Wannaskan Almanac for Thursday August 16, 2018 by WannaskaWriter

My 1998 Subearu Legacy Outback wagon

     I don’t know if I’ve written about my 1998 ‘Subearu’ Legacy Outback Wagon but if I have, please bear with me. I’m old and retired and have probably repeated myself on occasion.

     I bought my Subearu in 2017 from Joe McDonnell’s oldest friends, Alex and Nancy Stavro Something-Something, of somewhere south of here (and believe me, everything is south of here). In fact the only thing Minnesotan north of here, in the U.S., is Roseau and that’s another whole kettle of worms we won’t delve into now, not to mention Warroad, that is technically north of that. And north of that that a few hundred yards, is Canada, and as I said, just more worms. It’s not worthy, at this juncture, to even mention C-a-n-a-d-a.

    So anyway, I spell ‘Subaru’, ‘s-u-b-e-a-r-u’, because of this particular car’s first day in the true northland with a bear or bears that perused its beautiful exterior looking for an unlocked door or open window, slathering its windshield and side windows with its saliva and muddy pawprints whilst parked just outside our house, which isn’t a common occurrence. In fact, I can’t say any bears or single bear have/has ever took so much interest in any of my vehicles since 1982--or before that, that I’m aware. Had the trail camera been invented at that time, we would’ve known that information with certainty, but alas, we do not.

    I mentioned ‘true northland’ in the above sentence and I am wont to define said phrase because so many people, Minnesota residents and otherwise, think Minnesota ends at Bemidji, or just as ignorantly, think International Falls is as far north as is possible in Minnesota. It simply isn’t true as I’ve kindly pointed out in paragraph 2 and have yet to define here in paragraph 4, that the Northwest Angle, Minnesota community is even north of Warroad, and exists as the farthest north Minnesota town or place we’ve got, being even north of the Canadian/US border that everyone knows and loves, well except the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police), whom, I don’t believe, are fond of the situation.

    So in the theme of the area north of Grand Rapids, Bemidji, and Crookston is ‘True North” Minnesota, where I happen to own a 20-year old classic AWD automobile of some positive reputation-if only because of my tremendously great fortune to be friends with jiggin’ Joe McDonnell. Now you’re askin’ yourselves why is he known as ‘Jiggin’ Joe’, and I’d answer that you will have to go to Ireland to find out, in 2023. The short version is that Alex and Nancy, Joe’s oldest friends--not to say ancient-being friends, but people who he has known longer than any other friends in Minnesota--had this fine Subearu for sale and J.J. immediately thought that I might be interested in it bein’ as I had just blown up my own old car in a fit of negligence.

    Well, it wasn’t that bad, t’was just that I didn’t put a timing belt in ‘er as I should’ve to prevent exactly what happened, happen at 248,000 miles. Lessons learned, any vehicle I own that had a belt-driven timing belt has a new one now, plus a new waterpump--even this old Subearu with 66,700 miles. In fact, the Sub even got new ceramic brake pads and rotors the other day, all the way around.

     The mechanic said it really needed it as rusted as the brackets and rotors had become. I purchased the parts from a local auto parts dealer (as I always do) because, when I bought the car, it had new wheels and tires on it and the old brake pads emitted a lot of red rust dust that coated the shiny new wheels, so I googled the issue and learned that not only did ceramic pads eliminate the problem, they are equally good, if not better, performance-wise, and I always hate to be caught short, performance-wise, just ask any of my friends.

    “Oh yeah, he really hates it,” they’d all sing in unison should you happen upon a gaggle of them along a roadside. “That’s no mistake. He was teased about it as a child, you know, and now it’s his obsession not to be caught short ever again.”

    Yet, no one’s perfect. I have only to wander about my yard to know the mechanical history of each of my vehicles, including the three sitting idle with grass growing around their perimeters and now serving as temporary storage facilities, to accept this about myself. After all these years, although my intentions are good, it ain’t goin’ to happen.

    ‘Ennaways’, as Jiggin’ Joe says ‘Four B’s’ (the township Big Boat & Barge Builder) says all the time, back to the subject of this almanac entry, my newest oldest car, the 1998 ‘Subearu’ Legacy Outback wagon.

    I’m pretty fond of it even though it doesn’t get the best gas mileage. I remember the day, ‘way back in my earlier life in Marriage No. 1, when I thought there was something wrong with the gas gauge on our 1973 Mustang because it was so slow to descend toward ‘Empty’ compared to the 1972 Gran Torino sedan and 1965 Ford Fairlane we had. Further doubting its accuracy, I filled it up, despite that the gas gauge indicated the tank was still half-full. It took so little gasoline! I was tremendously happy with 28 mpg before gas mileage was even important. The Subearu gets 26 mpg, its best so far, and that’s using the AC too. I just know I've made an error in computation...

    Speaking of which, AC is a fine accessory, when it works. And when it doesn’t (knock on wood) I can just roll down the window, right? Well, if the window switch works too. Windows don’t roll down anymore. No car built in the past 20 years, has roll-down windows anymore, that is, windows that are lowered or raised manually with a handcrank inside the car. Ideally, windows should be designed with an emergency feature, in case of sudden submersion, for example:
BREAK GLASS.
REMOVE EMERGENCY HANDCRANK.
INSERT AS SHOWN.
RAPIDLY TURN COUNTERCLOCKWISE TO LOWER WINDOW(s)

    I digress. My Subearu (Okay, let’s stop the cutesy stuff and call it by it’s real name) ‘Subaru’ has all the bells and whistles of a new car, except the back-up camera, GPS, super dark tinted windows, 17-inch low profile tires and wheels, etc, etc. Let’s just say, it’s much fancier than my 1986 Toyota 4 x 4 pickup, and does almost the same thing serving as a farm vehicle. Just yesterday I hauled two tractor tires and a rim inside it, to Roseau and back, much to the expressed consternation of my over-alert wife whom I thought was safely inside the house perusing her extensive Facebook page and keeping track of who’s who and where’s where, and not observing what I was doing, i.e., loading the Subaru with dirty old tractor tires.

    “Hey, it’s a farm vehicle!” I told her, plaintively. “I’ve helped farm women load many a Cadillac with bags of milk replacer and 50 lb., boxes of farm chemicals! I’ve seen Cadillacs, Continentals and family station wagons that haven’t seen a carwash in years, loaded down like pickup trucks with their leaf springs flattened to the axle. I’ve known city cars to even carry calves, or in the case of a local diva personality, whose name will not be revealed, hauled young pigs in her car to Roseau. At least, I lowered the backseat rests and covered the whole thing with a relatively clean tarp, what could possibly be wrong with that?? Okay, other than the interior possibly having that new tire fragrance for a brief period.”

    No, my Subaru had been babied all the while Alex and Nancy Stavro Something-Something owned it. It could never wont for more. It was always garaged among other high-quality vehicles and hardware goods, including riding lawnmowers and snowblowers. Overhead extension and fiberglass step ladders smiled down on it. Garage door openers were careful not to leak anything onto it, squirting whatever it was, that just had to get out, onto the recycling and garbage roll-out cans sitting to one side instead, (obviously prejudiced).

    So Subaru was used to getting preferential treatment all it’s life except for the first 20,000 miles when it was a rental somewhere. When it arrived at the Stavro Something-Something home and was settled into its own homey little stall in their garage, it almost peed itself realizing it tremendous good fortune, and may have done just that, but all was quickly cleaned up without admonition, as was the way where the Subaru lived for nearly ten years. Nothing was too good for ‘Nancy’s car.’ Nothing was ever so important in their lives, that should Nancy’s car need, even a windshield wiper blade, it was replaced immediately. And yet, Jiggin’ Joe thought of me, when he learned Alex and Nancy were going to sell it after long last.

    Did he have something against Subarus? The Subaru definitely thought he did because when it was driven from its home in Burnsville, never to return, by Jiggin’ Joe instead of its beloved Nancy, it began writing letters home every chance it got begging for forgiveness:

December 19, 2017
Somewhere in the middle of nowhere

Dear Nancy and Alex,
    Thank you for selling me down the river!
What did I ever do to you two to deserve this kind of inappreciative foul treatment? Did I ever fail you? Didn’t start? Or stop? Or blow cold air? Or hot?
 
    I am destitute here in the middle of nowhere, and even at just 19 years old, I am not the newest of this moron’s fleet. You gotta get me outa here! I am parked between a 2002 Saturn wagon that I haven’t even met yet, and a rusty old 1986 Toyota 4x4 pickup that just lecherously leers at me, (it’s so creepy, Nancy...). On the other side of the Saturn is a 1995 GMC van under a car cover--and a snowcovered, flat-tired 1989 Honda Accord that they say, ‘runs’.   
    
    On the other side of the pickup is a 1967 Massey-Ferguson diesel friggen farm tractor with a seven-foot snowblower on it (I kid you not) parked near a plug-in under a spruce tree!
 
    Across the yard, there’s a 1997 Ford Escort wagon that stands dead under several layers of snow because Dum-dum killed it by not replacing its timing belt. Beyond that, is an old 1985 Ford F-150 pickup filled with years of odds and ends.
    
Three junked cars--isn’t there a neighborhood association law against this sort of thing? God, that’s right, I’m not in an suburban neighborhood anymore--but a rural township, six miles square, with only 55 people in it --and that being, seventeen years ago. There were more people than that in the mall restaurant you two went to last night! I’m so doomed.
 
I’m being subjected to abuse here, Nancy! Did you or did you not, tell Dum-dum here, I’ve spent all my idle life in a garage and was not to be simply parked outdoors with a car cover on me?? The very first night, a bear--yes, a real live black bear!!--saw me parked under the stars, pre-cover, completely ‘naked’, mind you, then walked over to get a good lick of me. YES, A FRIGGEN LICK!
 
    The beast stood up on its hairy hind legs and, utilizing its olfactory and gustatory senses slathered me from boot to bonnet with its great black nose and huge pink tongue, examining my perfect fit body and trim, heated side mirrors, heavy duty luggage rack, and drivers side windows with some real discrimination. Then it took a gigantic poop not ten feet away! 

Gigantic bear poop with flip-phone as size reference

    IT WAS ABSOLUTELY DISGUSTING! I FEEL SO VIOLATED! I WANNA COME HOME!!!!!!OH PLEASE, OH, PLEASE!! BUY ME BACK! PLEASE!!!
 
    If it wasn’t for his wife Jackie, why I think he’d treat me like a pickup, so full of farm junk, like chains, saws, wire, tools, gasoline and diesel fuel jugs, a 200 amp battery booster--and now, after deer season, various deer parts, dried blood and patches of hair. Jackie made him put a seat cover on the drivers side--that he hates. Then, in Bayfield, Wisconsin, the moron drove me over a five gallon plastic pail half-filled with sand and festooned with many yards of yellow CAUTION tape! It was a parking lot marker that, he said, had been put near me below his field of vision. He had even showed me off to a friend of his, not an hour before, but didn’t walk to that corner. God, I am so doomed, Nancy...
 
    So he turned me a sharp left, up and out of the parking lot situated on a steep hill there, when the pail tipped over in a dip of the sidewalk. With me, standing as high as I do, the pail got wedged between my tummy and the street, and as we pulled into all the traffic, the pail started hollering like it was being bludgeoned to death--because it was--but Dum-dum didn’t immediately stop me because nothing on the dashboard indicated anything wrong and, if he stopped where he was, he knew he’d block traffic clear to Duluth in both directions.
    
    Everybody in me was hooting for him to stop and people on the sidewalk were pointing, and people’s heads all over the place were turning at the horrific noise, but Dum-dum ignored them and drove me another half-block to a side-street to get out of traffic, where he stopped along a near-vertical street along a near-vertical curb.

    I smelled like burnt plastic. Jackie was not happy. Jackie’s son, Marty, a strong lad, worked several minutes to get what was left of the pail out from under me. I was not hurt, just grossly embarrassed. I drove just fine. The passengers seemed to get over it too eventually. But I am so doomed! 

    And, when we got back here again, Dum-dum drove me down six miles of gravel road! Six miles! Jackie wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy. But Dum-dum said, “This car, my car, is going to see some gravel, so get used to it. We don’t drive your car on gravel, but this one we will sometimes.”
    
    I mean what’s next? Me hitting a deer? Deer jump out of ditches here for no reason. Stupid creatures! They’re all over. Cows too. Skunks and raccoons.

    One evening he drove me down to deer camp, after four miles of gravel! Then down a half mile of minimum maintenance road that was all bumpy and matted down grass. No mud, no rocks, no snow, but all the same, I’m a city car, not a country car. He just doesn’t think sometimes. What a moron!
 
    The other day, Dum-dum drove me to Wannaska, the little town near them, when he met a scruffy-looking friend of his whose three-wheeled vehicle had broke down. Dum-dum offered to give him a ride home because he didn’t live too far from us. Once arriving, Dum-dum walked around the guy’s big yard looking at all Scruffy’s toys, vehicles he had made out of other vehicles. Dum-dum took pictures.
 
    Scruffy told Dum-dum that he will love me and my AWD,
“You’ll push snow as high as the hood this winter!
They’re great in snow!”
“DON’T TELL HIM THAT!” I shuddered, 
“I’ll end up in his bone yard!”
 
    So last week Jackie and Dum-dum took me back home to Minneapolis/Saint Paul. (I thought they were bringing me back to you, Nancy.) I was in commuter traffic at rush hour on 694/94, seeing all these signs for 494, 35W, 169. I was pumped! Sometimes, people were slowing down to get a look at me. “Oooo, look at that classic Subaru Legacy outback wagon. They don’t make them like that anymore!”
    
    I got to say this thing about Dum-dum, he likes to keep me clean (I think he likes to show me off). He didn’t do too bad as a city driver with all the trucks and cars zooming around us, because they’re all driven by idiots like himself more than likely. Once in awhile, he feeds me 91 octane gas on these long trips. I turned 70, 300 miles on this last trip and very recently got new oil afterward. While in the shop, he had his longtime mechanic, (what a loser) service the exhaust due to a common aging problem and repair a corner of a shield that is between it and my tummy, because it had started to vibrate on acceleration. Dum-dum thinks it may have been a result of the plastic pail incident last summer.
    
    Seeing that corrosive red brake dust on the front wheels, that so many other cars have, Dum-dum said he’s going to replace the regular brake pads with new ceramic brake pads. They don’t spew dust like the old-style brake pads do, so won’t rust the new wheels, plus he learned from two different people he talked to about them--and what he read on the internet--they’re perfect for smaller, lighter vehicles like me.
 
     Yet, the only rays of sunshine in this whole ugly scenario is that I still have five old Burnsville friends here to visit with on occasion: Extension Ladder, Step Ladder, Snowblower (Been seein’ a lot of it lately) Tree Trimmer and Leaf Vacuum. My homesickness is lessened having these guys to shout at, for ‘misery loves company,’ so they say. Oh, they all say ‘Hi!’ to you and Alex, by the way.   

   And, Step Ladder wanted me to tell Alex,
“Γεια σου φίλε!” Whatever that means. (Step ladder has always been so wide at the bottom and narrow at the top), if you know what I’m saying, Nancy. Oh well.
    
    Well, I’ll tough it out here over winter (like I have a choice) and keep you posted as I encounter other ‘adventures’ with this moron here in the frozen north.
    Think fondly of me once in awhile,
    Sincerely,
    Your 1998 Subaru