Jeep Cherokee

The image hung in my head. Dressed in grey jumpsuits the team inspected and diagnosed and concluded an expert needed to be consulted. He was just down the street. The expert, looked like a surgeon with the intensity of hours in the operating room sat on his brow. He came through the swinging doors to give the family the news. I saw it in his eyes. The news wouldn't be good.

He sat beside me, our knees touching so slightly. He all but took my hand in his as he said, “You need a new car. That one is so old, with 326,000 miles, it is leaking from everywhere.”

“No”, I silently screamed, thinking the last thing I need months before I move to Hawaii is to buy a new car. “How can you tell? There is oil everywhere.” I asked. And it was. Somewhere between Saratoga Springs, New York and Roanoke, Virginia I managed to lose an engine’s worth of black gold and had not attracted Al Gore. Under the hood oil coated every surface. The once white oil filter looked like a wet zebra.

I had noticed my rear window. Filthy. A hazy glaze much like a honey baked ham smeared across the glass when I tried to clean it with the wiper. When I stopped to fill up, I discovered the mess covered the rear of the Jeep. I knew what it was, but wasn’t prepared to see the mess when I popped the hood. The only place free of oil was the tip of the dip stick.

Fortunately, I had not blown the engine. After throwing a quart down the gullet, I cruised down an industrial-commercial street, in search for the yellow Pennzoil marquee. Ron and his crew huddled around the Jeep like five hungry men around a barbeque. After all, the underside dripped like a juicy steak on the grill. But outside of determining the engine cover bolts were loose, they couldn’t really tell where the mess was coming from. That’s when they referred me to John Porter, the surgeon.

I told him no one had ever talked to me so harshly about my high mileage vehicle. I wouldn’t accept that all was lost and I needed sell the Jeep as "quickly as possible."

“It’s just a car, a tool made of metal," he admonished. “The best I can do is send you on your way with a six pack,” referring to quarts of oil used every hundred miles or so. “And don’t drive too fast. The faster you drive, the quicker it will pour out.”

I paid him for the oil and went outside to have a talk with my Jeep. How many times have I done that? Since 1989 – a lot. How could I not be emotionally attached to the vehicle I bought in North Carolina nearly twenty years ago. I’ve been camping and caving in the vehicle. For a year, I lived out of it. How many trips up and down the east coast? What about all the times I made it out to Indian Country, exploring the wilderness to see my first elk, to pick up an old Navajo who had been tending his sheep and was coming to town to see a dentist? How many times have I slept in the back? I remember where I was when the odometer hit 100,000, 200,000 and 300,000. Got pictures of each milestone. Sure 400,000 has crossed my mind. It was a long 200 miles to Morristown, Tennessee.

I had not intended to make the whole trip in one day, but in Morristown there is a mechanic named Freddie. A quiet man of few words, he's worked on Jeeps for years. His methodical process of diagnosing the problem has resulted in never having to pay for something that wasn't fixed right the first time, the only time. He knows where to find used parts from wrecks, minimizing repair costs. But the jobs are never done quickly. I told Freddie he had until the end of May. If it can be fixed, Freddie will fix it.

But I do need to get home by April 2.