The old yellow Jeep and the mechanic who kept us running
The first time I approached the old yellow Jeep, I knocked gently on the hood as if in greeting. At nearly 30 years old, it was near the end of its life expectancy. At over 50, I was careening well past the middle of mine. I stopped at the rust flakes on the front fenders, thinking how I’d need to order new ones. I wondered if I could do the installation myself. If not, my mechanic, Sterns, would know someone.
I popped open the driver’s side door — the handle worked like a dream — and did for the first time what I have done hundreds of times since: put my left foot on the running board, right hand under the roll bar, and hoisted myself into the driver’s seat in one smooth motion.
The Jeep’s steering wheel was worn thin by years of hands not my own. The interior smelled like my dad’s Bronco from my childhood: sagebrush and live bait and granite dust. It felt like home. I didn’t even negotiate the price.
The thing about an old car is you can forget your lake-water swimsuit in the back and nobody cares. You can run over a curb or spill coffee on the seat or forget to cover it when it rains overnight and that’s fine. Everything else is so precious and fragile; sometimes life feels like a blown-glass ornament accidentally packed at the bottom of the Christmas box just waiting for that moment when the weight of everything shoved on top of it becomes too much and it shatters in July, unheard, in the attic. But this old Jeep is made of steel. It is a closed system with predictable parts. It is knowable and fixable.
I drove it straight to Sterns’s shop. He graduated high school with my husband and, it turns out, formerly owned a Jeep very similar to mine. He seemed nearly as excited as I was. “You could drive this to California tomorrow,” he said after a thorough inspection, “and you’d be fine.”
I didn’t but may as well have: The next three years were filled with endless trips to Charles River put-ins, the back packed full of fishing and paddleboard gear, the passenger’s seat reserved for the dogs. We took my aunt, who suffers from too many ailments, light off-roading in Vermont; she raised her hands in the air and yelled, “I’m still alive!” to the trees and the summer sun and maybe God above. And all those days commuting into work, the oddball on the Pike among white Teslas.
My Jeep needed minor repairs along the way, but nothing dramatic. I put yellow duct tape over the worst of the rust spots so it would pass inspection.
I mostly attempted the repairs myself, which landed me at Sterns’s shop when I got in over my head. He always took the time to listen; despite his vast knowledge he was never impatient, never condescending. We shared a love of working on the Jeep, but the relationship between a car owner and a good mechanic is deeper than that; you are placing your physical safety and financial health into their hands.
One time after disassembling the door to replace the interior and exterior door handles, I got a little too enthusiastic about bending a Vrod that connects the exterior handle to the latch mechanism and the driver’s side door refused to open. When I brought it in, Sterns pulled a pen light out of his shirt pocket and peered into the latch mechanism.
He emerged from the passenger side, backing out like it was a playground tunnel. He closed the door, sighed, and pulled an old gray cloth from his rear pants pocket to wipe his hands. He was shaking his head at me, smiling. “What have you done this time?”
In August, I turned the key in the ignition, nothing. No resistance, no click. I figured it was the starter solenoid. I called a tow truck, which delivered it to Stern’s shop in the middle of the night.
“No hurry,” my husband told him the next day, “we’re going on vacation for a week.”
“Me, too,” said Sterns. “I’m going to sit by a lake and stare at the water. But I’ll look at it first thing when I get back.”
But we didn’t hear from him when we got back. Days passed, a week. We called the shop. We learned that while on vacation, Sterns had felt unwell. It turned out to be cancer. He was in hospice. We were asked to tow the Jeep elsewhere because the shop was closed permanently, effective immediately. Two days later, Sterns died.
According to a clean and well-branded repair shop, the solenoid had “exploded.” Cracked in three places. And the tires were bald. No one there said anything about driving to California.
In October, the tail pipe rusted off. The whole muffler system was so shot that new parts had to be fabricated in order to safely attach them.
In November I peeled off the yellow duct tape, now faded and frayed. The rust holes had grown exponentially; a golf ball would fit easily between the flakes. But that wasn’t the reason it didn’t pass inspection: one of the front wheel ball joints had turned to dust. It needs a new suspension, they said. And brakes. The repairs will cost well over what I paid for the Jeep, well over its Blue Book value. “Please don’t drive it farther than you have to,” the mechanic who did the inspection said.
It seemed the Jeep gave up when Sterns became ill. I get why. This kind, funny, skilled person just wanted to go on vacation with his family and look at the water. Now he’s gone.
My neighbor Joe asked where the Jeep had been and I explained the situation. “I’ve got a guy,” he said, then described how this mechanic kept this ’08 Grand Caravan on the road until the passenger side floorboard disintegrated with rust.
I took the Jeep to Joe’s guy, who, to my complete surprise, said it currently needs no work. I think both repair assessments can be true: One shop’s standard is optimized performance, the other’s is continued existence. I chose the latter.
I’m going keep that old Jeep running in any way I can for as long as I can. Maybe we won’t make it to California, but we’re sure going to celebrate every mile we’re able to travel — and the man who helped make it possible.