Thawing the Frozen Turtle

My 1997 Ford Taurus was one of the victims of the recent very cold snap. We probably weren’t as good at checking the anti-freeze as we could have been. In our defense, it wasn’t freaking freezing when Grier left it at the airport for a five-day business trip.

I can’t say we haven’t been planning for the Turtle’s final roll. It is a 13-year old car with 203K miles. We’ve been auto-depositing part of my check into a car savings account for a while. Turns out, the Turtle might get thawed out and brought back to life. My brother is going to help us replace the motor and radiator, plus fix the AC for a much lower price than we could replace it. Props to handy brothers!

So it looks like the Turtle is going to get a second life. Yes, we’ve planned, but I had no idea how much it would affect me to crush the Turtle and move on to a new car. I guess there’s something to those astrological signs. Capricorns are very loyal. Instead of being excited about picking out a new-to-me car, I was very sad. I didn’t want to move on. I’m going to say it’s because it’s a salvaged car. Back when the Turtle was new, it was “totaled” at the car lot. My other brother put the totaled car I bought together with another totaled car that was destroyed at the other end. Some creative cutting, piecing back together, a little metallic red paint, and voila!

While I’m coming up with excuses to keep a 13-year old car with absolutely next-to-no-value, I’m going with Earth-friendliness. It seems wrong to crush a car that, except for the motor, is fine. On another green front, we have money saved for this, but it’s great to not have to use all of it.

Fingers crossed for Turtle’s Renaissance.