
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, March 30, 1992                   TAG: 9203300194
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-11   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MONTY S. LEITCH
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

POLITICS IN A TRANSMISSION

"PULL UP beside my car," a friend directed us the other day. "You see - that one right there. The one with the $500 worth of recent repairs."

Of course, it didn't look like it'd just had a $500 shot in the crankcase. That was his point. It looked more like a car on which $500 could easily still be spent.

I thought about this the other morning while I was lying in the frost-crusted grass, tying up my muffler and tailpipe with lengths of heavy string. It'd still make a powerful racket, but at least it wouldn't drag when I drove in to have it repaired.

I'd first noticed the hole in the muffler the day I picked up my car from its $300 transmission, etc., repairs. I said a few words that can't be printed in family newspapers and speculated on the wisdom of a repair shop that would let such a thing get by them when they already had me for so much.

Then I'd just kept driving the blasted car - with it blowing and coughing and all - until the tailpipe finally broke in two.

Then I'd let the blamed thing sit in the yard for a month.

Finally, the other morning I gave up. "Put it on the plastic," I said, when the repairman gave me the bill.

I know a couple who'd just had the engine rebuilt in one of their cars

when a kindly neighbor came by, wanting to do them a favor. He said, "You know that car you're driving's gonna need a complete overhaul 'fore long. Hear it knock? That's a bad sign."

He wasn't talking about the car they'd just repaired. He was talking about the other one, the one they'd thought was just fine.

We're all driving clunkers these days. My clunker has nearly 200,000 miles on it, and I know good and well that the $300 transmission job of a couple of months ago was merely a stop-gap measure. A quickie patch-up, until the day when the whole transmission falls out.

Well, I know a couple of really reliable towing services, too.

All the bigwigs and politicians talk about minuscule percentage points of growths and losses, interest rates, market growth, balance of trade. I'm a pretty bright person, but philosophical speculations on money that I can't see don't mean a thing to me.

What I know, instead, is this: Anyone who's still got a car to drive is driving a clunker. Anyone who's still got a job is holding on for dear life. And I'm still wearing the same pair of hand-me-down walking shoes someone gave me three years ago because the new ones I want cost more than $70.

You think it's the economy that's depressed? Oh, no. It's the people who're depressed. Everywhere you look.

Monty S. Leitch is a Roanoke Times & World-News columnist.

by CNB