I bought the car from one of my friends, Bob, for 900 dollars. Bob is a half Japanese student who was taking classes at OIT time by time for more than several years. He took good care of international students, particularly the naïve ones soon after their arrivals.
Toward the end of the first term, I was thinking of buying myself a car. It was mainly because the school is located on the hill by the mountain foot distant from the downtown shopping area. I was terribly busy studying in those days. I could not look for someone who could give me a ride to shopping malls; I could ask my friends to take me with them whenever they decided to go, which always happened only when I was absorbed in programming or working on psychology assignments; When I could manage to go shopping with them, they usually wanted to hang around far much longer than I intended to. Yes, I was incomparably busy challenging 7 courses in the first term with limited communicatory ability. I needed to manage my time strictly. I needed a car to let me live on my own schedule.
Bob said he had an extra car that he could sell to me. I wanted a cheap car that had been owned by or that had been introduced by someone who could give me a helping hand when the car gets broken. I had never owned a car before coming to the United States. I had only driven around well-maintained company cars during the work. I did not have any experience of fixing a car back in Japan. This meant that I would be in deep trouble when the car broke down.
Bob guaranteed that two conditions be met. He said that he would fix the car with his hospitality for international students. And he wanted to sell the car at 900 dollars. That sounded to me a very good deal He explained that the car was a special one and that the gas mileage was not good. He added that the radiator had been broken which he promised me that he would take care of prior to the sale. I made up my mind immediately.
A few common friends of Bob’s and mine doubted if I was really sure of my decision. They warned me that the car must be too big for me. I thought that all the American cars are designed for average American citizens normally bigger than I am. It was not true that the car was big. I found it when I visited Bob’s place to see how well his fixing the car was going. The car was not big, it was huge. Singaporian student, Ben, corrected me calling it a car, saying, “Sho, that’s not a car. That’s a tank.”
The car was Plymouth Fury made in 1974. It used to be a police car. It had a 440 cubic inch engine, a knot of which located in the center could not be reached out by me from any side around the hood. I asked about its gas mileage. Bob answered that it was 14. I recalled that the gas mileage of the Japanese cars was often expressed between the numbers, 20 and 25. I felt easy and said, “ Oh, that’s good.” “No, that’s not good at all” everyone around me denied spontaneously. One pointed out that units must be converted.
Units. In Japan, the gas mileage is calculated with kilometers per litter. I used a calculator, which displayed only 2.5 kilometers per litter. I said to myself that I would drive around only three places: school, downtown and movie theater. Bad gas mileage should not be hurting very much. “I am in the United States. I should experience something I can’t in Japan. That’s to own a huge car.” The car became a luxurious amusement to me on that very day.
It was luxurious stuff to me as that kind of huge car was hard to own in Japan and as it broke down several times to cost me very much. The car broke down in weird ways. First, a brake lamp, the red one above the rear bumper, went wrong. It was just one day before I took the exam for the local driver’s license. I was not aware of the disorder and went to the police office. I simply got the verbal warning not the driver’s license. I needed to replace it. I bought one but did not know how to replace it. Bob was out of town on that day. I recall that Dr. Stanaway, Dean of Students, walked by me struggling with my car and replaced the lamp for me with his own hand.
The tank gave me more troubles. The thermostat valve of the radiator broke down and flooded the radiator liquid right in the middle of the downtown road. I left the hood open and slowly drove home. I had Mr. Armstrong fix it for me. Then he left a small washer plate in the engine while he was fixing the valve. The washer plate stuck somewhere around the gear, which caused abrupt death of the engine. Mr. Armstrong, again, fixed it for me.
Then one day, the engine would not start no matter how often I turned the ignition key. The starter was rolling. Rolling too smoothly. It was strange. I got off the car and checked underneath the car. The starter was not engaging. Two bolts that settles the starter to the designated position were twisted and cracked. The starter was actually hanging under the engine with two electric cables. I had Bob and another friend helped me buying a new starter and replacing it. It was a painful work.
Then the car let me live easy for a few seasons until it started to lose the engine oil. Warning lamp for the engine oil shortage beside the speed meter began to blink. Bob, when I bought the car, explained that there had been an invisible small crack on the engine wall and it let the engine oil ooze out bit by bit. I checked the oil level every three days and emptied an oil bottle every two weeks. But half year after the purchase, the car started to demand more oil. I changed the engine oil, but in vain. I left the car at a repair shop to examine the car. The engineer there reported that half of the ignition plugs were dead and the engine was burning oil, instead of gas. I had to pay for the repair.
Other than these repairs, I practiced unusually minute maintenance that I would never do it by myself in Japan. I often checked the oil gauge and added the oil. I even changed the oil with my friend’s help. I changed the four tires before and after winter. I was too poor to buy stud tires just for rear wheels. And the rear tires were worn out. So I had the two tires re-mounted and had gas station men hammer the spikes all over the re-mounted tires. I did it, too, because the gas station men first stood hesitant to do such work. I volunteered to do it myself and asked for the price reduction. I started the work and the men cut in. The first several spikes were not well-planted. But it was surely another rare experience that I would never have an opportunity to have in Japan.
The car was actually a tank, which demanded special care. The engine was so huge and it took a long while to warm up and run steadily in freezing days. Bob had installed the special heater beside the radiator. The power plug was drawn out above the front bumper. I used to connect it to an electric outlet in the garage before starting the engine in freezing mornings.
When I left the car by the road, frost or icy snow covered the wind shield in the winter. The car was wide. It was as wide as I could almost stretch myself on the bench-type front seat from an end to the other. It was as wide as I could not reach out for the door on the other side, with my seat belt on, to unlock the door for someone getting in. That meant that the wind shield, too, was irregularly wide. When the frost or snow blanketed the wind shield, I could scrape only some portion of it with my feet on the ground. To scrape all over the wind shield, I had to climb up on the hood to do the front and on the trunk cover to do the rear window. The work was unique to see either in the parking lot on campus or along the path by Mr. Armstrong’s house.
The path was above the hill. The house was located on the hill side. When I became hungry or bored to study for a long while after midnight, I went out for a drive. But the roaring engine could be easily heard from a mile away in the silent midnight in the residential area up on the hill, where deer sometimes strolled. I put the shift lever to the neutral position and shoved the heavy tank at the top of the slope. I would jump into the car and let it glide down the hill. There I started the engine. Needles to say, I would leave the car at the bottom of the hill when I returned. Can’t go up the hill without the engine running.
The huge car scared the people in a few senses. Many said to me that they had been frightened to death to see a car running around with no one driving in it. I was driving the car. Unfortunately, I was small in relative to the size of the car.
Driving the huge tank in the way to drive ordinary cars appeared scary to people. My friend, Regan, followed my car into the parking lot one day. The main parking lot was full. I headed for the one on dirt behind the school building. I noticed a car following me. That was Regan’s. I found two empty spaces for us; however, Regan’s car was so close to me that I could not fit my car into the space without stopping Regan’s. But it was on dirt. Cars were easy to slip and to swing. I hit the brake pedal and gas pedal simultaneously bit by bit and ground the steering wheel. My car began to slip and swung its tail around. I felt like I was hovering. Sandy dirt and dust were blown up in the air. My car spun about 150 degrees and reached close to the aimed position. I could see Regan’s face in front of me. Her eyes and mouth were open wide. She was saying something that I could not hear. I had done this sort of thing on snowy road when no cars around. I saw students do the same thing in the parking lot. Only difference in this case was that it was the tank that spun.
When I stayed at Mr. Armstrong’s house for two weeks before I finally moved in, the house was full of Mrs. Armstrong’s old friends, five midwives from LA. One day I woke up late and found only Esther and Betsy left at home waiting for me to give them a ride. Other people had supposedly left for church. They said that they wanted to go shopping. They asked me where they should go. I recommended Safeway downtown. They wanted me to take them there. It was only three weeks after I bought the car and two weeks after I got the local driver’s license. They sat on the rear seat. I drove the car as usual, which was obviously wilder than they expected.
Esther asked me, “Masato, did you drive this kind of big car back in Japan?”
“Absolutely not. This is my first experience of owning a car. I bought this car only a few weeks ago. I am not used to driving this car yet. I drove company cars when I was in Japan but that was only once a week or so. And the cars were not that big.”
“Oh, okay. Do you have a driver’s license here?”
“Yeah. I got it two weeks ago. I had brought the international driver’s license. It’s easy to get. It doesn’t matter which country I will visit. It’s just paper work to issue it based on the domestic one. We drive other side of the road back in Japan. Automatic gear shift is not popular in Japan. What’s worse, driving other side of the road is okay but the driving seat in the car is set on the other side in the car, too. Well, it takes a little bit more time to get used to it. But so far, I think I am doing it okay.”
“Masato, what’s it like to drive on the other side?”
“While I go along the road, there is no problem. But I sometimes have to think which side of the road I should drive into when I turn at the intersection. Let’s see. The hardest part of driving cars in the United States is traffic rules. There are many signs that I don’t understand. And I found out the day before yesterday that you can turn right at the intersection under the red signal unless I don’t bother pedestrians and other cars. It’s not allowed in Japan.”
“It’s getting scary, Esther,” said Betsy.
“Yeah. Masato, keep on driving.” Esther shut her mouth and regretted her curiosity.
Safeway was crowded. There were not many parking spaces available. I found one and slid the car into the space. My car fit nicely into the white square with a big Mercedes and a similar one on both sides. There was no room left for us to open the door and get out. Esther immediately rolled the handle to open the window and shouted, “Hey , mister, would you…” Before she completed her words, the man in the car next to us swiftly backed off his car and let us get off. Here again, my driving tech of the unusual car scared the people around.
Esther shouted, “Nice move. Nice move mister. Thank you. Thank you very much.” And she sighed.
The Plymouth Fury indeed made me consume an excessive amount of money and even time to keep it running. But it sure was worthwhile for me to own as I could experience what I could never experience back in Japan. It took money and care but not just uneconomical; it was luxurious to me.