The Craigslist Chevrolet

We want to be mobile, so Erin and I research places to rent a car.  The nearest Enterprise is over two hours away.  On a daily basis we see RVs with pictures of national parks on the back and CruiseAmerica.com written above the windshield.  It costs a thousand dollars to rent one of those for a week.  Erin thinks there should be an option to rent a car for a few months.  What if you’re on vacation in a foreign country or a faraway state and you intend to stay a while but have no way of getting around? 

Then I get the idea to buy a cheap car on Craigslist and split the cost between four people.  Erin and I initially agreed to cover half, and then we met another couple, Chris and Emma, who flew here from California and who also find it frustrating to live in such a remote place with no transportation.  The other three already have cars that are in the shop, so I agree to register the car and buy the insurance.  During the summer, we will all share the car, but when the season ends I will drive it home on a circuitous road trip through the national parks of the West.

The plan is to get a piece of junk that looks like hell but runs well, and I’ll buy basic coverage.  If the car dies or becomes expensively broken, I will leave it where it stops, or I will place a brick on the gas pedal, jump out of the door, and watch it careen over a cliff.  There is no option to rent a car for three months, so I have to invent my own plan. 

I do not like owning a car because there is a gas tank to fill, insurance payments to make, and the never-ending dread that on some inconvenient day smoke will rise from the engine and the car will cease to move because of some illness I cannot diagnose.  I would much rather ride a bike or take the bus around the city, but in Wyoming one needs a set of wheels to explore the land.  The West demands to be driven because the land is too vast to be biked or walked in a reasonable amount of time.  Thus we begin our search.

We use the computer in the employee dining room to select cars under $1,000 located in southern Montana.  I compile a list of four options that will drive immediately and have no transmission problems.  Most of the cars have at least 150,000 miles on them and more than a few scratches on the paint.  My dad works on cars for a living, so I call him for his advice and eventually settle on a ’95 Chevy Lumina listed at a grand.  I have owned only one car in my life.  When I turned sixteen and got my license after failing my test four times for hitting the cones while parallel parking, my dad bought me a ’95 Chevy Lumina, which I drove around in my hometown for two years.  When I went to college in Pittsburgh, I got rid of the car because I didn’t want to pay a hundred dollars per month to insure a car that spent five days a week in a parking garage. 

Eight years later I find the same exact model, but this one is blue instead of white.  The odometer reads 127,000 miles.  The windshield is cracked but sealed mostly on the passenger side.  The driver’s seat isn’t properly secured to the floor, and the passenger side mirror is missing.  As long as the car moves when I press on the pedal and everything is legal, although barely, I don’t care what the car looks like, so I send the guy an email. 

I tell him I am interested in buying his car, and I want to set up a time to meet, but he is going out of town during my two days off.  Next week comes, and he isn’t responding to my emails.  I am worried he may have sold the car, and now we have to start our search over again.  On the Craigslist page for cars and trucks for sale in Bozeman, Montana, most of the pictures show immobile scraps of metal with capitalized warnings like:  WILL SELL FOR PARTS or PROJECT CAR.  

Everything about the Chevy Lumina is ideal for a price so low.  Out of all the options one thousand dollars and under, this car has the fewest miles.  The battery, tires, and brakes are relatively new, and the car is only a two hour drive away in a town where most of my friends hang out on the weekends. 

Finally the guy responds and asks me if I can meet him on Sunday around four in the evening.  Erin and I are both off, but Chris works breakfast and lunch, so this requires complicated finagling with the schedule.  I ask Chris to persuade his friend to let us borrow his car, which is a manual, something I cannot drive.  Chris is an integral part of the plan because only he can drive a stick shift, and he is the only one his friend trusts driving his car.  

Erin is the researcher, and the voice of reason who advises me to be cautious rather than buying the first car I see for the immediate satisfaction of driving away only to sputter out a few miles down the road because of some issue I overlooked.  I’m just the guy who haggles for the price and signs the title and takes the blame if we crash into a deer.

Chris manages to get his shifts covered, and his friend eventually relents on lending his car.  We drive north out of Yellowstone and into the valleys of Montana until we reach a small conglomeration of recognizable stores, a main street with cafes and bookstores, and a small population scattered between the downtown area and the outlying plazas. 

City is rarely an appropriate word to use when describing a place in Montana.  Some exits off the highway are bigger than others.  A few of them have movie theaters and Walmarts, but most of them don’t.  Bozeman has both, so it is considered big, but if you are from the East you will consider it a town between cities.  However, if a place is more urban than rural in the land where there are no cities, then you have little choice but to call it a city.

We park the car in a free lot near Main Street, and we walk to a café to buy coffee and use our laptops while killing time before the meeting.  I stop in a bookstore and buy a bulky text about Lewis and Clark and another one about the Oregon Trail.  Reading about the environment in which you live makes the place seem more alive.  When I look out at the land, I know the earth has no opinion of what has occurred there, and the history seems dead.  But when I learn what has transpired during the migrations to the West, I find significance in vanished moments where the land leaves no evidence, only that which is preserved in the memories of those who bore witness and remembered to write it down.

Four o’clock.  We drive to College Street and into an apartment complex, where we find the Chevy Lumina we had previously only seen in pictures.  I call the guy, and he comes out to meet the three of us.  He tells me the car has been sitting in the lot for a while, and he is trying to get rid of it because he already bought a new one.  I ask him if we can test it out, and he hands me the keys, which I hand to Chris.  Erin stays behind while Chris and I pull out of the parking lot and cruise around Montana State University keeping our ears peeled for funny noises. 

We stop and change places.  The driver’s seat jostles when I plump down into it and slings back when I accelerate quickly.  We both decide the seat will not fall off and the extra movement is an added bonus of entertainment.  The crack in the windshield does not obstruct the driver’s view.  For now, I will use the rearview mirror and briefly shake myself of the habit of checking the passenger side mirror when changing lanes.  Instead I will ask the passenger if I’m clear.  

There is a faint smell of burning oil, but the car runs smoothly.  Chris says he feels confident about making an offer. I call my dad for his opinion, and he says that everything checks out besides the obvious missing pieces which are not imperative for movement.

When we all reconvene in the parking lot, I ask the guy to give us a few minutes to discuss our offer.  I want to start with $700 in order to work my way up to $800, but the others convince me not to be so aggressive about the cutting the price.  The guy is very friendly and easygoing, and he seems more than willing to part with this car.  We could drive this back home tonight, as long as we don’t offend the guy.  We agree on an asking price.  Chris and Erin stay behind with the car, and I approach the guy and say, “Will you take eight-fifty for it?”

He says, “I’ll take nine hundred.”

I shake his hand, and he goes upstairs to his apartment to get the title.  I hand him the cash and sign on the line and thank him again.  After he unscrews his license plate, the three of us drive to Walmart, where I order a chocolate milkshake and use the WiFi in McDonalds to buy insurance for about twenty bucks a month.  

Then we are heading south through the fading light between the Absaroka Mountains with an unregistered car with no license plate.  The radio is playing hits from the nineties, and the wind is screaming through the open windows.  We no longer have to rely on favors from friends.  If there is somewhere we would like to go, now we can go.  And to think:  there used to be places on maps that were too far to reach.