I Knew Him Well

My '89 Buick LeSabre has lived a long life. It has gone almost 200,000 miles, although the odometer hasn't worked properly for parts of the last 20,000. It's really a two-tone car - silver and rust. Since some time this fall, the "Brake" light on the dashboard has been lit. It has been making a loud, high-pitched grinding noise for some of that time. It is about 500-1000 miles overdue for an oil change. When it does go in for an oil change, the hood, which lifts from the windshield, sticks for the first half hour that the mechanics work on it. We haven't necessarily been "in the money" fro the last 9 months, so the Buick was always the lowest priority. I tell you that to tell you this.

Last Wednesday, we needed to get on the road to come down to Chicago. It also happened to be the morning that our parking lot was getting plowed after the first real storm of the winter. All cars had to be moved by 10am or they would get towed. So, I got up at 9:30 and moved the Subaru out to the road. I then had to scrape the snow off of the Buick (luckily I had already shoveled off the snow on the Buick the night before). When I tried to turn the car on, nothing. No click, no grinding, no sputtering. Nothing. Occasionally the dashboard would beep as I turned it off. I quickly realized that the gas gauge was showing a quarter of a tank (a "quarter of a tank" when the car is off means "fumes" when the car is on). When I got out of the car, I tried to lock the car with the power locks. I then realized that the battery was dead. After praying and doing all I knew to prophesy over the car, nothing happened. I got Katy and she tried the same wih the same results. All that we could do was push the car out to the street. By 10:30, we had pushed the car just barely out of its parking spot. Luckily, the plow came to our lot before the tow truck, which was filled with other lots' cars. The man plowed the snow out of our parking spot and then helped us to push the car back into the spot so he could continue plowing. So, in an odd answer to prayer, we didn't get our car towed.

We were supposed to get another 4-10 inches of snow that night, which would mean that they probably would have plowed the lot on Friday. One woman in the front office said "Tough luck" when we asked about any special provisions for us since we would be out of town for awhile. Another woman, later, took down our cell phone number, said they would call us if they needed to plow, and was willing to plow us in if no other options were found.

Three options:
1. It snowed, they plowed, and they towed our car.
2. It snowed, it melted, they didn't plow, and we're fine.
3. It didn't snow enough to plow.

We've prayed against the first, but we won't know until we get back. We may have seen the last of the buick, since it is not worth picking it up if it has been towed.