I should have known this fateful day would come: the day my car would suddenly start to fall apart.

Living deep in the country, it is vital to have a car or two. And for the past six years, I have got by with one hard-working car. It has been a staunch companion, plowing through mud and snow, even starting when the temperature was minus 32. This car ran up 267,000 kilometres, and the only servicing required in all that time were regular oil changes and one brake job.

I thought this car would go on forever. I was wrong. All my cars have been plagued by illness, but I thought this one was different. Woe and alas.

First, you should know that I am an expert on car problems. It started with an ancient car called a Morris Oxford that would fall out of gear at a minor bump in the road. The repair called for crawling underneath.

After that baptism, my problems multiplied. Two cars at different times had gas pedals that jammed at full throttle. Not good. (One of these open throttles I solved by tying a string around the gas pedal so I could pull it free. Not good.)

With one of my cars – which I got brand new – the back seat mysteriously filled up with water during rainstorms. How it got in we never knew.

With another, almost new car, the electrical system would shut down if you turned on the lights and the wipers at the same time. In two other cars of mine, the floor on the driver’s side rusted out and my seat fell partway through on the Laurentian Autoroute.

But that is all history. My current car, a mid-sized SUV, and I went our merry way for six years until my latest oil change. I went to my dealer; and I should have known better but I said to the man at the counter: “My brakes seem to grab a bit when I back up. And the car makes a grumbling sound.”

He punched that into his computer, printed out a form, which I signed and then I sat down. I felt I might be looking at a couple of hundred dollars in addition to my $45 oil change. Oh dear.

Luckily, I was sitting down when the service guy came to see me an hour later. Remember that I am mechanically incompetent as I sum up his report: some kind of seals were loose and leaking; there was a wonky sensor in the right front tire; possibly there were problems with the vertical assist stabilizers; the powertrain seemed to be warped; and the heat shield was loose. (That last explaining why my eggs cooked when I put my groceries on the floor in the back seat.)

My oil change was now into the thousands of dollars, and I was in for a five hour wait. I did the only thing one could do when you are 40 miles from home: I said OK and took the dealer shuttle to the mall, where I ate comfort food – one chocolate milkshake and a medium fries. Heavy on the salt.

When I got back to the dealer, the car and the bill were waiting for me. It cost me 11 times more than the entire first car I ever bought. But that is not all, for there were fateful words.

“There’s more that we should do, Paul,” the service guy told me. (It’s always bad news when they call you by your first name. Ask anyone who has been to a prostate clinic.)

So, together we ran through a list of some repairs and tuning that would restore my faithful car to health and a week later I brought it back for a lengthy session. And this time, I didn’t go to the mall. I went to the main library, where I started making these notes.

By the time I picked my car up, it had now cost more than the price of my first brand new Volvo. But at least, it was now running smoothly.

However, when I backed out of the service place, I thought maybe the brakes grabbed a bit and surely I could hear a faint grumble.

And then I thought, to hell with it.

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