Jesus Sold Me A Car
And he wasn’t completely honest!
In my wildly successful post (a little wishful thinking perhaps?) about my Rain Man experiences in the USA, I referenced buying my SUV from a man who looked like Jesus.
I thought it would be a good idea to expand on that story.
So there I sat in Round Rock, Texas, after moving halfway across the world from Australia to the US, and was housesitting for a new friend. I had passed the exam to teach Special Education in the state and had also been accepted into an alternative certification program as I worked towards my teaching licence. Sending out my resume to schools and looking for an apartment in San Antonio was an ongoing challenge, but I was moving forward toward a successful relocation.
Despite my progress, getting a vehicle was priority number one as nothing could ultimately be accomplished without transportation.
After trial and error exploring Craigslist as well as dodging a few scams, I found an army green 2002 Ford Explorer SUV and contacted the seller. He sounded like a lovely chap over the phone and we organized a time for me to come down to Bastrop to check it out.
I set off in my friend’s Subaru to meet the seller who, much to my amusement, looked like Jesus — well, the white, blue-eyed version that Christians are so fond of. He was a gentle boy and we hit it off immediately. Jesus had been driving the vehicle for a few years and it showed; there was stuffing missing from the seats which had been hidden by camouflage-print seat covers, there were stains and a blanket of dog hair in the rear of the vehicle, and the army-green paint on the body had faded considerably, but I fell in love with her almost immediately.
Having just sold my little Toyota Yaris in Australia for a grand more than the price of the eight-seater SUV, I made an offer and agreed to purchase “Melissa the Monster.” I name her after the musician Melissa Etheridge, continuing a pattern of naming my cars after famous lesbians.
Melissa did have one major flaw though, she had a check engine light that stayed on. Jesus assured me that I only needed to get the catalytic converter replaced (making it sound like there was only one), and being slightly gullible and completely oblivious to the needs of any vehicle, I believed him.
It turned out that there were three catalytic converters that needed to be replaced and would cost considerably more than Jesus had indicated when I bought her.
You live and learn!
Unfortunately, Melissa had a range of health concerns that I am not adept at checking. In addition to the catalytic converters, she also had tyre, oil, O-ring, axis, and coil issues which I only realised after I had passed over the cashier’s check and driven her away. Despite Melissa’s ill health, I loved her dearly and pumped out country music on the radio (her CD player didn’t work) as I drove her around, slowly becoming more comfortable driving on the right side of the road.
I found a lovely mechanic in the northern suburbs of San Antonio who patiently began to fix Melissa’s boo-boos. His wife, however, enjoyed separating me from my money and whilst I understand that time is costly, the repairs and the new issues the mechanic found with each visit became too much for me and I had to give up on attending to Melissa’s poor health.
Her oil issues had largely been taken care of, her O-rings had been replaced, but with a myriad of other concerns that damn check engine light refused to be silenced.
I got a few quotes for replacing the catalytic converters and decided that I would need to wait until I had money coming in before I could address that particular urgency.
Whilst I had fond memories of Jesus and his kind smiling eyes, I cursed his morphing of the truth. At the end of the day, it had been my responsibility to make sure that everything was copasetic. I had only ever bought new cars, bank loans funding their purchase, and so buying a used car was as out of my league as actually fixing the damn thing.
Melissa had turned into a bit of a money pit.
A month later I had to drive down to Laredo to renew my visitor’s visa. That trip turned out to be the final straw for one of Melissa’s catalytic converters and we could be heard coming from a mile away, the rattling of the broken “honeycomb” within it calling out our imminent arrival.
I couldn’t put off replacing it any longer and it came at a hefty price!
Despite Jesus’ con job, Melissa proved to be a vehicle I loved dearly. Her cab was large enough to transport everything I bought for the apartment, including a queen memory foam mattress and a cheap futon, so I never had to rent a trailer.
During my time with her, she transported an old cowboy to the veteran’s hospital, was waiting for me after I was almost detained at the Mexican border, carried hay to the horses at the ranch that I found myself on months later, and looked sexy as hell with her Texas plates.
It was with a heavy heart that I had to sell her before leaving the US eighteen months after I bought her.
I still have her plates as a sweet memento and I sometimes allow my mind to travel back to cruising down two-lane roads jamming to the country music belting out of her ancient stereo.
Country roads take me home.
