The 1991 Buick LeSabre

I turned around and promptly bought another granny car from another granny. This time it was a 1991 Buick LeSabre. It had approximately 85,000 miles on it. The negotiation for the vehicle wasn't as easy as for the Celebrity. It took a little negotiation onprice in terms of what she needed in order to get into a newer buick. She was waiting weeks for a custom painted 1999 Buick Lesabre in a sea foam green color. She was the type of lady who loved to bake pies and cakes, always giving them to her friends and acquaintances. She was one of my mom's customers at the nail salon and we regularly went over to her house to keep her company. She was staying at one of the apartment complexes we had looked at a few years earlier when we were looking to move away from Dad. The apartment was decorated to my mom's sensibilities. The walls were pinkish mauve with wallpaper wainscotting. Country knick knacks, like rusty tins and stylized ceramic chickens, decorated the high shelf areas. Baking books, bowls, and decorative pie pans lined every surface of the kitchen.

We sat down and spoke about the car.

"How much do you want?" I asked.

"I don't know, how about $5,500?" she said.

"Blue book for the vehicle is $3,000," I said.

"Um.. Lets see. I need $5,500 for the down payment, what am I going to do?"

"How about $4,000?" she said.

"How about $3,500?"

"Okay, you are getting a great deal Scott."

She needed the down payment from the Buick she was selling me so that she could buy it and give me the car.

Well, I'm going to need it for a few days before the new vehicle arrives, you understand, don't you?

"That's fine. I'm okay with that," I said. "I will check in with you next week and see where you are."

A few days later I checked in. She still said she was waiting on the dealership and that the special car was being transported from across the country to get to her. I said ok, I'll check back in soon. Later that week, Mom came home and asked how it went. I said fine, Nora was still waiting on the dealership to deliver the new vehicle to her and she should know something on Monday. Mom told me in passing that she had her as a client that afternoon and they had talked about the deal.

What did she say? I asked.

Oh that you two came to a great agreement, Mom said. I thought it was nice of you that you let her take your car on her trip to Colorado to visit her daughter.

"We never talked about any of that," I said.

"Oh.." Mom said. "Well. Shit."

I guess that was her way of getting her $500 back. I'll remember that move and save it for later I thought.

The interior of this car was cloth again, but not velour. It was woven like berber carpet, a light grey cornflower color. The seats were thicker and lower than Shit Brown. They slanted back and gave zero neck support. You sort of leaned back at a 15 degree angle as you drove, like relaxing in an adirondack chair while cruising down the freeway. The console was still wood grained plastic. The linear instrument readout was similar to the Celebrity, but the former's graphic design was more a camp futurist feel to the tea room feel of the Buick. The stereo had an AM/FM radio and also had a cassette player. After putting in a cassette I found out that it didn't work and ate tapes. At least it had AM/FM radio.

It became my ride driving back to college. I knew nothing about car maintenance, I just knew how to keep them clean. As I drove back and forth down the road I never did any maintenance nor changed the tires, only worried about changing the oil. I went by hearsay; I always heard from people that you never bothered changing transmission fluid or flushing it. So I didn't bother.

I usually tore up and down Highway 59 to Houston at 85 or 90 mph. I found at certain times in the morning or evening I could get between home or school in 2 hours or so. I had a Sunday job at that time and had to get back. During the drive home one weekend felt a rumble in the car that was so bad that it felt like the door was about to be pulled from the vehicle. I stayed fairly slow as I got home and didn't think much of it.

The ride back to work that Sunday I was in a hurry. I was not paying attention to the rumble. I got about halfway there and my perceptions immediately slowed down to a frame by frame processing of the world around me. The steering wheel torqued violently clockwise as a sound as loud as a gunshot came from outside and the car was surrounded by a rain of black smoke and debris. The car rotated 22 degrees clockwise. I was starting to see the median in through the front glass. I remembered being loose. I let off the gas and held the steering wheel in place for a split second and the car stayed fixed at its angle. Then the car dug in and shot -- like a rubber band releasing its kinetic energy -- counter clockwise, this time the cars hood pointed five degrees counter clockwise. This time the pull on the car was more manageable. I held it at its stopping place and steered it facing straight down the road as if nothing happened. I was sufficiently slow at that point to pull the car over however I could; it ended up in the service lane on the median between northbound and southbound traffic.

I looked around. I hadn't hit anyone. Traffic was very light. I walked around the car and saw that the passenger side rear tire had shredded to the rim. The rim looked alright though. I opened the trunk and threw all the mish mash of trash, paint, and art supplies out on the road behind the car to get to the tool console on the side of the vehicle. Good, the jack was there. I then pulled the floor board to get the spare, and found...nothing.

Did Nora take the spare from this vehicle before selling it to me? Shit.

I struggled with the factory jack and finally pulled the rim off the car. I looked south and saw nothing but freeway lined by two rows of green forest. I looked to the north and saw what appeared to be a gas station about two miles down the road. I picked up and carried the tire two miles down the road. I got there and since it was Sunday, it was closed, but there was a payphone and a telephone book next to the building. I looked at the phone book and realized I was in a tiny town called Leggett. I found a mechanic in Seven Oaks another three miles down the road.

"It's Sunday, I'm home but I'll come over and help you out," he said.

"Thanks, I'll be there soon," I said.

I picked up the rim and carried it another three miles to the mechanic. He had a used tire my size in stock. It cost me 25 dollars for the tire and the fitting. He finished and charged me. I was tired and sunburnt by that point.

"Hey, could I trouble you for a lift back to my car?" I asked.

"I'm sorry son, I have to get back home," he said. "Good Luck!"

I rolled the now much heavier and more awkward tire back down the empty highway the five miles back to the car, installed the tire, and got back down the road. I passed the first mechanic in five minutes and the second mechanic in 10 mins.

Sometimes, I got bored and decided to come home. Late one Friday night I decided that if I left then, I could get home by midnight. That night it was raining and cold, a little below 40 degrees. I made my way back south in the darkness, in East Texas, the streets rolled up at 9 PM, so nobody was out. There was very light traffic down the freeway.

I got going down the road a ways and got a little sleepy. I stopped in a small town called Seven Oaks (population 110). There was a hole-in-thewall gas station there; I gassed up and got a cup of coffee. I set back off and promptly had blue and red lights flare in my eyes, filling up the back of the rear window. The rain spitting on the front window, illuminated in the blue and red light as I pulled to a stop on the pitch black highway on the side of the road. It wasn't a state trooper, rather a Polk county police officer.

Can I see your license and registration?

Sure.

I leaned over into the glove box and retrieved the papers from an envelope and handed them over to the officer.

Please wait.

I watched from the rear view mirror as the officer retreated back into the fog lit by the police cruiser's light bar.

Many minutes later the officer returned.

You can shut off the engine. Please step out of the car.

I complied. I shut off the Buick and the running lights. It was pitch black in my front field of view with only the ambient reflection of red and blue light.

Um, I don't have a coat officer. It's pouring rain.

Step out of the car.

It wasn't as cold when I started on the drive. A late winter cold front had come through and dropped the temperature by 25 degrees in an hour. I was now standing on the side of an empty East Texas highway, in the neck of the woods of Jasper, with the James Byrd dragging-death very much in the region's conscious. I was standing next to the officer who was looking at some papers. I looked briefly down the axis of the Buick towards the cruiser. I caught the silhouettes of two prone officers flanking us with their pistols drawn.

Do you know why I stopped you?

No. I know I was going exactly the speed limit. I was set on cruise control.

I noticed you swerve.

Well. I might have changing lanes, this car is a little wobbly in the rain. I think I need to look at the rotors, there is some steering wheel play.

Have you been drinking son.

No, I'm going back into Houston from Nacogdoches, gonna go visit my mom and dad.

There are reports of people trafficking drugs between Lufkin and Houston. Can we look in your car?

No sir.

No?

No sir.

Why?

You don't have any cause to. I was not speeding. You are saying I swerved. I don't think I did. You wanna give me a breathalyzer or a sobriety test?

The police officer looked back at his two partners.

I want you to step over in that ditch for a second son.

I looked over where he was pointing. It was a deep culvert with about six inches of water in it.

There?

Yes.

The rain was coming down a little more. I had on a black t-shirt and a pair of cargo shorts. I was uncontrollable shivering at that point and he made me wait---for a long time. Eventually I heard the officer approach my general location from the top of the culvert.

Come on up here son.

Why won't you let me look in the car.

Me, shivering, "because there is nothing there."

What do you have in there?

Art supplies and a bowling ball?

A bowling ball, you?

Yeah, I bowl. A purple one, with a fingertip grip. I bowl in Nacogdoches at that place next to the movie theater, Texas Pro Bowl.

You any good?

Sometimes, I haven't figured that place out yet, they have old wood boards that roll funny.

Ok, I'm gonna give you a citation for unsafe lane change.

Ok.

I looked around northbound and southbound into blackness. No cars were coming. The officer handed me the piece of carbon paper.

Be careful son.

Sure.

As I walked back to the car drenched I felt the rain gently tapping the thin carbon paper. I got back in and turned over the engine and promptly turned on the heater. I waited for the car to drive off before I set off. I made it to another gas station in Livingston to change my wet clothes before making it home late.

The next day I told my family about it. They didn't believe it. As I told my dad the story, he said, "Fuck those good ole boy motherfuckers." The times were certainly a' changin'. A roll back of live and let live attitude greatly eroded in the post 9-11 landscape, especially in East Texas. The first time in my life I saw two dollar a gallon gasoline was leaving Nacogdoches after graduating. It was otherworldly. The summer before leaving for grad school, I stopped off at a corner gas station late one night and watched the station install and test a new digital sign. It was a chevron with bright red and blue led bulb lights. They were testing the prices and were moving the numbers around on the sign via computer on the control panel. It was set at 20 dollars a gallon, with a capability of setting the price to a hundred dollars a gallon if they wanted to. On top of the pumps, they had installed fresh pricing signage that reflected the same ability to set the price to hundreds of dollars a gallon. As I was pumping, I messed around with the signs, placing a few of them to 20 dollars a gallon. Unreal, I thought. Is there an anticipation of fuel ever being that expensive?? Shit, unreal.

I sold the Buick for 1,500 bucks with 125k miles on it to a guy I worked with and left for graduate school. I didn't own a car for another 5 years. I made it out.