
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 1, 1995                   TAG: 9502010033
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BEN BEAGLE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CAR CHECKUP CAN LEAVE YOU IN A FIX

If you feel yourself getting soft and starting to think that everything's going to be all right, you need to take your car in for its regular pit stop. This will clear your head and make you realize this is no bed of roses we live in.

The 3,000-mile checkup will get you back to reality. That is when they do all these things that are supposed to be done - only you can never really be sure what they are from reading the manual.

(I'm sure we're frequent-stop, local traffic people. We haven't been past the western city limits of Salem for six months.)

The worst thing about these checkups is their resemblance to same-day surgery for humans.

You check the old crate in, and then worry for hours about how things are going or if maybe something terminal is happening.

You can say that's silly if you want to, but we're talking here about a car that had a major transmission transplant when it was very young. So far, there are no signs of rejection, but you never know when the drive train may go WOMP! again.

I don't mean this as a general condemnation of the auto repair business, but it has yet to invent a waiting room I like.

You meet people in there just like you - trying to hide their fear and desperation by looking at CNN or obscure magazines that were published in October of 1983.

They want to get on with their lives in the outside world, but they turn pale when the public address system says: "Mr. Lodestone, your Road Eater XXV is ready."

I especially dislike the waiting rooms that are in the same building where new cars are displayed.

All these cars are new and shiny and have never known what a $3,000-mile checkup is like. They are so new and pure that the moment you open one of the doors, you feel inadequate.

The new-car smell can play with your head and you are very likely to do something silly.

I know what I'm talking about. I was cruising the display floor during one 3,000-mile checkup and was about to trade for a Superheterodyne Warrior with four air bags. Including the CD player and non-lock brakes, it cost three times what I paid for our first house in 1956.

Only the public address system, announcing that the car I was now ashamed of was ready, saved me.

No, of course the check-up never costs as much as same-day surgery.

But I think you could have had an appendectomy for that kind of money back in 1945.

by CNB