The Season of Taking

Call me old fashioned, but I always look forward to the same things this time of the year: the first snowfall of the season, spending quality time with friends and family, having my car die on the Gene Snyder on Christmas morning, and so on and so on. Sure, they’re the same things everyone looks forward to, but hey, I’m a sucker for the sentimental.

That last item I hadn’t experienced until just last year, but it didn’t really feel like Christmas until that point. My wife, my mother-in-law and I were headed to my parents’ house in a car full of food and gifts, when all of a sudden the car lost power and slowed to a stop.

My survival instincts immediately kicked in and I remembered the most important thing to do in just this type of situation.

“You’ll have to push,” I told my wife.

“You’ll have to remarry,” she responded.

Luckily, Christmas is a time to help your fellow man. Only not if you’re a tow-truck operator and your fellow man is in need of a lift. Nobody was willing to help us. Not the highway department, not the police, no privately-owned companies (none of which were open anyway), not even AAA. You know the wording on your membership card that says, “Call for an emergency tow seven days a week, 365 days a year?” Well, what it meant this day was, “We’ll reimburse you for what you pay somebody else to tow your car seven days a week, 365 days a year.” Only no one else would tow the car because, in case I haven’t mentioned this already, it was Christmas.

A prompt rescue from my parents reminded me that there are in fact rare occasions when it’s nice to live within 15 minutes of family. The car, however, had to sit on the side of the highway - alone and desolate. Until, that is, the next morning when I returned to the scene and it sat there no longer. The only thing remaining was shattered window glass.

Now, there were only so many reasonable explanations for this scene and I couldn’t come up with a single one. The car wasn’t towed, yet how someone could have stolen an automobile that wouldn’t run was escaping me. Regardless of what happened, it contained less glass than it had 24 hours earlier. I wasn’t optimistic about seeing my ride again.

Nevertheless, I made all the same calls I made the day before to see if, in fact, anyone had towed it. Turns out the highway department (one of the first places to reject my pleas for a tow the day before) picked it up late Christmas night. The only problem was that after reuniting with my car at the in-pound lot, I learned they didn’t get to it before some desperate procrastinator used it as a department store for some very last-minute holiday shopping.

“Your stereo’s gone,” the helpful lot worker pointed out.

“It would appear so, yeah,” was all I could get out.

It wasn’t until after I left that I thought of something better, not to mention more childish and unconstructive, to say. After getting my broken-down wheels to the body shop, I tried to imagine how the discount shopper spent his or her hours following the heist of my stereo. Perhaps they went something like this:

“Merry Christmas, mom. I got you this.”

“This is a piece of junk. Where did you get this from, a ’92 Accord? It doesn’t even look like it was factory installed.”

“Of course not. Do you really think I would’ve had time to rip out a factory-installed model before the cops showed up?”

“Well maybe if you didn’t wait ‘til the last minute, the interstate would’ve had a better selection!”

Then again - who knows? Maybe she loved it.

Anyway, after a joyous Christmas day, the start of the New Year involved a major financial decision: either 1) pay for the repairs, including a new window, which the body shop estimated would add up to the next-to-nothing price of $2,000 or 2) buy a new car. Since the poor thing probably wasn’t worth $150 (or significantly less without the stereo), we opted to get a new car. But after becoming one of the statistics that says the Honda Accord is the most broken into and/or stolen car in the United States every year, we decided this time around to buy another Honda Accord. Like I said, I’m a sucker for the sentimental. Happy Holidays!

Please check back for a direct link to the December 2007 issue of Louisville Magazine, in which this column appeared.