Stalled
A story of a woman, a marriage, and the automobile that helped to liberate her.
In 1976 I needed a car…. I had been accepted at a university, starting in August, just a few weeks away. First, I couldn’t believe I was going to college. An “atypical” undergraduate, twenty-six, married for 6 years, and afraid of failing. I had told myself “If you don’t pass, you will at least have tried.” It helped just enough to get me to apply. I had been boiled, soaked, and steeped in a tea of family chaos and financial instability for the first 18 years of my life. But in 1976 I was focused on transportation.
Larry, my first husband, was a bit of a car snob. He preferred sports cars and owned one when we met, a bright cherry red Triumph TR-3. I was not only attracted to the car but to Larry, who was intelligent, artistic, and determined to quit working alongside his father as a mechanic. His parents had paid for college. He attended but decided he only liked his art classes so quit attending everything else. He flunked out disappointing his parents and himself. Several years later he re-enrolled and picked a new major. To prove to himself he was intelligent enough to pass any class, he chose chemical engineering. I admired his determination to change the course of his life. Larry had other qualities. In retrospect, I should have noticed these while we were dating. We married; I was 20 he was 26.
He also owned a non-working car, a rare Mg-TD built in 1953; a maroon color, but also marooned as it sat in his garage, the motor on a piece of grease-covered cardboard. Various other parts sat in distant spots. Larry was capable of restoring the car; however, it sat for over a year, so long an opossum delivered her family inside the car. When we married and moved to Kentucky the car and its various parts were the first to go into a moving van with the rest of what we owned. I wondered how long it would take before this rare car would be drivable. Much later, the car was restored but the procrastination continued.
When we first married, I took a bus to work, and Larry used his car to finish his degree. We made a deal that if I helped him through school, he would help me. We lived on my income and his part-time job. By 1976, however, we lived in a new state, he was working as a chemical engineer, and it was my turn to go to college. BUT…I needed my own car.
“I just need a small used car that can take me back and forth to classes,” I said. Larry nodded. I had been saying this for several weeks and was feeling desperate. Working on the assumption this car was going to happen I asked, “Any ideas of where to look?” I needed the car but felt helpless in looking.
Larry said he would work on it and, given his car preferences, I was hoping for a sports car. Putting it out of my mind for a week, I went back to worrying about how I would find my classes on a campus that seemed immense. Two days later a very small car appeared in our driveway. It was smaller than a Volkswagen Beetle. Really small. The car was a Honda 600, which looked like a little orange box. If you walked down the aisle of any grocery store you would be able to find the color in the baby food aisle. Pureed sweet potatoes or pureed pumpkin was a close color match. I can’t remember how the car smelled but I am certain it was not a “new car smell.”
Larry said, “Here’s your car, you want to take it for a drive?”
I opened the door, saw a stick shift, and yelled, “Oh shit! Larry you know I’ve never driven a stick shift!” Oh, it’s easy”, he said. A typical response from Larry. Despite hearing my mother’s voice in my head saying it’s not okay to get angry, I was angry. As a child, my mother was often told not to get angry at her siblings. She generalized this to NEVER GET ANGRY.
It would take divorce, remarriage, two degrees, and counseling for me to understand the role I played. Why had I put him in charge of buying my car? Instead, I ignored my anger thinking, “Just what I needed before starting classes, another worry…”
“Well, aren’t you going to get in and drive it?”
I had no choice. With minimal instruction, my foot found the clutch, pushed it in, and tried to start the car. With a serious grinding noise, I moved out of first gear and into second gear, grinding to find third and fourth gear. I stalled at a stop sign, stalled again on a hill, stalled the car repeatedly… I wanted to cry and yell, “No it’s NOT easy, Larry!”
The quickest way to classes meant taking a route with a steep hill. On the first day of class, I stopped for a red light at the very top. When the light turned green, I couldn’t get the car to go forward. I stalled multiple times and other cars had to pass me. Embarrassed, I rolled down to the bottom of the hill, waited for a green light, and gunned the car fast enough so as not to stop at another red light. This sequence was played out many times before I finally gained enough skill to slip the clutch and keep the car going forward. I learned if I revved the engine, it sounded like a lawnmower.
While attending classes (yes, I made it to my senior year) a freak storm deposited 20 inches of snow. My car was buried in a snowdrift. After multiple attempts to get out of the drift, four guys came from a fraternity building, picked up my car, and sat it on the road. I cleaned off the snow and thanked the guys. For once I was grateful for a small car.
The Honda 600 was cheap to own and, after the initial learning curve, fun to drive. Finally, the car and I became friends. My boxy, small car, the color of pureed baby food gave me freedom and a realization I no longer stalled. I shifted with ease and moved forward.
But, aside from driving, in many ways, Sherri was still stalled, married to a man who hated his job and who seemed unwilling to change jobs. He was perhaps more stalled than I was.” “Find a new job I said…we don’t own a house, we have no children, I can find another job.” I kept thinking what was he waiting for? I had just graduated; it seemed a perfect time to relocate. I was also applying to graduate schools.
Finally, Larry applied to a well-known oil company. They offered him a job. He took so long to decide they withdrew the offer. He applied to another company. He received an even better offer and the same indecision resulted in a withdrawal of the offer. Bewildered, angry and frustrated, I offered another option. “Larry, I’ve been accepted into a master’s program in Industrial Psychology,” I had finished my psychology degree and wanted to continue my education. I proposed moving back to our home state. He could try to find a job he liked while I continued my education.
Larry seemed to like the idea and said, “Okay, I’ll look for a different type of job.” He didn’t look. I missed the opportunity. After that, arguments popped up continuously until all our conversational matches sparked, ignited, and burned out. A heavy smoke dulled the silence between us and drifted to the top of the room, straining against the ceiling.
With both our lives stalled I asked myself many times why I took so long to leave Larry. Multiple fears played a role. The reality of a loss of income played a major role. The thought of poverty loomed. The loss of my in-laws was a factor, as they provided a sense of stability and loved me. Divorcing Larry would be easier than losing them.
Whatever “normal” was, even if it wasn’t perfect, my marriage was better than my childhood. The thought of losing it made my whole body ache. Courage was needed and I found it, not through anger, or more fighting but through therapy. Like learning to drive a stick shift, my therapy included substantial grinding when moving from my past “gears” to the present, rolling backwards at times. I gradually became more confident. One day I would be able to drive forward, alone.
