Dad

Dad
in his backyard haven

Wednesday 26 September 2012

CARS Part 3 of 3


Part III of III

Gotta love those Hondas!

My Dad GAVE us his 1990 Honda Accord when Dennis first got cancer (in 1997).  I was driving Den to “CITY OF HOPE” (about 75 miles) and to the Parkview Cancer Center (30 miles)   on weekly and daily runs for 10 months.  My Dad was worried that the Corsica wouldn’t last so he wanted us to have a safer car.  Now my Dad was a frustrated inventor who was always decades ahead of his time.  Long before we had it in our make up My Dad had invested in stock in Jojoba Lube.  He not only invested in the “stock” but he bought stocks of oil!   He poured that oil into every receptacle of that Accord and she hummed.  Eventually we gave that Accord to Katie and Ryan and they drove it until this past spring.  How many miles were on that, Katie?  215,000 you say!

The last brand new car that we bought is our 2006 Honda Ridgeline Truck!   We got some inheritance money from Grandma Betty and Dennis was itching to have a truck.  He was looking at ugly used “working man’s trucks”.  I was searching on-line and came upon - again - a first new model, Honda’s first pickup truck.  It had everything I wanted in a luxury ride but plenty of muscle for “work”.  Dennis was NOT interested - so what to do but to “trick him”.  I begged him to let me peek at a little Honda sports car and he caved.  As we entered the dealership the barracuda salesmen rushed toward us.  I walked ahead of Den and said “sell him the Ridgeline!”.  By the time that guy finished with Dennis you would think Dennis invented the Ridgeline!   I took a leave of absence from work and we drove across country for six weeks.  We went from San Francisco to Cape Cod and Minnesota to Little Rock, AR and all parts in between.  We had the best road trip ever!  XM Radio was new - it was wonderful to match the music genre to the location on the map: cowboys, blues, hillbilly, etc.  Additionally we had a six-CD changer that was perfect for loading books on CD.  We loved listening to Nelson DeMille books like: “Night Fall”, “Up Country”, “Wild Fire”, “Plum Island”, etc.   In the past seven years we’ve had many terrific road trips in our wonderful Ridgeline!

I’m keeping the Ridgeline for a while but it wasn’t our last car.  When we sent the 1990 Accord to Virginia we had just purchased the 1998 Honda Accord from Liz and Jay Reed.  That was a sweet little sedan with leather seats and all the amenities.  When I took delivery she had about 73,000 miles on it and I drove it up to 141,000.  We never had trouble with it and it was always a proud little buggy for me.  After my mechanic went to the great shop in the sky I passed it along in the family to our niece, Aimee DiGiovanni.

Dennis and I loved to drive together!  We built a lifetime of memories in our cars.  You’ll always be sharing the front seat with me, My Dear!

2 comments:

  1. I loved our road trips in the old van! I'm glad i grew up at a time when children weren't required to be harnessed into vehicles like they are riding in a roller coaster.

    But you forgot the inherited Blue Buick from Grandpa Vern. I'm not sure what you guys did with that one. That thing was sweet! Dad and I drove across country hauling a uhaul trailer behind it. Retrofitted with grandpa's 'suicide knob' on the steering wheel, you could turn that bad boy so fast!

    Seat reclined, back fluffed with pillows, sitting with my legs criss-crossed, cruise control and the one-handed 'suicide knob' all we had to do to drive was sit back, hold on and keep our eyes open!

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  2. YOU ARE RIGHT! HOW COULD I FORGET THAT!!! IT EVENTUALLY WENT TO A RELATIVE. THANKS FOR THE UPDATE!

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