And Then Fred Came into My Life

â┚¬Å”Environmentalists have a very conflicted relationship with their cars.â┚¬Â â┚¬â€œ Tom Arnold

Vincent is dead.

Honestly it wasn't like we couldn't see it coming, but the timing was more than a little inconvenient. To paraphrase a great writer: He should have died hereafter; There would have been time for such a word.

To be fair, Vincent served us well. He hauled drunken Canadians back and forth from downtown to the Disney area. He carried countless plants to countless plantings. He hauled marketing materials for the likes of Blue Man Group. On quite a few occasions he made the trek to the Cape Canaveral Seashore. He hauled us from here to there and back again.

He also broke downâ┚¬Â¦a lot. Brendan paid my dad $1000 for the red 1998 Pontiac Montana Transport (or is it a Transport Montana?) a few years ago. It seemed like a decent enough deal, but we have now lost track of the tally of repairs we made to him. The whole thing came to end a couple months ago when Vincent would stall once heated, then not want to turn back on. We took it to a trusted mechanic, and that was followed by a voicemail from a woman who mostly sighed through the entire message because she hated to deliver the message. The engine was dead and needed to be replaced.

Fuck that.

I'm not sure why our mechanic couldn't have figured out the engine was dead the week before when the charged us $600 to â┚¬Å”repairâ┚¬Â it, but I digress. You see, this story has a happy ending and I'm mucking it up with the details of life.

So I had no choice but to embark into the vile process of car shopping. I hinted to Dad that I'd like his help, but he gave me an unspoken tough love not-going-to-be-around-forever brush off. It was the first time I'd be doing this sort of purchase without Mom around, and somehow that made the process seem even more daunting.

Brendan and I started by doing research online. We would research cars at dealers, send them information and inquiries, but hear nothing back. Obviously trying to cushion this experience through the cyberworld wasn't going to happen. So I started going to the dealers in person, only to come away disgusted since they would try to sell me everything but what I came to see.

Clearly in need of professional help, I turned to the one therapist I can afford at the moment: Facebook. I don't remember by exact status, but rest assured it was bemoaning my car shopping hell in the best â┚¬Å”poor meâ┚¬Â tone my fingertips could type. Some of my friends commiserated with me, others professed to being experts and offered their services, many apparently could care less â┚¬â€œ all in all a typical Facebook reaction, leaving me feeling a bit listless still.

Then an e-mail from Dave Wegman (brother of Miss P) suggested that I contact Fred Berliner. Fred has been an advertiser in Watermark since before I was writing for it, maybe even the very beginning. It seems Dave went in to Don Reid Ford and wound up getting the royal treatment for mentioning the ad, even though Fred wasn't in that day! Contact Fred â┚¬â€œ an inspired idea. I liked the idea of supporting someone who had, in a sense, been supporting my work. Fred also had a solid reputation and, for reasons, I can't explain, I trusted him.

I decided to shoot Fred an honest e-mail, laying down the facts of my car hunt. The van is dead, but it's our only down payment. We were caught unawares, ironically when I just started working out of a recessionary career rut. We we're looking for the impossible â┚¬â€œ something around $6000 (afraid to commit too much in the current economy), low miles, good gas mileage.

Later I got a call from Fred who was just as honest with me. First there was no way I'd get something financed right now for $6000 as the used car market has blown up and banks will only finance looking at something higher. We were wise to look for something gas efficient considering the price of gas was rising and will be $5.00 a gallon soon. He ended the conversation by saying he had â┚¬Å”bearedâ┚¬Â his soul to me, making a pun on the community he identifies with. He left me to look at the website and give him a call, if we found something appealing.

By now we were beginning to feel pressure to get a new car. We were borrowing a car from Dad â┚¬â€œ our second borrowed car during this car nightmare â┚¬â€œ and he was not so subtly indicating that he wanted it back. Yes, it is his second car and, as his neighbor sassed him, you can't drive two cars at once. That would be beside the point to him.

Brendan and I started looking through what Don Reid Ford had to offer. Given our new knowledge about the price of the car we needed to look for, we began entertaining the idea of buying a new vehicle. It was beginning to feel like I was back in that listless zone again, when Brendan found something on the Don Reid site that we weren't expecting. A 2011 Smart Car with about 2000 miles on it, being sold for a reasonable price.

Despite the hopeful tone that is the very nature of this blog, I have to admit to being a bit of a pessimist, so I still have a hard time believing the great treatment I got from Fred Berliner. Each time we had contact, I would expect the worst and there would actually be good news; the warrantee was extended because of this or that, for example. Because of Fred's dedication, I wound up with a sweetheart of a deal, including getting way too much in the trade for Vincent.

Now I the proud driver of a Smart Car, being far kinder to the planet than I thought was feasible at this particular point in my life, getting 33 miles to the gallon when I'm stop-and-go puttering around town. How awesome to get be able to walk the talk, as they say. As you and I go along our SSTW journey, I'll be able to tell you the things I've observed about the American psychology regarding cars. Our dependence on petroleum is as embedded in our psyche as apple pie.

I took this occasion to register my new car with a treesarecool.com license plate. For those non-Floridians in my readership, we have specialty license plates in Florida that I've noticed are starting to crop up in other states. You pay $25 above the normal registration and you get cool looking license plate â┚¬â€œ well, actually that depends on the one you get, I think the arts one is icky â┚¬â€œ and the money goes to that organization. There's one that helps manatees, several that support colleges, and, for reasons I can't fathom, ones that support professional sports teams (I'm hoping the money goes to charity off-shoots). Anyway, my license plate supports the Florida chapter of the International Society of Arboriculture.

I've had all this good news about me, so I know about now you're wondering what's in it for you, right? Well, let me tell you! If you go to Fred Berliner at Don Reid Ford and tell him I sent you, I'll get $50 for the referral. Wait, â┚¬Å”bearâ┚¬Â with me, I know that sounds an awful lot like it's about me again, but if you do go and I do get the 50 bucks, I'm going to give that money to ISA. Helps to offset our carbon emissions, get it? Naturally I can't promise you'll get a Smart Car â┚¬â€œ that was some pretty good timing, on top of everything â┚¬â€œ but I'm sure Mr. Berliner can help you find something fuel efficient.

Oh, by the way, Brendan and I quickly named the latest addition to our family. We couldn't help by call him Fred.