Don’t get me wrong, my husband is a good man. But he has a history of driving that is… How do you say it? …not-so-great…less than stellar…below average…dismal at best….
He had gotten his license just a couple years before I met him, and had very little actual driving experience because he had lived in town within walking distance to his job.
Then he met me, a little country bumpkin. Our first home together was about 20 country miles away from his work in the snow belt. We owned several older model vehicles early in our marriage… one at a time. My husband manage to damage every single one. Honestly I think if he hadn’t of had bad luck, he wouldn’t have had any luck at all during this time.
He was driving our little Ford Ranger to work. He looked over in time to watch the front tire roll down the hill ahead of him. Luckily, this particular incident didn’t result in a crash. He was able to retain control of the vehicle enough to pull it safely to the side of the road and locate the defunct tire. The vehicle was repaired and resumed service, but my husband learned to check the lug nuts after the annual inspection… some mechanics are pretty sloppy.
We borrowed my father’s huge old (70′s) Lincoln Continental, and wouldn’t you know it, the piston went through the side of the motor – literally. The old Ford motors were awesome though. Despite the horrible damage, the car still started. Sadly, Ford doesn’t make them this good any more.
I had a maroon Grand Marquis, it was a big old angular car that was like driving a tank. I really liked this car. It was big and room and had a trunk that I think we could have shoved a small car into. Indeed, my mom & I bought a couple of nanny goats one time. They were able to stand comfortably in the trunk with the lid down on the short drive home. I hauled everything in that trunk: hay, feed, yard sale treasures, saddles. It was an awesome car.
The Marquis lasted a little while, because I wouldn’t let the hubby drive it. Then it happened. He had to go to work and the only vehicle available was the Marquis. He never made it there. A deer jumped out in front of him, he veered, the heavy car hit the ditch, bounced back out and the car separated from it’s frame. Mad is too soft of a word for what I was feeling… somehow we made it through.
He found a Ford Ltd, but we had it so briefly that I can’t even remember how he managed to destroy that one.
Then there was the Chrysler Cordoba. This was my first non-Ford car and it was a huge two door monster. I didn’t really care for the car personally. It was difficult to get the kids in and out of their car seats, but it was transportation. I didn’t have much trouble handling it in the snow, but it didn’t have the same responsive handling that the old Fords had.
The hubby was going to work on a cold winter day. The roads were covered with ice, and he made the mistake of not going around one of the worst roads in the district. Right about at the spot that he’d missed the deer but destroyed the Marquis in the ditch, he lost control. The Cordoba was a huge and very heavy car. It didn’t stop that great on a good, level road, much less on a huge hill covered in ice. Of course the plow trucks still hadn’t sanded the road…
The Cordoba went barreling down the hill, somehow he was keeping it on the road and probably would have made it safely to the bottom, but his terrible luck was at work again. A woman was driving home after taking her dog to the groomers. Rather than pulling to the side of the road, she just stopped. He tried hard to avoid her, but the out-of-control Cordoba wiped the little car out – completely totaling it. The Cordoba was driven home after the accident report was completed, and miraculously the snow plows had gone through – sanding the road after the fact… the bastards.
We ended up buying a house that halved the distance he had to drive to work. This seemed to really reduce the number of accidents he was having. We also took a safety class together to help reduce our insurance Gee, I wonder why it was so high? (sarcasm) This seemed to help improve his driving a bit and for a little while we were accident free.
I was driving a huge old Ford station wagon. He managed to dent my station wagon by hitting a tree while trying to drive up my parents’ awful driveway. This must have qualified as enough damage without him totaling the vehicle, as I was able to keep this car running for few years and was the first vehicle that we actually wore out mechanically.
He now had an old F-100 truck and was happy, as he was a man that liked a truck. Then it happened. He was balking about having to go to a dentist appointment and as the fates would have it, it was a nasty cold day. He never made it to his appointment. I went to pick him up just 2 miles down the road. The truck was upside down in the ditch, but he was somehow hardly scratched despite all of the tools that had been in the cab with him flying around during the accident. One thing for certain, my husband has one hell of a tired guardian angel.
Against my better judgment, we ended up buying a newer black Ford sedan. We had a payment with this car, so had to have collision insurance (ouch!). The car was a beauty and my husband was very proud of it. By this time, I was pretty fed up with all of his wrecks. “If you wreck this one, I’m going to find a $500 car and that’s what you’ll be stuck with until you figure out how to drive!” Little did he realize that I was dead serious…
The rare times that I drove his car, I noticed that the steering was pretty sloppy. I told him about it and told him to go have it fixed. “Yeah, yeah. I will.” Famous last words. I nagged him about it for a couple months, but he never had it fixed. Then it happened. He went around a curve, lost control and took out a portion of a grape field. I was pissed. The weather had not been a factor, and I knew the accident was because he hadn’t taken care of a problem I had told him to fix months before. In addition, our girls had been with him during this accident.
I refused to let him drive my vehicle… I was now fed up with his piss-poor driving. He was going to get the vehicle he deserved until he figured out how to drive better. I went from dealership to dealership, “What do you have for $500?”
They’d look at me funny, “nothing.” Car salesmen are usually pushy, but the murder in my eyes must have warned them not to go any further. My husband was fairly silent through this entire process, but was hopeful that my search was in vain. His hopes were dashed. I scoured the papers and, through my determination, found three vehicles that were in my set price category. One vehicle we looked at was in such bad shape that I thought about getting it just to watch him “Barney Rubble” push it down the road, but decided against it. Then we looked at a van that had a horrible interior, but seemed to be in reasonable running condition for the price. Then we found a little black Ford Escort. It was a little 4-cylinder stick shift. I knew from a little hatchback Mustang that I’d had, that these little motors were tough.
Disgusted, but wisely silent, my husband transferred his firemen’s blue light to the new car. The little Escort looked almost exactly like the car he wrecked, in miniature. At work, he was properly heckled, “What happened? Did you go through the car wash and it shrunk!!!”
I was very firm, “If you wreck another vehicle, it won’t be an Escort… it’ll be a Yugo! …and don’t think that I won’t be able to find one.” Expressing his amazement that I had followed through on a threat that he’d thought was an impossible feat, he said that he had no doubt that I was very serious.
The little Escort was a great find. It lasted over a year, far longer than I had hoped. It was the first vehicle that he didn’t even put a dent into. I did eventually get a phone call that the car was failing. I went to meet him and followed him home with my flashers on. The front tires pointed in different directions, making the vehicle wobble like a kids toy, but we pulled safely into the driveway. He had mechanically worn out his first vehicle. My husband finally learned his lesson; he had learned how to drive.
