Good Sport Cherokee

That's my car.

It's a 1995 Jeep Cherokee Sport with 320,000 miles on it.

Obviously, I believe in driving a car into the ground.

I may have just done that. It died on July 11th on a long trip back from Phillipsburg Kansas. It died in Topeka under a bridge under the Interstate of clutch failure.

It sounds like I'm writing a eulogy on the car, but it's not death, more like the final straw in deciding on retirement. For the first time, I'm considering getting a new car.

I'm getting it fixed, but it's really expensive. It started being some little clutch thing, and then grew to be a replacement input shaft, then encompassed a cracked transmission housing.

I had already authorized repairs, so each new thing added to the bill and was necessary in light of what had already been done.

I told the guy I was travelling with that it's sort of a family tradition to drive cars into the grave. Our old 1973 Buick Estate Wagon was the family car for years and finally died on the driveway of our house. This social embarrassement took us on most of our family vacations growing up. It had a 4 barrel 454 and survived though our high school days to be one of the first cars we drove. It was a mixed curse and blessing, as Dad was not reluctant to let us use it and we were not eager to be seen in it. But I remember my brother driving it 120 mph down the road, a very exciting time when I was 15. It was swamped and died one time in a flooded Buffalo River in Arkansas, but we pushed it out and started it up and it spat a geyser of water 30' out of the tailpipe and kept on going.

The next family car was a 1983 Dodge Prospecter Van. We thought it was really cool. Dad got it when my older brother and I were in college, so my younger brother is really the one that spent the most time in it. After Dad died, I drove it occasionally. By then it was old and had some quirks. I think it had about 140,000 miles on it around that time. I took it to Colorado once, slept in it even. It wouldn't start one time in Rocky Mountain National Park, so I opened the engine compartment (it's between the front seats), popped off the air cleaner cover and stuck a screwdriver in the intake and fired it right up. It sat just off the gravel drive under some pine trees for about a year with very little use and it wouldn't start. Rather than towing it off and letting it die, I told a friend that was on hard times that if he could get it started, he could have it. After fiddling with it for a week, he replaced the cables going to the battery for 93 cents and had a new car. They used to take it to ski vacations in Colorado and to Chiefs games as a tailgating party on wheels. This was an echo to my Dad bringing it up to K-State football games and having the most extravagent tailgate spreads you ever saw including Tippins pies. I used to have a picture of it in the parking lot of my college apartment with huge inner tubes tied to the top of it when Dad was going to Colorado for a summer vacation. I think my friend got over 250,000 miles out of it and sold it to someone who kept it going after that.

My first Jeep (the second car I owned) was purchased new after I graduated from College. I entered the Army and took my Jeep to Panama for 3 years. It had been from Colorado to South Carolina, as well as overseas. I sold it to my mechanic when it had about 175,000 miles on it. He drove it for another 8 years after that and just recently sold it to a guy that apparently gettoed it up, but still drives it around. That Jeep was stuck in a mud puddle up over the bottom of the doors when it was 3 weeks old. It lost several clutches, water pumps, and other major parts, but I always fixed it and kept it going. I used to say that it never left me stranded, which was stretching it, but one time it died in the Grandview Triangle during rush hour. It blew a radiator hose and ran up into the red before I pulled it over and shut it down. I had a knife with a screwdriver and other tools on it. I walked down the highway and found a 2 liter bottle and a 5 gallon bucket on the side of the road. I hopped a guy's back fence and asked to get some water out of the hose in his back yard. Walking these things back to the car, I went to work. I sliced the end off the hose and reattached it. Then I cut the bottom off the 2 liter bottle and made a funnel. Then I poured the water back into the radiator and filled it back up. It fired right up and took me home without any problems.

But this Jeep I love the most. It's only the third car I've ever had. I want to take it to Yellowstone this summer with me. It's hard to explain. It's like a brother to me. It's been there for so many times in my life, it's like a touchstone that I can't give up. I've seen the world though my Jeep and I can't just give up on it. After Yellowstone, I'll get a new car, and put this one into service as the haul around car. Maybe I can keep it for another 4 or 5 years. But no more long trips. I may never make 400,000 with it. It'll be like that old racehorse that now just hangs around munching grass and taking it easy.