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Incontrovertible Proof That There Is a DogMarch 30, 2009 We passed. I'm not kidding. Uhura Mazda passed inspection. This morning. With the passenger's side shoulder harness that Mr. Travvy chewed through. Here's the seat belt:
The picture doesn't look as chewed as the original, but you get the idea. You can get more of the idea by noting the yellow foam rubber showing through the upholstery. That's one of my old, rarely worn turtlenecks concealing the duct tape that's holding the seat together. I called Cars Unlimited this morning to get an appointment. How about 10:15, they said. Gulp. That was less than two hours away. Uhura was a mess. I hauled the vacuum, a plastic bag, and some paper towels downstairs, backed her up close to the outside electrical outlet, and went to work: picking up the bits of foam rubber, the shredded cardboard and paper bags, Reese's Peanut Butter Cup and Nutrageous wrappers, clumps of sloughed-off fur . . . Under the passenger's seat was a small bundle of the Shabazians' mail -- from mid-January. It included a couple of bills, an Important Tax Document, and a late Christmas postcard. This was embarrassing. When I'm horse-sitting over there, I regularly pick up mail from the box at the end of the road and leave it on the dining table. Some of it evidently slid under the seat. I hadn't looked or felt under the seat for two and a half months. I called Elaine to report. She recalled having a tiff with American Express about a bill that went missing but no harm had been done. Whew. I set off for the airport, where Cars Unlimited is. Most years there's this suspense when I go to get inspected: Will I pass? Will I flunk? Please pass, please pass -- and if I flunk, please don't let it cost to much to fix. Last year was a rude shock: ball joints and four new tires. This morning there was no suspense. I knew I was going to flunk. How could I not? The seat belt's back-ordered because the manufacturer only cranks them out when it's got plenty of orders.(The Ford Ranger ones are easier to find, and they're identical to the Mazda ones, but they cost twice as much. Go figure. Die, car makers, die.) Soon I'd be driving around with a red "R" for Rejected on my windshield and it would be only a matter of time before some zealous cop pulled me over, noted that the "R" had been there for two months (you're supposed to fix safety defects within seven days), and gave me a ticket. I settled down in the waiting room and read a gruesome Boston Globe story about a young man who'd stabbed two of his sisters to death, one of them five years old, and seriously wounded a third, before police, summoned by the older sister who didn't survive, broke in, ordered him to stop, and when he didn't, shot him. As problems go, I thought, getting fined for a defective seat belt wasn't all that bad. A mechanic came out and told the other guy waiting that he needed new windshield wipers; did he want to buy them here or go to NAPA? "How much?" asked the guy. "Nineteen bucks," said the mechanic. I said mine were about $8.50 each at NAPA; $19 sounded like a good deal. The guy sprang for it. I told him about the year the inspector told me that he could have flunked Tesah Toyota because the windshield had Rhodry's nose prints all over it. A woman I know from my chorus days came in to pick up her car. She'd just finished reading Mud of the Place and really liked it. I felt better already. Then Uhura rolled up, and I went out braced for the inevitable. "You're all set," said the mechanic. I wasn't really taking this in. He was telling me I didn't have to worry about it for this year, but the Registry of Motor Vehicles is making people replace old, faded, dented, and bent license plates. Like mine. OK, I said, gazing at the new sticker in the lower right corner of Uhura's windshield: it had a big "3" (for March) in the middle, and 2010 along the bottom. Hot fucking damn. All day I've been button-holing people and telling them the good news. They all get that this is right up there with winning a few hundred bucks on a scratch ticket. Now all I have to worry about is finishing the two interminable jobs I'm working on, and doing my taxes, and paying for Uhura's new exhaust system. Here's Uhura Mazda, who just reached 94,000 miles. You can't see the inspection sticker, but it's there.
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