ZoominZRF
New Member
- Joined
- February 12, 2009
- Messages
- 1
- Reaction score
- 0
- City, State
- Roanoke, VA
- Year, Model & Trim Level
- '95 XLT
So if anyone wants to hear my story about how I came by my Explorer please read on, it is full of tragedy and triumph, pain and love, old ladies and close friends...otherwise you'll prolly get bored so go ahead and hit backspace...
Yeah I put it right in the title, this car has about 2,000 miles short of 400,000 but I kinda like my story of how good people can be so imma tell you about that first.
There was always a lady back in my hometown that we all knew and respected, Dot (short for Dorothy of course), but she was a teacher so we never really got that friendly with her, we could just recognize her and say a nice "hello m'am" when we'd walk by. Well sometime around my 3rd year of college her mother started ailing and at the time my mother was staying with elderly folks in their homes so they could pass away in the comfort of their home vs. a nursing home. One long story short, my mother ended up staying with "Mrs. Barger" as we all came to know her. Well it was inevitable that Mrs. Barger would pass away so none of us were surprised when that fateful day came. Fast forward a few years and my mom still got together with Dot for lunch and certain occasions, well suddenly out of the blue Dot's son, who was only a few years older than my mother - he was around 50 at the time - passed away! Dot’s brother had moved closer to his extended family in NC earlier that year and when Johnny passed away she, and the entire community, was stunned. Johnny was on the Volunteer Rescue Squad for more-or-less his entire life seeing as how Dot and her husband Stull founded the first in my hometown of Buchanan, VA.
Dot mourned for her son as any mother would I could imagine, but it was really sad to see such an exuberate lady alone without family very close. After spending more time around Dot through my mother after I graduated college (I went and helped her set up her Christmas tree) she began to call me her "adopted" grandson. I then started to get into the habit of waking up on Saturday mornings relatively early and going down to her house and I'd help her organize her garage or we'd vacuum, she had a room that the ceilings had to be replaced so we washed down everything with Murphy’s soap and cleaned up. We would typically go for drives around lunch ending at out favorite restraunt in town, she'd show me her husband's and son's graves, the house she was born in, the house her husband was born in... It really was a beautiful thing to see so much history in a town I never wanted to associate with in my adult life.
I mentioned earlier I graduated from college--Virginia Tech in May '08 to be exact. I got my Bachelors Degree in Architecture and was one of the lucky people in my class to have a job lined up even before I graduated. When I started working I got my paychecks and I had a blast spending the money, bought a new car - an '07 Subaru Legacy, new furniture, moved into an upper-scale side of Roanoke. All in all I had a super comfortable life. I generally felt pretty removed from the financial crisis, I was making good money, so were my friends. But a few weeks ago I was informed rather quickly that I was being laid off--me, an architect, being laid off?! Well it didn't take me long to decide on a few things, first off that my bills had to be cut quickly. First thing on my list to go was my new car. Now I loved my Lesbaru and truth be told it could run circles around a lot of cars out there, but I had grown up driving BMWs and a Saab, all manual transmission cars, and I missed that driver input hat made you feel like a piece of the machine (not to mention that graceful rush from a rear-wheel drive leather-clad Bimmer...
When I decided my car had to go I had to come up with an idea quick, and then I remembered, Johnny had an old explorer just sitting at Dot's house and I've heard her mention she needed to do something with it instead of let it sit. I went and talked with her, and she was ready to stop grieving over it and she said she was ready to let me take it; I just had to drive her around town one last time in it. We plopped in a new battery, Windex-ed the front and back windows and we were off. She got her closure and I got a car. The best part of the entire story is that dot refused to either let me work the car off or pay her for it, all she would let me pay was the $88 it would take to transfer the title to my name and tag it.
This is the dirt monster on its first trip to my house in Roanoke, I have since cleaned it up - a good waxing and the paint on the hood that people thought was the fading turned out to be just a sizable layer of dirt and it shone through with that metallic flake that would make a king jealous.
And while I was cleaning the car out I did find some receipts that show the transmission was rebuilt at about 360,x.. miles so at first I was disappointed, but now I'm thinking maybe it's a good thing because I need this thing to last me as long as possible, and I'm finding I really love it more and more each time I drive it... Here's the odometer to prove it to you guys:
So a quick question, as you can see the gear selector hits in between the letters/numbers. I know this is common for older cars but what causes it and is it something that is easily fixed? Sometimes the most insignificant things bother me...
Yeah I put it right in the title, this car has about 2,000 miles short of 400,000 but I kinda like my story of how good people can be so imma tell you about that first.
There was always a lady back in my hometown that we all knew and respected, Dot (short for Dorothy of course), but she was a teacher so we never really got that friendly with her, we could just recognize her and say a nice "hello m'am" when we'd walk by. Well sometime around my 3rd year of college her mother started ailing and at the time my mother was staying with elderly folks in their homes so they could pass away in the comfort of their home vs. a nursing home. One long story short, my mother ended up staying with "Mrs. Barger" as we all came to know her. Well it was inevitable that Mrs. Barger would pass away so none of us were surprised when that fateful day came. Fast forward a few years and my mom still got together with Dot for lunch and certain occasions, well suddenly out of the blue Dot's son, who was only a few years older than my mother - he was around 50 at the time - passed away! Dot’s brother had moved closer to his extended family in NC earlier that year and when Johnny passed away she, and the entire community, was stunned. Johnny was on the Volunteer Rescue Squad for more-or-less his entire life seeing as how Dot and her husband Stull founded the first in my hometown of Buchanan, VA.
Dot mourned for her son as any mother would I could imagine, but it was really sad to see such an exuberate lady alone without family very close. After spending more time around Dot through my mother after I graduated college (I went and helped her set up her Christmas tree) she began to call me her "adopted" grandson. I then started to get into the habit of waking up on Saturday mornings relatively early and going down to her house and I'd help her organize her garage or we'd vacuum, she had a room that the ceilings had to be replaced so we washed down everything with Murphy’s soap and cleaned up. We would typically go for drives around lunch ending at out favorite restraunt in town, she'd show me her husband's and son's graves, the house she was born in, the house her husband was born in... It really was a beautiful thing to see so much history in a town I never wanted to associate with in my adult life.
I mentioned earlier I graduated from college--Virginia Tech in May '08 to be exact. I got my Bachelors Degree in Architecture and was one of the lucky people in my class to have a job lined up even before I graduated. When I started working I got my paychecks and I had a blast spending the money, bought a new car - an '07 Subaru Legacy, new furniture, moved into an upper-scale side of Roanoke. All in all I had a super comfortable life. I generally felt pretty removed from the financial crisis, I was making good money, so were my friends. But a few weeks ago I was informed rather quickly that I was being laid off--me, an architect, being laid off?! Well it didn't take me long to decide on a few things, first off that my bills had to be cut quickly. First thing on my list to go was my new car. Now I loved my Lesbaru and truth be told it could run circles around a lot of cars out there, but I had grown up driving BMWs and a Saab, all manual transmission cars, and I missed that driver input hat made you feel like a piece of the machine (not to mention that graceful rush from a rear-wheel drive leather-clad Bimmer...
When I decided my car had to go I had to come up with an idea quick, and then I remembered, Johnny had an old explorer just sitting at Dot's house and I've heard her mention she needed to do something with it instead of let it sit. I went and talked with her, and she was ready to stop grieving over it and she said she was ready to let me take it; I just had to drive her around town one last time in it. We plopped in a new battery, Windex-ed the front and back windows and we were off. She got her closure and I got a car. The best part of the entire story is that dot refused to either let me work the car off or pay her for it, all she would let me pay was the $88 it would take to transfer the title to my name and tag it.
This is the dirt monster on its first trip to my house in Roanoke, I have since cleaned it up - a good waxing and the paint on the hood that people thought was the fading turned out to be just a sizable layer of dirt and it shone through with that metallic flake that would make a king jealous.
And while I was cleaning the car out I did find some receipts that show the transmission was rebuilt at about 360,x.. miles so at first I was disappointed, but now I'm thinking maybe it's a good thing because I need this thing to last me as long as possible, and I'm finding I really love it more and more each time I drive it... Here's the odometer to prove it to you guys:
So a quick question, as you can see the gear selector hits in between the letters/numbers. I know this is common for older cars but what causes it and is it something that is easily fixed? Sometimes the most insignificant things bother me...
