My dad spent hours in car dealerships when shopping for a new car.  The salesmen saw him coming and probably drew straws on who would try to finally sell him a car.  My dad was a turd about the whole charade.  The unlucky salesman would show him cars in the lot and he would look at all of the cars in the dealership.  He was not affiliated with any brand of car.  He just saw price tags.

After a month or so of lunch hour shopping my dad bought a Volkswagen Beetle, an ancient version of the newly minted V.W. cars made today.  It was affordable, and baby blue.  I rode with him in our rusted Ford Galaxy trade-in.  I loved the V.W. immediately.  It looked like a toy.  It had a stick shift and we went home at four miles per hour in first gear.

The engine was in the rear.  The trunk was in front, which was amazing to me.  In those days, a new car purchase required a spate of family visiting to show off the new vehicle.  It was a rite of passage, I guess…in Detroit.  It was good on gas.

It had a price tag that was affordable.

I was often my dad’s sidekick in that car.  He was a teacher, and teachers drove the wheels off their cars.  The “bug” had a few issues.  It rained and the windshield wiper on my dad’s side would make two passes over the windshield and then fly off the car.  I heard it swipe, swipe, and then saw it disappear in traffic.  My dad said words I won’t print here.

He would have to take it back to the dealership to install a new one, because my dad and machinery had no relationship.  Rain turned to snow and my dad kept his window rolled down with his arm stretched around to hold onto his wayward wiper blade.  In effect, my dad became the windshield wiper.  This activity, with a cigar going and a stick shift made for a war of juggling.  I froze.  The heater kicked out about two degrees of heat after driving for an hour, which meant he never got heat at all.  The engine made a little tinny whine.

He ground through the gears, dropping cigar ashes when he shifted and tried to coordinate the clutch at the same time.  His left arm got longer as the windshield wiper.  The winter slid into zero temperatures. This caused a more major issue with the car.  It would not start in the morning.  I was too young to understand car motors.  On record cold nights my dad covered the engine with his heavy, canvas jacket from W.W. II.  He had a “trouble” light with a hook on it.  He snaked extension cords from the house to the driveway.  Garages, in those days, were unusual.  He found some part to hang the trouble light and closed the engine’s lid upon the whole rig.  Young, I still questioned the practice as I ruminated about his activities so near the gas tank.

Each winter morning he trudged through the snow to the V.W.  He pumped the accelerator to get the gas flowing and then he took off the trouble light and his heavy coat…which he would later put on to handle the cold task of keeping the wiper blade on the car as he drove to work.

My dad was not a morning person.  He was silent as he slurped coffee and ate cereal for breakfast.  Dressed in an old suit he wore a raincoat with a lining in it one day.  I could hear him start the car, (or not) and grind through the gears to power the little trucker through the heavy snow that was never plowed on our street.

One fateful day my dad drove off and forgot to remove the jacket and trouble light and extension cord.  The engine balked.  He smelled smoke as he commuted, and looking back on it, other drivers must have seen him trailing an extension cord behind him.  The turn into the parking lot at school was difficult.  He then looked at the tiny engine compartment and saw his trouble light, unlit, and the smoking coat. The extension cord he didn’t see.  It had wound itself around the axle of the rear wheels.

Not awake yet, he threw the light and the jacket into the back “seat” for midgets like me when my mom was in the car.  He said nothing about what had happened when he got coffee in the teacher’s lounge.

I have one more story about that car.  My dad, wearing the canvas jacket, waited in the parking lot at church as he waited for the little heater to kick out its two degrees.  I was in catechism class.  I got in the car.  The engine was running.  My dad tried to warm his hands by sticking them into the pockets of the jacket.  He had to grip the steering wheel, the stick shift, and a cigar.  He yelled out loud and scared me.  I heard his bad words due to coming from catechism class.  Then he pulled his wiper hand out of his jacket.  In good weather it was his fishing jacket.

A great big fishing lure with multiple treble hooks had embedded itself in his hand.  We drove to an emergency room in the hospital where I was born.  His hand dripped blood.  I sat with my legs dangling in a chair as the doctors carefully and painfully cut the barbs of the lure so that they could pull the hooks out of his hand.  I was horrified.

My religious education ended that day.  His wiper hand disabled, the wiper flew off the windshield and he said some more bad words.  His hand was heavily wrapped in gauze.  He had a tetanus shot.  How we actually reached home that day is a fog.  He got lots of attention from my mother.  A cigar, a beer, and a pain pill calmed him down.

We kept the car until the wheels fell off.  My dad never replaced his windshield wiper.