Recently, my son and I were driving along in a town, if you can call it that, near us. As we were driving by the old mill were my dad spent his entire working life, I remembered a humorous story from my childhood. Here it is, at least my version of it.
When you try to do the right thing, it doesn’t always work out the way that you had hoped! My mom and dad had just purchased mom a new car. It was one of those metallic, light blue colored Reliant’s. Apparently, the government liked them as well because I remember seeing a multitude of those cars, same color, with government plates.
Anyway, the Reliant was a basic, but nice car, and most of all, it was Brand New! New cars were not a common occurrence in our family. We did not trade in our cars every few years. We drove them until they could no longer be driven! Basically, the car would drop dead before we stopped driving it, and even then, we would attempt resuscitating it, multiple times if necessary! We had to get our money’s worth out of them, although I doubt we ever really do.
My dad worked as an assistant plant manager at the mill and would usually go in on the weekends just to touch base with the weekend shift managers and staff. It was a common enough thing to do. Instead of driving his truck, which was a little more costly on gas, he decided to drive mom’s new car to the mill. It never hurts to save on gas, even more so today!
Dad chose his parking spot carefully. Instead of parking in his normal place, he parked in a different spot in hopes of protecting mom’s new car from getting scratched or dinged. He hoped to protect it! Did I mention that new cars were a rare thing for us, so we wanted to keep the squeaky clean newness of it as long as possible.
So, he carefully parked it inside the fenced-in parking lot in an isolated space near the gate, probably too close to the open gate. But that way, it would be protected from the street traffic that might side swipe it. Also, no other cars were parked on either side of it that could open a door into it or pull too close to it. Ahhh, protected! Good job! Now to work.
Great plan! We all have high hopes that our plans will work out for the best, but unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen! While dad was working inside the plant, an older gentleman unintentionally had a heart attack while he was driving. Amazingly enough, he ran a stop sign, jumped the railroad tracks, and made a perfect 90 degree turn into the gate where mom’s new car was sitting.
Incredibly, while having a heart attack and attempting to control his vehicle, he managed to hold his car just steady enough to perfectly go down the side of mom’s new car! Luckily, he survived the heart attack, but all of dad’s careful planning fell on hard times. Side swiped! Badly, horribly, side swiped! There’s no stopping some things! Dad drove the wounded car home to explain to mom what had happened to her new car. Things do not always go as planned.
The new car was no longer new. It was repaired, but a new repaired car is no longer new, nor even really wanted, but we drove it for a long time to come. Although I don’t remember mom ever really being happy with that car again, we still had to get our use out of it. The new quickly became old. Later, I finished it off for good, and we could finally commit it to its temporal rust. THE END!