CAR TALK, PART I

It was such a slight sound, just a minor whine coming from somewhere in my car. It seemed a trifling problem, one that could easily have been fixed by turning up the volume of the stereo, had my car stereo not been stolen months before. There was no urgency, no robotic voice bellowing, "Danger! Danger, John Parnell!" Just a tinny, little whine that gave every indication that whatever problem it signaled could wait until Monday when my mechanic was open.

Or not.

The next sound that my car made was its death rattle. Turns out that minor whine was the bolt that held the tensioner in place breaking. Once it broke, the tensioner was no longer tense, the timing belt quit timing and my engine was junk. My mechanic said he had never seen something like that happen before. Well, at least I could say I could still astonish people.

So I needed wheels fast and that meant renting a car, which meant stepping into a time machine, figuratively speaking. You see, I work at a newspaper, snd so I can only afford cars from the previous decade. Any new leaps forward in automobile technology come to me only when I leach off my well-heeled friends, or when whatever car I own pauses long enough on its grim march to the junkyard for me to get it to the mechanic for an overnight visit ... and I get to rent a car. So in a pathetic sort of a way, I saw a silver lining to my engine debacle.

I rented the cheapest car I could get: a Chrysler Sebring. The car's name was meant to evoke the high-speed thrills of the race track in the Florida town. As a boy, I had been through Sebring many times on the way to my grandparents' house in Lake Placid, and I had thought Sebring sucked. The car and I were not off to a good start.

But