Purchasing Automobiles Isn't Easy

 I'm the first to admit I know little or nothing about cars--inside and out. When I was a teenager there were classmates of mine who would sit around and talk about car engines, about horsepower, about hemi's----whatever that was. I flat out wasn't interested. At that time if the conversation didn't revolve around basketball or baseball then the conversation was meaningless.

Like any normal red-blooded American in his seventies I've had my share of cars. My first was a 1968 Pontiac GTO purchased off the showroom floor for the grand price of $2,600. My dad loaned me the money and I repaid him $100 a month. Eight months later I met Her Majesty and nine months after that we had tied the knot. The Queen could not handle the 350 horse power of my heavenly chariot and I was forced to sell to be replaced by a Ford Falcon station wagon. Folks, with children coming within one year of marriage my world of owning cars has been all downhill, to say the least. After the Ford came a Datsun. It was a mobile casket. In case of an accident a toe tag would have come out of the dashboard. I called that car 'Hiroshima's Revenge'.

In 1988 I left education and took a job in sales. The company bought my vehicles for me. I fell in love with Buick LeSabre's for twenty years drove this very nice machine with an Oldsmobile 88 or two thrown in the mix. Since retirement my world of cars has centered around whatever was cheapest. For me, autos became a form of being able to get wherever I wanted to go at the least amount of price. The one I'm driving now is a Subaru Outbook. I purchased it from the wife six years ago at a good price.

In the past three months the Subaru has let me know it is now ready to go to the big parking lot in the sky. These past three days of searching the internet interspersed with trips to local car dealers to find a different vehicle tells me one thing. CARS ARE EXPENSIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm looking at smaller SUV's and the sticker tells me if I buy a 2021 Subaru with 35,000 miles I'm going to be shelling out $25,000 at a minimum. I fully realize most of you reading this are laughing at me because you know about engines and horsepower and hemi's. I don't and the reason for this is because my mind is still living in the 1960's. 

I'm a big believer in praying the rosary. Beginning tonight I'll push the beads hoping there's someone out there in this world for whom I did a good deed; A deed so good they're about to leave me their Mercedes Benz(or even a Chevrolet) when they pass on from this world. It's either that or I'll start hitchhiking because God did not intend for autos to cost more than the combined price of my first two homes.