largest gift of grace. We named it Geodude (a rock type Pokemon) and it gets awesome gas mileage.