My 1995 Ford Ranger was still running at the time, but to say it had seen better days was an understatement. While at that time I was still hoping to get another year or two out of it, I thought it was a good idea to at least start brainstorming about what to get when the time did in fact come. Soon after writing that Durango blog post, the writing appeared to be on the wall for the Ranger. On the way home from New Jersey one particular night, the truck broke down on Interstate 95…as it got towed to our mechanic’s shop, Krissy and I mentally and psychologically prepared for the worst. We had just sprung for new tires on the Ranger less than a year ago, but we had decided that any pricey type of repair from here on out would constitute some serious decision making about the pickup’s future. Luckily (and to our surprise), the truck hadn’t died at all…it had simply run out of gas. You see, for what seems like as long as I’ve driven the Ranger the gas gauge has been busted, and I have simply kept track of the gas using the trip odometer…but that method doesn’t work when someone siphons gas out of your car at night, which I had suspected had happened on at least one other occasion in our apartment complex, and I suspected here again. That was the good news; the bad news was that I had asked the mechanic to just do an overall check of the vehicle since it was in the shop anyway, and he had found a bearing problem in the truck’s rear differential. This basically served as the Ranger’s $800 death sentence. Not to make light of terminal illnesses, but it kind of reminded me of when a doctor tells a patient they only have 6 months to live.
Anyway, I intensified my car-buying research, but that car-shopping blog post still never came. About a month after the “running out of gas” incident, the Ranger really did die. All of the sudden, Krissy and I were down a car, and we didn’t really have time to do as much in-depth research as we had originally wanted, much less write a blog about it. A few days later, we found ourselves at our local Toyota dealer test-driving a brand spankin’ new 2011 Toyota Tacoma. I had toyed around with the idea of getting some kind of sporty looking hatchback or mid-size SUV, but Krissy brought me back to Earth and convinced me that I was and always will be a pickup truck guy…fair enough I suppose. Anyway, prior to actually going car-shopping I had contacted this particular dealership about a particular Tacoma that was listed on their website as being in stock. This Tacoma was a 4x4, but also had a manual transmission, which seems to be a combination that is all but extinct in pickup trucks nowadays. It also was a 4-door and had a full back seat, which weren’t deal-breakers, but they were definitely pluses.
Upon seeing it and test-driving it, we were pretty much sold right away. Along with the couple of features that I thought were must-haves for us, there were a bunch of bells and whistles that I wasn’t originally aware the truck had including Toyota’s TRD (Toyota Racing Development) Off-Road package, power locks and windows, satellite radio, etc. We ended up buying it and taking it home that same night, and we ended up parking it right next to the old broken down Ranger when we got home. I actually felt kind of guilty…it seemed like I had been driving the Ranger (which was technically still in my Dad’s name) for a lifetime, and bringing home another new truck felt something like showing off your new 22 year old girlfriend in front of your 50 year old soon-to-be divorced wife.
The reason this post has now gone full circle due to my lateness is that not only have I delayed writing it for so long that we’ve actually bought a new car, made our first payment on it, and driven it over 2,500 miles, but the old Ranger is finally gone now as well. Ever since we bought the new pickup, the Ranger had sat in our parking lot as we and my parents tried to decide what to do with it. We had a thought to give it to Krissy’s Dad, and maybe he could fix it up and use it just to drive stuff back and forth around town on the weekends. We also thought of selling it to a junkyard for parts. In the end, we decided to simply donate it to Catholic Charities.
Krissy was the one that officially oversaw it getting picked up after I went to work, but seeing the pictures she took on her iPhone of the Ranger being loaded up and towed away were bittersweet all the same. My Dad bought the Ranger brand new…281,128 miles later (over half of which were driven by me) I suppose it will soon belong to someone else after it gets fixed up. To say we got our money’s worth was an understatement. I had mentioned the gas gauge had been broken for some time, but that wasn’t all. The AC was spotty, the radio would never power off, and the middle storage console had been broken and could only be kept shut using a piece of string long since before I even started driving it. The ceiling was all scratched up from a time I had hauled rails to help make a post and rail fence. The only way the rails would fit was if they went through the small sliding door in the backseat into the cab, and any time I went over a bump or sharp turn the edge of one of the rails would pierce the ceiling. There were still small pieces of broken glass in the backseat from when the truck was broken into when Krissy and I were on vacation. On top of all that, the Ranger (even as a new truck) was never made for inclement weather. The combination of its 4-cylinder engine, rear wheel drive, and lack of any appreciable weight in the back over the driving wheels (even if you loaded the bed with snow, cement bags, or whatever else you could find) made for some interesting trips whenever the roads were wet. I could list a dozen times where I either got stuck in mud or ice or did full 360’s (or even a 720 once) in the middle of the street, and only the grace of God and the help of strangers saved me. Still, there are a lot of good memories that accompany that truck. It didn’t have the performance capability of a full-size pickup or even our new Tacoma, but it’s hard to quantify the utility we got from it. A lot of mulch, firewood, garbage, furniture, and anything else you can think of was hauled in that bed. It’s where I first learned to drive stick. It’s the car our old family dog, Dayton, rode in during her last family vacation. It’s what Krissy and I used to take us on a lot of road trips when we were first dating and first got married. Heck, it’s even what we used to haul our wedding gifts home after getting married. So, while it definitely was it’s time to go, bittersweet is definitely the word I would use to describe its departure. While I never technically owned the Ranger, and it wasn’t even technically the first car I ever drove (other family hand-me-downs, an ’88 Ford Tempo and a ’94 Plymouth Voyager, have that distinction), I will always consider it my first car. We can only hope our new pickup, still shiny, new, and with hint left of that new car smell, will last just as long.
New Meets Old
Last Ride
Out With The Old, In With The New
No comments:
Post a Comment