End of an Era

This is the View from Underneath the Dodge Caravan. Do you see the big hole in the middle of all that metal? That is what happens when the thick steel of an automobile muffler meets the cast aluminum of a transmission block.

The muffler was sitting in the middle of the turn lane on the street adjoining our neighborhood. It fell off some unknown car prior to my daughter's approach, no doubt due to the corrosion caused by the overabundance of salt on the road.

Salt is strewn all over the roads in the winter because it lowers the melting point of water and because it provides some amount of traction when the roads provide none. But salt is also highly corrosive when it couches bare steel. Cars - even the cars of today - have lots of bare steel. Rocks, gravel, salt crystals - they all chip away at the paint which protects the bare steel from the ravages of corrosion. And there are lots of parts on the underside of a car which have no protection at all due to the fact that they operate at temperatures far beyond the capacity of paint to protect them.

Like exhaust systems. Where mufflers live.

This particular muffler finally achieved corrosion nirvana and dropped off the underside of the car from whence it came, coming to rest in the path of my daughter's car as she was on her way home from school.  My daughter, whether through an inability to see the obstacle in time or a knowledge that attempting to swerve around it was more dangerous, drove over it.

She could tell right away that something bad had happened. Immediately, she said, "the car sounded funny" and "it wouldn't move anymore".

Cars always sound funny when all the transmission fluid leaks out of them. They have a tendency not to move when the fluid which turns the gears is lying on the ground beneath the car instead of inside the transmission case.

Being the smart girl that she is, she called Mom & Dad for assistance, so we came and got the girls and took them back home, and then called a tow truck to bring the van back home. I had neither the tools nor the inclination to try and tow the car myself, and it was obvious that it could not be repaired where it was.

Unfortunately, all the tow truck drivers were busy pulling people out of ditches and helping dis-entangle metal pretzels caused by people who failed physics in high school, so it took several hours before they got around to our piddly little problem.

Meanwhile, a very nice man stopped to help push the van off the main road and onto a side street where the probability of our being killed by unobservant drivers was drastically lowered.  Thank you, nice man! You forgot to tell me your name so I could give you a shout-out, but I'm shouting anyway.

Three hours later, the two truck driver arrived. He was very nice, or so I've been told. I couldn't stick around to supervise the operation; I had to be at church to teach a class, so Cheryl and James helped him find the house, and they said he was very nice. He even managed to get the van into the garage where I could work on it, instead of leaving it in the driveway where I expected.

Thanks, Mr Tow Truck driver!

It's been very busy lately so I didn't have a chance to even look at the van. It's been in the garage since last Wednesday (when the 'accident' occurred) waiting for me to find some spare time.

So today I looked at it. And found that big, gaping hole.

And I am so grateful that this happened close to home instead of miles away.

I had hoped to keep the car a while longer, until the girls got out of school, but that is not to be. The car is too old to waste time and money fixing it. We're going to (finally) get rid of it, but we probably won't be replacing it. With James going off to Germany, there are plenty of cars to go around.

I'm sad, though. I enjoyed that van through all the years we had it. It was the family car. Lots of miles, lots of family trips, lots of memories.

Now just craigslist fodder.