Faithful readers will remember the horrendous problems that our family experienced when somebody stole our car about a year ago. Well this is like one of these Hollywood movies—just when you think the hero has escaped unscathed, he’s being attacked by the same villain again but much more violently!
Our Honda’s electrical wiring failed miserably recently and left us riding around in the dark—no brake lights, no back lights, no dashboard lights and no gear box lights.
I refer to it as the Morgentaler Curse—a curse that is levelled against all of us pro-lifers—but especially against people who write bad things about Henry in the Interim.
I was driving along at night when all the lights inside the car went out. I got out and found that the back and brake lights weren’t on either. I thought: “no sweat,” and began to sing: “Somewhere a fuse has blown.” I drove into my favourite garage the next morning and $46.00 later a mechanic had found the problem—a blown fuse.
I hadn’t driven the car five minutes when the same problem occurred.
Pfft—out went the lights! The good news was that the front headlights still worked, the turn signals worked and the flasher signals worked. I put the flasher signals on and the car looked like a Christmas tree driving along. Helpful people in other cars signalled that our flashers were on and our back lights and brake lights weren’t. We would nod a smile politely and ignore them.
I decided that I would take our Honda home to the dealer. If anybody could fix it in a hurry—it would be them. They were willing to try– at $72.00 an hour. I decided that I would wait and five hours later I was still there! I had read every scrap of paper in the lobby and I was even hungrily eyeing a Chinese newspaper on the end table. I kept multiplying $72.00 by five.
Finally I got up and complained to a very nice service representative: “Where is my car? Has somebody stolen it? Please tell me? They build on assembly lines faster than this?”
I told him that there were four adults in our house going in four different directions and we desperately needed the car. The service rep said that they had failed to solve the problem and suggested taking it home and getting it into the garage very early in the morning and he promised to start work on it immediately.
Day after day I would crawl out of bed and get the car to the garage by seven a.m., walk a mile home only to find out at the end of each day that a whole army of white-coated men had failed to solve the electrical problem.
Then they came up with a villain! The car had been in a bad accident and the front end showed serious damages that had been fixed. I told them that the car had been stolen a year ago using a phony key and had cleared a four-foot ditch and ended up imbedded in the front lawn of somebody’s house a few miles away. But five month’s had elapsed since then and we hadn’t had any electrical problems.
I suggested they get an electrical expert from Honda head office and they did. He worked on it extensively and he failed to solve the problem! The service rep said that there are four or five harnesses(I thought they were for horses) that contain a multitude of very fine wires that run from the front to the back attached to the frame and one of these wires inside must have been shorting out. To replace each one would run about hundred dollars each plus labour! I told him: “I came in here for a lousy fuse and now you want a mortgage on my house!”
The service rep had the painful look of an aircraft designer that has just seen his newly designed plane crash into the ground. He said: “Why don’t you get your insurance company to pay for it because we believe it was definitely caused by the accident.”
I called the insurance company and told them about the delayed car problems we were having and they were sympathetic and were willing to send an adjuster to look at it. At the request of the garage—I even brought in the detailed bill for repairs to the Honda service manager for possible leads as to solving the electrical problem. I was in and out of the place so often that I suggested to the service rep that if we kept this up—we might be exchanging Christmas cards.
Time and time again they would take the car out (using our gas) for a run and it worked perfectly and then mysteriously (The Morgentaler Curse) it would conk out. Finally after they thought they had fixed the problem and we were allowed to test run the car over a period of days—one of the rear lights went out. I took it back to the service rep and he looked at me very sadly and said to leave it with them just once more.
I came in the next day and the service rep said: “I’m sorry Mr. Kennedy, we’ve got bad news for you. We shot your Honda and buried it out in the back lot.”
I’m only kidding. They actually put extra big fuses in the car and gave me a whole pocket full of them to carry with me at all times. If you see me parked along the–you’ll know what I’m doing.
