Ripped from a Cherokee forum
It's also a matter of time -- a lot of time -- until I have the discretionary funds. My Jeep is 21 years old and is the only motor vehicle I can reasonably expect to own for some time yet. I'd love to restore and customize the thing but such work is going to have to be a matter of necessity just to keep me out of the bike lanes. I'm very fond of it, as we bought it a few weeks before our firstborn came along. It was our station wagon, our four wheel drive concession to the need for a family van, and pretty much anything that can be done in an automobile has been done in it, from dog pooping to infant projectile vomiting to intimate acts conceivable only in the minds of teenagers. No acts of violent blood-letting, not to my knowledge. If so, they got away with it.
It was stolen one summer Sunday in 2003. I was away from home and the phone call to my wife was very strange, but I don't wish to be unnecessarily critical of her, suffice it to say she also decided to return all my birthday presents and buy (me) a convertible Mustang instead. Then the Jeep was found in an Oakland neighborhood, where I babysat it throughout the wee hours until the police and their contracted tow truck could come, make reports, and haul it away to impound. It sat a few days in one of the scariest neighborhoods I've ever seen until the paperwork was done and I could drive it home. Insurance fixed all the damage and then some, being as they really couldn't tell what was due to the event and what was due to prior years' misuse.
I'll be mad if it gets stolen again because I probably won't get it back. Why would I? Did once already.
Presently the headliner is held up with stainless steel pins. I replaced the headliner a few years ago but I didn't do a perfect job and it started sagging again. One of my hopes is to replace the original soft felt-like surface with something durable and creative, but damned if I've thought yet what it could be. I want heat and noise insulation but I also want it to be rugged and manly-like and washable. I envision waterproof seats and black rubber floor coatings in a diamondplate pattern, but dog knows when any of that can ever happen. I also want to toughen the thing up to be my Burning Man rig, but that too is unlikely to get done before tequila and old age carry me off to the RV dealership.
I'm a snob -- "No RVs at Burning Man!" -- but people who use them are really glad they do, and I've spent a few hours in one or another enjoying the respite from the dust and unexpected company. This makes me more of a hypocrite, I guess. Fine with that. Meanwhile, I do have an RV, technically, and it gets pretty good mileage and has a tighter turning radius than that Mustang, which by the way I'm having no qualms about leaving behind.
7 comments:
It's purple! Like. Good vibes for Jeep to keep going a long, long time.
Back when I was married to the "good" husband, we bought 2 new Cherokees... the first one in 1985, which was a 4 cylinder. After baby #2 was born, we traded that one in for a 1987 with a V6, and more customized. (Faux wood grain, nicer seats, etc.) He drove that thing for about 20 years, long after our marriage broke down, so to speak.
Damn, you're just an incurable snob. I swear.... By the way, Lower Emeryville ain't scary, it's the part of Oakland nearby that's really alarming.
Wasn't in lower Emeryville. Impound was somewhere out near the Colosseum, surrounded by high walls and razor wire, where all the houses had window bars and patches of pitbull-worn dirt where the lawns used to be.
Yeah, but didn't they find it in Lower Emeryville? I thought you were referring to where it was found.
No, 'pologies for the confusion. The place it was found was just another flatland East Bay neighborhood, overgrown yards with deep shadows from the all-night fast food joints, a furtive dog-walker at some ungodly hour, a car full of young people passing with the air of doing no good, and that weird silence that settles in from the passing fog despite someone's TV blasting and the far away barks of an argument.
That sounds like Lower Emeryville.
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