How God has helped me and my family with cars.

version of  12/06/03

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When it came time to move to South Carolina, I was easily able to pack all of my belongings, including three cats, into the vehicle. It served the purpose. Living, as I did, on campus, and eating with the students, the GMC soon got borrowed for all sorts of purposes. (I didn't need to go off-campus often myself, and had a hard time saying no, I guess.) Gospel teams used it. Three or four girls who didn't have dates for the Junior-Senior banquet decided to go stag somewhere, and borrowed it. David Kelly, student, and Judy Magnusson, librarian, got married, and took their honeymoon in it. On October 29th, 1966, Faye and I were using it when we got married, so that was two faculty-student honeymoons in the same vehicle, probably an all-time SWU record. That our marriage was associated with that vehicle was fitting, as I had been driving it when I first saw Faye.

Eventually, my late father-in-law, John Coyle, bought the van, when we got a different car. It was still his when he died in 1996, although it wasn't his only vehicle. I'm not sure what has happened to it.

In about 1978, I was taking a car on a field trip to the Yerkes Regional Primate Center, near Lawrenceville, GA. I had had a suspicion that the oil needed changing, so I had it changed. (I am anything but a mechanic!) Well, on the way, the car made some awful noises. One of the students, Russell Guffee from Pendleton, said, "It sounds terminal, Doc!" He called a friend in Pendleton who came and towed it, while the class and I got into one less vehicle and proceeded on our way. Another student from Pendleton volunteered to lend Faye and me his car, so that we could go car-shopping. We went to Anderson, and picked out a Dodge Aspen station wagon. It became our vehicle. These guys, whoever they were, were super good to us! It was the last new car we will owned, until 2003, when we bought a Honda Accord.

In 1982, Faye, Stacy and I headed for Bloomington, IN, for a National Institutes of Health Summer Seminar on Bioethics. We went early, so we could take Amtrak to LA to see my brother David and his family. We got tickets from Terre Haute, IN. I didn't know any better, so left the car parked on the street, a half block or so from the train station. (There was no designated parking) We were gone for over a week. The first thing I saw, and looked for, was the Aspen. There it was--right where we had left it. No one had stolen it, or towed it. Thank God!

By 1989, Faye and I both had jobs, and Stacy was also driving, so we felt that we needed more than one car. (We still had the Aspen) We bought a 1988 maroon Ford Taurus wagon. Stacy drove it, and we agreed that she would drive it to Marion, IN, where she was to be a senior at Marion College. (Now Indiana Wesleyan University) There was a problem. The car was using oil. I took it to be looked at. The Ford dealership I was taking it to couldn't find anything. We took it to Michigan for our 25th anniversary, leaving it in a designated parking lot in Oshawa, Ontario. It was still there when we returned, but I had to buy oil in Michigan on the way back.

Finally, I asked the guy who acted as go-between between the customers and the mechanics to drive the car for a weekend, since they didn't seem to believe me when I said there was anything wrong. He drove it for about 100 miles, and it lost a quart of oil. He believed me. I'm not sure what was wrong with the car. Once a week, I went to Greenville, SC, to teach an evening class. On the way over, I kept stopping to check on the car. This went on for seven weeks. It still wasn't ready. It developed that they had ordered a new motor for it, but somehow the delivery went astray. It finally came in, and we got the car back the night before Stacy was supposed to leave for Indiana, just in time. The charges for replacing the motor were exactly $25, apparently because they were embarrassed over the fiasco. God was, and is, good!

Stacy drove the same car to the Medical University of South Carolina. When she and Rich moved to California, she decided that she wanted something a little newer, and she gave it back to us. I'm still driving it to work, and to other occasions, including to Pennsylvania to bring Amber back after her sophomore year at Messiah College, in May 1999, and to take Faye's mother and her stuff to Charlotte for her last trip there, in August, 2000. (The Aspen was junked in about 1995, but it was my go-to-work car for years.)

We bought a 1991 Honda Civic, and drove it for several years. We took it to Grantham, PA, for Amber's sophomore year at Messiah College. She and Eric drove it to Peoria on their honeymoon, and Amber drives it to work now.

In August, 2003, Faye and I began making payments on a 2003 Honda Accord, our first new vehicle since 1978. So far, it works fine.

Moral? God is good, even about so-called ordinary details.

-Martin LaBar