THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 23, 1995 TAG: 9504190042
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY EARL SWIFT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 133 lines
BOB LAKE'S beloved Volkswagen campervan was parked outside his Ghent apartment when a nighttime vandal bashed in its driver's-side window earlier this month.
The senseless act left Bob at one of life's many crossroads. He could simply drive to a repair shop and have the window replaced, or the Old Dominion University student could solve his problem with Yankee ingenuity and duct tape.
Improvisation was quicker. Bob found a plexiglass rectangle left over from a friend's art project, and wedged it into the hole. Tape around the edges sealed out the wind.
``It's nice. It's neutral. It looks normal,'' he said. ``And the plexiglass is a little smaller than the window was, so there's a slit I can slip a dollar through at toll booths.
``Of course, if it's a toll that takes only change, you have to do a hook shot from the passenger seat.''
So unfolded Bob's entry into the vast family of drivers who live full, near-normal lives despite owning scarred transportation.
Hampton Roads' highways are clogged with these cars and trucks, suffering from chronic but nonfatal flaws. Most are nickel-and-dime: A busted cigarette lighter, a jammed seat mechanism, a tape deck without rewind. A bum dome light.
Some are the fruit of neglect or accident. Others, like the ubiquitous sun-cracked dashboard, the product of age.
Regardless, a good many take a long time to get fixed, if they get fixed at all. Despite all the talk of our cars being statements of status and self-image, a lot of us tend to let the little stuff slide.
Perhaps it's because we share a uniquely American, survivalist bent, a thirst to tackle new and interesting challenges. Maybe we're subconsciously striving to re-create the hardships surmounted on the hostile plains by our Conestoga-carried forebears.
Then again, maybe not. Maybe we're just lazy or broke.
Consider the case of ``Claire,'' a young Norfolk professional whose grooming and social station would lead one to assume that her car's wheels are properly aligned.
Until recently, however, they were not. Why? Because by leaving the car out of line, Claire - who pleaded for anonymity, as did most drivers interviewed for this story - avoided speeding tickets.
Most of the time her Pontiac's dash lights didn't work. Every now and then they'd suddenly pop on, at which time her speedometer would quit. At night Claire had no way of gauging her velocity - either the dash was too dark to read or the speedo useless.
Except when she reached 65 miles per hour: At precisely that speed the Pontiac's misaligned front wheels would create a shimmy that rattled her poorly installed car stereo.
Claire couldn't be bothered with repairing such annoyances, particularly given that her car's faults had developed codependencies. ``If it doesn't keep me from passing inspection, I don't worry about it,'' she explained.
Hers is not an unusual attitude. ``Some little thing goes wrong and you say, `Ah, I'll fix it next month,' and then you don't get around to it and other little things go wrong and pretty soon, you got a lot of things wrong with your car,'' said Jerry Crocker, of Jerry's Alignment and Brake Service in Norfolk.
``I've had customers come in and say, `Line my car up,' and I'll have to climb over the seat from the passenger side because the door won't open.''
Claire eventually had the wheels aligned. But now the glove compartment door has started to rattle, a phenomenon Claire first noticed after a friend, ``Dicky,'' overstuffed it with his belongings.
Dicky - not his real name - was in the Pontiac because his own vehicle was unreliable, thanks to a juiceless battery that he refused to replace.
He started the car the hard way. Each morning he'd whip out his jumper cables, hunt down a motorist and beg a jump-start. At the end of the workday he'd persuade a co-worker to lend him power. After several days his colleagues took to hiding when they spotted Dicky packing his briefcase.
Dicky might have won sympathy from ``Kirk,'' who's spent 30 years driving cars that one might charitably label ``beaters.''
Not long ago, Kirk - not his real name - owned a 1979 AMC Concord station wagon, the rear window of which had disintegrated into a thousand tiny cubes without warning or reason. Kirk brushed away the glass but didn't replace it, what with summer on the way.
``I always thought,'' he shrugged, ``that gas caps were options.''
For months Kirk drove the Concord exposed to the elements. Summer storms gave way to autumn's chilly drizzles, and in the meantime the car's carpeting was kissed by each dawn's dew. Soon mushrooms sprouted from the nylon pile. The Concord looked like a salad bar by the time Kirk sold it.
When Kirk met his future wife, she was driving a 1967 Ford minus windshield wiper blades; in their place she'd lashed two sweatsocks.
These were cars with ``personality,'' according to Mark O'Neil, president of Land Yachts, an auto restoration house in Virginia Beach.
O'Neil routinely befriends such cars. ``Price is a lot of what prevents people from doing little repairs here and there,'' he said.
Even if you have the cash to make repairs, it gets tougher as your car gets older. ``We've had customers,'' he said, ``who've gone from shop to shop, and have been told: `Your car's too old. We won't work on it.' ''
Then there was the Oldsmobile convertible recently owned by ``Merle.'' One evening Merle - not his real name - locked his keys in his car, prompting him to force his arm through the narrow gap between a window and the vinyl ragtop. The top ripped.
Merle bought some heavy-duty thread and sewed the rip shut. He performed the repair with the ragtop partly lowered, so that the fabric was slack. It wasn't until he'd finished that he found his sutures lacked any ``give,'' and that he could no longer latch the top to the car's windshield.
For several months Merle used the Olds anyway. At highway speeds he had to drive one-handed, clinging to the top lest it balloon with the wind and tear away from the car. It did wonders for his upper-body strength.
Why did Merle suffer so? Because he didn't have the scratch for a new top. He had his pride, however: He Armor-Alled the car weekly.
Typical, said James Zawacki, general service manager of Bay Chevrolet-Geo. ``People will come in and say, `My car's not running well, not running well at all, so I need that fixed. Oh, and clean it, too.' We'll call back and say, `It's going to be such and such to fix this,' and they'll say: `No, I'm not going to pay that. But go ahead and clean it.' ''
What are we to conclude from all this? Will Bob Lake get that window fixed anytime soon?
Bob - that is his real name, by the way - Bob said he will. He said he hopes he doesn't have to put up with the plexiglass any longer than he has to. Bob loves his campervan, after all. He's crossed the continent twice in it. He depends on it. We should be able to count on Bob to follow through.
He might admit it's ``in a transitional period,'' and that ``there are a few minor things wrong with it.'' But that doesn't mean he won't fix that window.
It does, indeed, have a worn exhaust with ``a Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang sound effect,'' which Bob has talked about fixing since last summer. But he's on top of that. He knows it needs work. He'll get to it.
And the VW's paint job, it might be a bit impressionistic.
Yeah, he'll eventually have to do something about that paint. . . . ILLUSTRATION: JANET SHAUGHNESSY/Staff illustration
by CNB