Allow me to introduce you to Mirge. Mirge is my car. She used to be called Mirage, but the 'r' fell off, so we just call her Mirge.
She is an absolutely no frills vehicle. No automatic windows or door locks, no cruise control, a simple AM/FM radio. She does have heat and she does have AC, both of which work quite nicely. Mirge has a ton of miles on her, over 180K, but she still purrs up and down the road and gets nearly 30 mpg.
The first time my grandkids rode in Mirge, they had no idea how to roll down the windows.
When we first purchased Mirge, she was a business car, we needed a way to get a driver from point A to point B without a lot of fuel expense. At that time she was known as Ol' Smokey. Whoever owned her before must have smoked three packs of cigarettes a day and never cracked a window. Maybe they were young and didn't know what the window cranks were for.
Mirge still stinks, but after the initial use of the heater, you kind of get used to the smell.
The only problem Mirge has is one front tire. It loses air. Not all the time though. It may stay up and intact for months on end and the one day you don't bother to check it, it will be going thumpity thumpity about two blocks up the street. This tire has been checked, balanced, rotated and what ever else needs to be done to a tire. It does not have a hole in it and the valve stem is not the culprit. It is just Mirge's way of being mysteriously finicky.
The other day I needed to travel about an hour away from home. Since a recent arctic vortex had made the temperatures much colder than the norm, I decided that the possibility of having to put the never used spare tire in Mirge's trunk on, if the tire decided that was the day it would go flat, did not sound appealing. Especially if it happened on the interstate with cars whipping by me at 70 plus miles per hour. Having this cautionary vision, I asked my oldest daughter if I could borrow her vehicle.
Her vehicle is much newer than Mirge and has all the amenities that most new models offer. The first thing I learned was that her SUV, crossover, or whatever it's called, sits much higher off the ground than Mirge. I failed to raise my leg high enough to clear the floor board and went tumbling into the front seat. As my arm load of goodies flew into the passenger seat, I was extremely thankful I was still in their driveway, hopefully no one saw my graceful fail.
I sat in the driveway for some time, trying to figure out how to move the seat forward. At least adjusting the rearview mirror was an easy task.
It only took me 7 miles to figure out how to set the cruise control and another two miles to change the radio station. I discovered there was no play in the steering wheel so I kept my hands at the strategic 10 and 2 spot on the wheel.
When I arrived at my destination, I made sure to take the keys out of the ignition. I always leave them in a cubby hole in Mirge and never lock the door, if someone took her, they would bring her back. Clutching the keys with a death grip, for fear the doors might lock before I even got out of the seat, I exited the vehicle, shut the door and pressed the little button on the key fob that had a picture of a locked padlock on it. The doors locks clicked. I pressed it again and the horn honked. Oh, I do love that feature! I thought about doing that a couple of more times, but the parking lot was full and I thought someone might think I'd lost my marbles.
It was an enjoyable ride and someday, in the near future, I'm going to retire Mirge for a newer model. I will keep her though, because it is always fun to see the look of panic come across my oldest grandson's face when I tell him Mirge could be his first car.
But for now, Mirge and I will continue to putsy up and down the street.
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