rt station wagon was the first car I owned. Bought from an ad in the Anchorage paper for $900 of my own money. It took me to work, to my apartment and to school. It wasn\u2019t fancy but it was enough.<\/p>\n
It burned oil\u2014about a quart a month. I made sure to put a quart in every month and we got along fine.<\/p>\n
I was buzzing around between the places I needed to go, full of freedom.<\/p>\n
UNTIL<\/p>\n
I took a road that wasn\u2019t really a road and bottomed out the radiator. This wild patch of non-road ripped a hole and the water poured out of the radiator.<\/p>\n
This was not good. What was I gonna do about this?<\/p>\n
I calibrated it as quickly as I could:<\/p>\n
If I filled up the radiator RIGHT before I drove anywhere, I had just enough water in the system to cool the engine to get to work. Just barely enough, but enough<\/p>\n
For a few months anyway. Until the day that the whole engine seized and it was done.<\/p>\n
That was the first car in my adult life, and I\u2019ve learned a few things about cars and life since then.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t have much when I had that car. I had to shrink down to the head of a pin to make it all work.<\/p>\n
I figured out pretty quickly that I don\u2019t\u2019 want to live small like that. I don\u2019t want to limit myself to just barely enough. That\u2019s a bad sign. As a brand new grown-up, I had to learn that barely enough is not enough.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s something I\u2019ve had to learn over and over. Nature itself works in excess. Plants make far more seeds than get planted. Fruit trees make so much fruit it can\u2019t all be used.<\/p>\n
If I don\u2019t have enough and to spare, that is not really enough. I had to buy a car that could take me further than just barely to where I needed to go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
rt station wagon was the first car I owned. Bought from an ad in the Anchorage paper for $900 of my own money. It took me to work, to my apartment and to school. It wasn\u2019t fancy but it was … Continue reading