My Car, My Body

My Car, My Body

Peter A. Hempel (10/03/25)

My senior year in high school, my parents gave me their old car. This was in 1961, and the car was a 1948 Plymouth, an extremely popular model in its heyday.

My parents were not car people. My father had had a near-fatal bike accident in his early 20s and took it as a sign that he should not be in charge of vehicles of any sort. My mother, who grew up in Philadelphia and New York, had never had any need for a car. But when my father was teaching at Yale, we moved to a house in North Haven, a suburb of New Haven, and a car became a necessity.

My mother learned to drive at the age of 35, and was always a nervous driver, hands at 10 and 2 on the wheel at all times. Neither of my parents were remotely “car” people, so the car they passed on to me was far from well-maintained. Stopping the car required pressing the brakes absolutely to the floorboard and then some.

In any case, I was driving down Nassau Street in Princeton one sunny afternoon when I discovered that the stick shift (remember those?) was flopping around in my hand, with no impact on the gears. I managed to pull over to the side of the road and somehow (this was obviously pre-cell phone) managed to call AAA. The guy came out in his truck, opened the hood of the car, and explained that my cotter pin had fallen out. This was the pin that connects the stick shift to the actual gears.

He put in a new cotter pin and went on his way.

A few days later, I was driving down Nassau Street in nearly the same location, when I realized that my stick shift was flopping around again. Fortunately, this time I knew that even if the car was not in the gear I wanted it to be in, at least it was in gear.

I managed to pull my car over to a safe location and once again called AAA. Same guy, same truck, same problem. He explained that the last time, he had not had the right size cotter pin, and that the one he had put in was too small. Fortunately, this time he had the correct size pin, installed it, and I was, hopefully, good to go.

Since then, I have learned a great deal more about cars, one breakdown and one expensive repair after another.

My medical education has followed almost exactly the same path. I keep learning about what can go wrong when it does go wrong, one damn thing after another. I keep earning credits towards a wholly unasked-for medical degree. I have learned about so many things that can screw up, so many procedures and treatments, so many pills and injections. I accept my destiny as a human pincushion for shots, blood draws, and anything else they come up with. I am not an eager student, and the homework sucks.

All this is unwelcome at best in your younger years, but for the most part, it helps keep you going.

As you get older, however, the calculus changes.

I explained about how my automotive education began with a lost cotter pin.

Another touchstone in that education came when I bought a new Honda Accord in 1994. It was a terrific car. No electric windows or anything else fancy, although since I bought it in Texas, it obviously had AC (an automotive first for me). It also got somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 miles to the gallon, which was pretty damn good outside of the hybrid category, which wasn’t a thing back then.

I drove it hard for many years, ending up with a bit over 300,000 miles on it. (the odometer had stopped working a while before, so it was hard to tell for sure, but definitely over 300,000.)

Generally the car held up pretty well, but in later years, repairs became more frequent and more expensive. Still, my calculus was “Sure, $2,000 is a lot, but it’s cheaper than buying a new car.” This was true in each individual case, but $2,000 here and $3,000 there adds up.

Well before my final visit to the repair shop, when the guy basically said, “It’s not worth doing this anymore,” I should have seen the writing on the wall. I was spending money faster on repairs than I would’ve been investing in a new car.

That’s where I’m at with my body at this point. One problem, one not quite complete repair/cure, after another. It totally doesn’t make sense anymore.

Time to just go ahead and trade it in. I know I won’t get anything for the old one, but how long can I just keep throwing good money after bad?