Readers and writers blog

The Swellmobile is back. After 14 days and $1,323* to fix its transmission, I have been reunited with my car, which I have given an elegant nickname because it is one of the last few indulgences in my otherwise frugal life.

Oh, I’ve indulged myself before. Back in my salad days of the late 1970s, I bought myself a tuxedo. Tailor-made. Silk lapels, leg stripe, cummerbund and tie (not a clip-on, please). What I paid for it then would be about $1,000 today.

I reasoned that I needed the tuxedo — I’d been to a half dozen weddings where formal attire was required, and renting tuxedos already had cost me nearly half what buying one would — but it really was an indulgence.

What I didn’t realize, of course, was that weddings are about the only place a man needs a tuxedo, and even then, he’s often mistaken for a member of the wedding party, if not the groom. And try going to a restaurant in a tuxedo. People will ask you for a table. Or if it’s a party, they will expect you to be carrying a tray of hors d’ouevres.

And there were other indulgences. In the mid-1980s, when I was divorced, out of a job and living on the road in a small truck (again, see it here), I used some of the few dollars left over from the sale of our house to buy a portable VCR (they were expensive then). And, oh yes, six pieces of stemmed crystal glassware that hung under one of the cabinets in the truck’s living area, right across from the small closet where I kept the tuxedo, never to be worn again.

I came from a family of modest means (some might say poor), and the tuxedo, VCR and stemmed glasses were totems of a lifestyle I thought I wanted before I returned to frugality.

The last piece of stemware was broken years ago, but the VCR continued to function until two years ago, and I donated the tuxedo to a social-service thrift shop just last year. You know, I was a little annoyed when one of the thrift-shop volunteers put on the coat and laughed that she should wear it to a costume party. Hell, that tuxedo was still in perfect condition and might have helped some poor guy get a waiter’s job.

Ah well, I digress.

Being without my car for two weeks hasn’t been a great deprivation, but it has kept me away from Kingston, N.Y., about seven miles away, and the supermarket where I do my weekly shopping. (Yes, Kingston still has a supermarket right in town.)

My wife, Bonnie, and I split the shopping, but my part includes such bulk items as cat food and litter. (The cats have been eyeing me suspiciously of late, even though I know they can’t see into the closet where they’re down to less than one small bag of food.)

And in case you haven’t noticed from the photo above (or, like me, can’t tell one car from another), the Swellmobile is a 1994 Ford Taurus — yes, 14 years old. The reason it’s ’swell’ is that it has plush velour upholstery, a split-bench front seat, drop-down dual armrests and four power windows, three of which still work. It still has most of its paint — a rich burgundy — although my father-in-law, Glenn, has touched up a few rust spots with some orange paint he had lying around. I bought the car from him and my mother-in-law, Virginia, when they gave up their seasonal trailer in Texas and brought the spare car here.

It was certainly no extravagance — they gave me a good price — but the reason it’s an indulgence is that its six-cylinder engine barely averages 20 miles per gallon. Even though I drive it only about 20 miles a week, it’s wasteful.

You know, I would rather have an electric car or some kind of hybrid, but I can’t afford it. What’s sad is that there are some people who could — but wouldn’t.

Today’s new offerings in Works

• Chapter 15 of R.J. Keller’s novel Waiting for Spring. Tess, who supports herself as a cleaning lady, meets a trophy wife in one of the new gentry’s homes, then runs afoul of one of Brian’s trophy ex-girlfriends in a local bar.

• Chapter 27: Sutro Heights of Gerard Jones’ nonfiction novel Ginny Good. Things begin to fall apart between Gerard and Melanie when she realizes he still loves Ginny and wants the two of them to move in with Ginny and her current paramour Elliot.

– Sid Leavitt

NOTE:

*No complaint about the repair cost. It was on the low end of what my Google research showed was a national average of $1,300 to $1,900 for repairing a 1990-95 Ford Taurus transmission. It also was on the low end of the estimate of $1,300 to $1,500 given me by the local repair shop. So thank you, Paramount Garage & Transmission of Kingston, N.Y., a shop run by Anthony and Frank Naccarato — two guys who keep their word. (See? There are guys like that in New York.)