(first posted 8/14/2016) It was mid-September, 2001, and a psychiatrist on the PT Cruiser’s radio was saying that the 9/11 terrorist attacks could prompt people to make their lives more meaningful while they still had the time.
It would cause some people thinking about getting married to get married, and it would cause some people thinking about getting divorced to get divorced.
My wife was in the latter case.
It could be called the most amicable divorce in NJ history, maybe the whole USA. It could also be called the most drawn out divorce in NJ history, maybe the whole USA.
After announcing she wanted a divorce, TIP moved upstairs to the spare room next to our son Will’s room. I remained in the ground floor master bedroom on the pine wood four poster we had bought on Bleeker Street in Greenwich Village just before moving to the “country” in 1990.
We sat down with Will in the living room and told him his parents were getting divorced. “OK”, he said looking at me, “where are you going to live?” “Pretty close” I answered, “not sure yet.” Will thought for a short second or two and said “cool, I’ll have two homes.”
Lots of his friends were from divorce-split homes, some of them divorce-split-twice. If it bothered him, he wasn’t showing it.
A friend of ours who was a real estate agent was picking up Will along with her two boys of similar age in her Sebring convertible. TIP and I walked down to the car as Will hopped into the back seat without using the door and clicked on his seat belt. We told her I wanted to buy a nearby local condo and asked if she would like to help.
“Sure.” She showed no surprised; it turned out most of the people we knew were not surprised.
Sometimes, the things you think are being kept private, are not so private after all.
In a few weeks I bought a two bedroom condo shown above; it was two miles from the marital abode.
This is the back view of the condo showing my neighbor Alice’s blooming white wisteria. So far, I have rescued Alice three times from a dead battery at various locations using either jumpers or my JNC-660 battery booster. Next year Alice, who is still an active artist, will be 90 years old. I am blessed with great neighbors.
It was an easy walk or bike ride for Will if he wanted to pop over. I moved into the unit in January 2002 and have been here ever since. With a re-fi or two since then, I’ll be 99 years old when the mortgage is paid off. That should be one quiet mortgage burning party.
Meanwhile Compaq, the company that bought DEC in 1998, was itself bought out by HP. So now I worked for HP.
Industry analysts were not overjoyed with this latest takeover/merger (HP buys Compaq) any more than they were with the first one (Compaq buys DEC) three years earlier. One media guru call the HP/Compaq “merger” like two drunks holding each other up.
Our new CEO was Carly Fiorina. As a resident of NJ, I was already familiar with Ms Fiorina who earlier had been a Lucent group president. Ms Fiorina oversaw so many management mis-steps at Lucent, which included NJ’s pride and joy Bell Labs, that Lucent ultimately disappeared from the corporate landscape in a series of failed mergers and at least one major accounting scandal. Many former Bell Labs/Lucent people blamed Ms Fiorina for the events leading to that sad affair.
In January 2003 the NYC DOC got a new Commissioner under the relatively new mayor Bloomberg and sweeping changes were made to DOC management and vendors. I was called into the office of my new DOC manager/customer and told “…you’re the DEC team project manager; I don’t need a DEC team project manager; I have my own project managers and my own way of doing things, we’ll run this team from now on; your services are no longer needed.”
It was just business; that’s how things sometimes go in business. Actually, from a business perspective, it was a good, long, and very profitable run.
I scrambled to find a revenue job within DEC Compaq HP asap because CEO Fiorina was conducting a blood bath of right-sizings. I found a position managing a small team working on a forensic e-mail retrieval project for a large bank responding to a court order. Because the e-mail server backups were made with outdated DEC hardware and software and stored on compact digital tapes, we used two old resurrected DEC systems to re-process the backup tapes and load them onto a bank of PCs in Microsoft Outlook format.
This was a revenue generating team, but still we lost a team member in the middle of the project to lay-offs due to the massive numbers of people being cut to make the HP/Compaq merger look better than it was.
Note-1: I suspect you’ve heard this before, but it bears repeating. Never put anything into an e-mail that you would not want to see printed in the NY Times, the National Inquirer, or discussed on MSNBC, CNN, or FOX. How many times do people have to hear this clear and unambiguous warning before they learn? Unless you completely control the e-mail servers on both ends of the communication, and most people do not, you do not control the e-mail backups.
While people were being laid off, including my revenue generating team member, Ms Fiorina bought or leased five new corporate planes, including one 30 million dollar Gulfstream IV deemed to be exclusively for her use. This created a stir within HP and as a result we all had to attend meetings where local (and clearly embarrassed) management explained to us the importance of having modern aircraft when HP is competing in the lofty and complicated business arena occupied by CEOs.
Meanwhile, TIP and I each got lawyers and told them to do nothing until they heard from us. If they were going to work billable hours, it would be work we wanted them to do.
I told TIP I would write the divorce agreement, get her OK, and then give it to my lawyer to codify, and then he would give it to her lawyer for his approval. Minimum legal billing hours and a fair agreement were my objectives. TIP agreed. She knew she would get a better net deal working with me than from an expensive lawyer-to-lawyer, high billing hours battle.
She wanted to keep the Passat. I suggested the PT Cruiser might be a better car, less expensive to run on regular gas, and probably cheaper to maintain, but her mind was set.
TIP discovered a few things in her new found separated-and-soon-to-be-divorced state.
- Bathrooms get dirty and they’re a pain to clean.
- Cars get dirty, inside and out.
- Car inspections are easy to forget.
- Car registrations renewals are easy to forget.
- Out of warranty Passats are not trouble free and they are expensive to fix.
- Lawn mowing is hard work and is needed weekly from early spring to late autumn.
- Leaf raking is hard work and happens every autumn.
- Snow doesn’t shovel itself.
- Household electrical, plumbing, and hardware related repairs are needed quite often.
There’s more but you get the idea.
I helped her with the last five of these tasks for the first few years but it was still a revelation to her to reflect on the easy life she had earlier, and how it might have had something to do with her husband’s hard work and boring behavior at home.
At church, the priest told the congregation that TIP was caught by local police with an inspection sticker on the Passat that was 18 months out-of-date. “She got a D-W-B”, he said, meaning driving-while-blonde. A few people laughed.
The Passat’s clutch went, not with a slipping wimper, but in a screaming smoking fit. All of my efforts to say the clutch never seemed right were rebuffed. In the end, the clutch AND the flywheel had to be replaced. Why, I never found out. It made the Eagle Vision repairs look cheap.
One of the two engine cooling fans started vibrating so badly the dealer disconnected it and told TIP it needed to be replaced. There were other issues, always expensive to fix, but TIP tended to ignore them unless they became serious.
I paid for these repairs because she was working locally at a senior housing development and I was trying to not have too many things overwhelm her.
TIP kept putting off the activities needed to get the divorce settled. I pushed and prodded as much as I dared, but the delays went from 2002 into early 2006. Finally, she moved on the paper work (*), the settlement was codified, a court date was set, and suddenly it was done.
(*) I think the fact that she had a serious boy friend may have motivated her.
TIP also used that court appearance to change back to her maiden name.
She got the marital abode, free and clear. That’s two fully paid homes I have given away.
As the great musical sage and philosopher Willie Nelson once said: “I’m not going to get married again, I think I’ll just find a woman that hates me, then buy her a house.”
It was a few months later that I realized I had not had an ulcer attack in a long time.
I offered to pay the expenses for TIP to get a MSW (Masters in Social Work) so that in the future she could support herself and always be able to get a decent paying job. She took me up on that offer.
One cold snowy morning in 2007 I was working from home on HP storage array project planning, happy to not be driving anywhere in the miserable weather, when I got a call from an unknown number. It was TIP.
“Can you pick me up? I’m on 287 south and I just had an accident. I think the car is totaled.”
I thought of asking why she doesn’t call her damn boyfriend, but I did not, I just said OK and asked where exactly she was. “Just come south from Basking Ridge, you can’t miss it, three of four cop cars, three or four tow trucks, all with flashing lights.” Three or four tow trucks?
I cleaned the snow off the PT Cruiser and gently headed out to the rescue. As is my nature, I felt for and noted how well the new Michelin Hydro-Edge tires were working in the 4 to 6 inches of powdery snow.
The scene of the accident was a mess.
There were three or four cars deep into the trees that bordered the highway, all badly mangled. When I got there, the white Passat was being dragged out of the woods by a cable attached to a big wreaker/carrier. None of the wheels were turning as the car was dragged through the now deepening snow and mud. Every airbag in the car had gone off. The front, back, right, left, and roof panels of the car were all mangled. All of them.
TIP was calm, maybe in shock. I asked the cop whose cell phone she had used to call me (she forgot to take hers when she left home) if she was good to go and he just nodded. It looked like he had a lot of paperwork to do. I leaned into the Passat, checked for any personal valuables, and removed my Easy-Pass from the windshield.
“I want to go home” she said. At the house I could still see the vague tire marks she had left just a little while earlier.
TIP, on her way to a MSW class, and a few other cars were going about 75 mph in the heavily falling snow when they encountered an icy spot. One or more hit their brakes and all went spinning into the woods. 75 mph, in heavy snow, on icy roads, with poor visibility. OK, makes sense to some people.
She was lucky. The vault-like Passat did one important thing very well. That’s why I did not name the prior VW COAL “From The Chrysler Frying Pan Into The VW Fire.” I did not like the troublesome and expensive to repair Passat, but must admit it was a solid and safe car.
Back in 2002, I settled into the newest phase of my life and tried to be a not-too-distant father to Will. I joined the vestry of the church we had been attending as a family and took on the worst of all vestry jobs, stewardship chairman.
Will often came to the 8 A.M. church service (no choir and no music – my kind of service) with me and attended the after church men’s breakfast club, which usually included a few women, but was still called the men’s breakfast club. Will loved that inconsistent title and enjoyed the topical subjects of discussions at those genial gatherings, some politics, some social commentary, and lots of friendly humor.
One of the regular topics was his father’s dating life, which all attendees knew was non-existent. A standard question to Will was, did your father come home with any hot dates this week? Will’s smiling reply was always the same: “My dad? Are you kidding?” Everyone laughed, including me.
TIP’s boy friend was a nice enough fellow and he considered himself a car guy, but the cars he drove were all flashy, expensive, and fast. Most were S model V8 Audis, including one rare 2003 RS6. That may be a car guy of sorts, but not my sort of a car guy. I once had to jump start the RS6 (he had gotten a ride and left the dead RS6 for TIP to resolve) which had the battery in a box located deep in the trunk.
I appreciated his efforts to maintain a cordial relationship with me, but I respectively declined to attend their wedding when they were married a few years later. I told them “I don’t go to weddings; they give me stomach pains.” I thought that was funny.
In July 2009, two months after my 65th birthday, I got a call from my manager early on a early Monday morning. The world was in the early stages of the “great sub-prime mortgage recession” of 2008 and I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
I was right-sized .
I wondered what younger people were being included in this lay-off because corporations always salted the layoffs of older workers with a few younger workers of both sexes and varying races so as to prevent any litigious hint of ageism, racial, or gender bias.
Frankly I was OK with it. Work at HP/Compaq/DEC had stopped being interesting and enjoyable as soon as I was no longer working directly on site for customers who appreciated and valued my efforts.
I feel bad for people today who have to deal with greedy and sycophant filled corporations.
From late 2001 to mid 2005 I had lived like a monk. I was working hard and worrying about how Will was doing, and enjoying the fact that I was alive, healthy (no more ulcer), employed (until mid-2009), and that all the people I loved were healthy.
I walked a lot for exercise and to clear my mind. I started doing a variety of floor and weight exercises and they made me feel even better.
In mid 2005, I first saw Debbie.
I was at a loss for words one day when I found myself walking past a beautiful woman I had never seen before. All I could do was smile. I reasoned she must be a visitor that I’d never see again.
I saw her again about a week later and again did not know how to say anything. Maybe she wasn’t a visitor.
A few days later I saw her coming from a distance and prepared myself. I stumbled out an awkward hello and started a brief and polite conversation. Her name was Debbie; her late mother had owned a unit in my condo complex, and she was preparing to rent it out. She had been walking from her nearby home to the condo when I had seen her. She told me her last name, and later I tried to look it up so I could call her. Her name was not listed.
After that I didn’t see her for weeks. I walked even more than normal, concentrating on areas where I saw her in the past hoping to meet Debbie again, but no luck. Weeks went by.
Then Debbie saw me in the supermarket and said hello. I did not immediately recognize her without the sunglasses she always wore outdoors. I wrote her phone number on the brown paper bag holding the whole wheat French bread I was going to use to make Will’s favorite brie, lettuce and tomato with honey mustard sandwich.
Long happy story short, August 9, 2016 marked the 11th anniversary of our first date. Debbie is the love of my life.
Debbie is a vegetarian and treasures all forms of life, even insects. We walk together a lot, so much so that Google maps street view has a shot of us from August 2015.
This location is Saint James Church, zip 07920, first crosswalk heading north. Faces and license plates are blurred automatically by Google software.
I knew we were made for each other when on one of our first walks, she rescued a worm stranded on the sidewalk and gently placed it onto soft shaded ground.
Debbie has two miniature male Dachshunds named Benny and Marcelo, and a fluffy white female Havanese named Lucy.
The Tacoma, yes, I didn’t forget. That’s the main reason for this COAL.
With Debbie’s 3/4 acre of old growth trees and brush and TIP’s 2/3 acre of old growth trees and brush, the PT Cruiser was doing its best hauling brush, tree debris, and leaves to the dump. But 13 year old aging and starting-to-fail Chrysler parts, roof and side damage from heavy falling white pine branches (dumb of me to park under it is a snow storm), and the plethora of spider webs (and spiders) always found inside it after weekends of hauling brush (even after a through vacuuming) led me to Morristown Toyota one June Tuesday morning in 2013.
I had always recommended Hondas and Toyotas to relatives and friends and yet, I had never had a Toyota. When I asked my RAM pickup driving mechanic what cars he recommended, he answered “Honda or Toyota.” When I told him I wanted a pickup truck, he said “Toyota.” A RAM driving man of few words.
This is a 2013 Tacoma double cab long bed in spruce mica (aka dark dark green). It is 18.5 feet long, has a 140.6 inch wheelbase, and a 44 foot turning radius. When I go to the supermarket, parking is easier if I take the Miata.
The Tacoma has a 4.0-liter DOHC EFI V6, 24-valve aluminum block, an aluminum alloy head with VVT-i. It develops 236 hp at 5,200 rpm, and 266 lb.-ft. of torque at 4,000 rpm. The differential is 3.727 and the automatic’s fifth gear ratio is .72. It weighs 4,220 pounds.
It has the trailer towing package which includes a class 4 hitch, a supplemental transmission cooler, a supplemental oil cooler (shown above), a 130 amp alternator, a heavy duty battery, and a 7-pin connector. The towing limit is 6,400 pounds. Maybe some day I’ll actually tow something. Payload for the V6 double cab long bed is 1,280 pounds.
MotorWeek says the V6 auto Tacoma 4X4 goes from 0 to 60 in 7.8 seconds, and does the quarter mile in 16.1 seconds at 86 mph.
This Tacoma is not the rough and ready TRD model, so it rides a bit softer on its long wheelbase, has four-season P245/75R16 road tires, and lots of dashboard blanks (above and below).
The rear brakes are drums. A lot of vitriolic internet posts have be written about this fact, but it doesn’t bother me. MotorWeek says that stops from 60 mph average an “OK” 130 feet.
I was interested to see that outside lights go off automatically when the engine is shut down, and come back on when the engine is restarted. If you want lights on with the engine off, just turn the light switch off and back on.
It rides like a limousine; is quiet and comfortable, and with the aforementioned 7.8 second 0-60 time, seems to have a lot of power.
The Tacoma and the Miata comprise my current two vehicle fleet, but those two units cover many bases. Of course it would also be nice to someday have a clean Citroen DS, a type 1 VW Beetle, a Volvo P544, a Tesla, or a … … … well, you know how it is.
____________________________________________________________________________________
This COAL brings us up-to date; it has been an interesting retrospective journey.
When I sent a COAL proposal to Paul in late March of this year, I thought I’d write about the cars in my life, describe them to the best of my memory, and wax effusively about the good old days and good old cars.
It didn’t turn out that way, and was quite a bit harder than I expected. But it was also a fully enjoyable and cathartic endeavor.
I told Paul about half way through the series that “… I’ve never put these events into writing, and in doing so, has kind of straightened out the spaghetti-like tangle of memories trailing behind me over the last 55 years.”
(Note): When working at Grumman in the late ’60s/early ’70s I had to keep track of time spent on different Navy and NASA projects. Those “time dairies” became a lifetime habit even after Grumman and were also used to track various life events and activities. So while it may seem that I have a good memory, I also had a little diary help as well.
Evan Reisner said it best in his recent COAL: “It isn’t the cars themselves, not the sheet metal, the engines, the buying and selling, or anything else that makes the Cars of Our Lifetimes important, it’s the experiences they give us, both good and bad, that is what gives cars meaning to us.”
The best part of writing these COALs have been your comments. Thank you for taking the time to write your thoughts about the various topics of these COALS. I always look forward to reading them and have enjoyed every single comment.
Additional Reading: https://www.curbsideclassic.com/cars-of-a-lifetime/coal-2009-toyota-tacoma-the-anti-beater/
-30-
Well done.
They’re not tears, I just got some dust in my eyes.
Rlplaut, it’s been grand. Thank you.
BRAVO! It has been a great journey. Thanks for the stories, they will be missed.
Do those blanks on the Tacoma bother you? Despite the interwebZ its armchair experts vitriol, if Toyota used drum instead of disc brakes is because they could meet their targets with that. Also, there was not a lot of competition in that segment before. The current one has a plastic cargo tub. It is surprising that in this day and age, Toyota still uses the same digital clock from 30 years ago.
I think I speak for the whole Curbside Classic community when I say this was a fantastic series and it’s sad to see it come to an end.
I’m very happy you’ve found love again, too, and that everything in your life seems to be great! And I love the color of your Tacoma.
My thoughts exactly!
+1
As william Said, thank you for sharing this series with us. Reading it is literally the first thing I do on Sundays after getting out of bed.
Thoroughly enjoyable, couldn’t wait for Sunday mornings. Like JPC says below, please, hurry up and buy more cars!
I admire that you have seen after TIP in spite of the divorce. I don’t think I could manage the same.
I’ll second that. Thank you for sharing your life: it’s been a pleasure to read every word.
+1 and then some!
Agree — thank you for sharing your cars and life events and how they evolved.
+1 from a distant Europe!
+1. Well done, RL, thanks for sharing your stories with us. you opened yourself up there – which takes courage – and we’re the richer for it. Best wishes to you and Debbie.
Excellent. You have enlightened me about the information systems work world, relationships, and even certain automobiles. It’s been a well-written weekly treat. If gold medals were given for serials, you would have your own Wheaties box.
+1
Thank you so much for writing these,
Sunday nights won’t be the same without them.
The happy ending absolutely charmed and delighted me! Like you, I have two cars: The Sensible One (9 yr old Dacia Logan MCV) and The Stupid One (20 yr old Bentley Turbo R). In your honour I am going to take Ol’ Wallet Fryer to the supermarket today. All the best, Canard.
You deserve some kind of award for owning the two most extreme ends of the automotive spectrum. The automotive version of bi-polar syndrome. 🙂
Hehehe! Kindly Dr Jekyll drives the Dacia.
Thanks for this. Am going through the upheavals of yet another corporate shuffle at work so I can relate to everything you say. I’d go into pension at a drop of a hat but funds are not there yet. Oh, I have always been fascinated by these North America only (?) big Toyota pick up; here in Austria we only get the Hilux which – although possessed by very similar looks – is, I believe, another vehicle altogether and is available with only one engine option (150 hp diesel).
The Tacoma is the “compact” pickup. The Hilux and the Tacoma are related, but they are unlikely to be the same.
Something similar happens with the US and the ROW Colorado.
I see the American Toyota pickups quite regularly, all of them grey imports. And all of them with an LPG system.
The current HiLux model has a new 150 hp 2.4 liter D4D engine. Either with a 6-speed manual or a 6-speed automatic transmission.
And good to see a happy ending to this impressive series of articles !
Never saw a Tacoma in Austria – I have a feeling those who want something like this go for the “real” thing, that is, a Ford/Chev/GMC/Ram…
I was more thinking of the Tundra. If you’re in the market for a V8 pickup, then why not the Toyota ?
It’s right here, Ram – Ford – Toyota:
https://uscardealer.nl/modellen?brand=toyota
We get the 4 litre V6 in the Australian market HiLux- my missed former work vehicle had one. A good reliable engine, though a little heavy on fuel.
nice
similarities to my life. also i have 2011 version of that truck with 108,000 miles and nothing but oil and filter changes and tires, original brakes even!
So glad to see you have some happiness in your life.
Thanks for the great series and best wishes.
I was sad when you and TIP split up. I have an unsophisticated and undeveloped romantic idea.
Glad to hear it turned out relatively happily after all.
Minor note: I’m assuming you mean the two companies were two drunks holding each other up, although depending on one’s preferred slang, “dunks” might not be wrong…!
Got it; thank you AUWM.
Scott McNealy of the now-defunct Sun Microsystems called the HP-Compaq merger: “Two garbage trucks colliding”
What a delicious (albeit heartbreaking at times) read this has been. Thanks for sharing your life (and some incidental cars along the way) with us!
Great series – loved you writing. I see that you comment from time to time too. Perhaps you would consider writing articles for us to enjoy? I am sure there are many fascinating people in your life and they all have some sort of car related story.
This has been a wonderful series and I’ve enjoyed reading them early every Sunday morning. It is amazing how the cars in our life help define specific chapters and associate themselves with certain events in our lives. Sir, this series has been top-notch.
For whatever you might think it’s worth, I would encourage you to keep going with writing about cars you encounter, those that you haven’t owned yet had significant meaning to you, etc. You have a great perspective to offer.
+1 Definitely want to read more from the plaut.
Agreed. I didn’t even notice the absence of the Toyota from the story until you said “The Tacoma, yes, I didn’t forget.” I was so caught up with narrative. That’s great writing!
“that’s two fully paid homes I have given away.” Aargh!! The stuff of nightmares.
Carly was responsible for the demise of Bell Labs? Geez she was awful in so many ways.
I cannot tell you how much I have enjoyed reading these each Sunday morning…the cars frankly became secondary. And you’ve made me homesick for NJ.
There are times I am very grateful for not having a relationship, very grateful. Particularly when reading sentences like this (even if in Mr. Plaut’s case it had a happy ending).
Nicely played, Mr. Plaut. 🙂
This looks like a happy (ending?) continuance. I am so glad you found Debbie. It seems you guys are made for each other.
RL: no doubt, your COAL series has been very influential to my own writing. You published your experiences, both good and bad. That’s honesty in writing. In your case it added a huge amount of entertainment value.
Thank you so much!!!!!
Thank you very much for the series. I’ve enjoyed them very much.
Easily the most absorbing & interesting series of articles that I have read on this site (no Offense, Paul.)
You treated your TIP much, much better than I would had!
This has been a full-fledged autobiography as much or more than it’s been a collection of car stories. Awesome!
This series was COAL at its finest, thank you for the engaging stories. If we ever do a CC East Coast Meet up, I would hope to see you there.
COAL = Cars…Oh, AND (a) Lifetime.
Wonderful.
What a journey, thank you for bringing us along with you. I don’t think I am alone if I suggest that you need to buy some more cars. ? Even if you don’t, I hope we haven’t heard the last from you.
Thank you for the shout-out, RL. While your series took quite a different path from mine, I enjoyed every word.
I think a round of applause and a standing ovation is due here. Just a great series. Thank you!
+1
Wow. Just wow. Thank you so much for writing all these and making a COAL series so much more. They are all good but the way that the surroundings were woven into the cars was excellent. CC is evolving and this is one of them of the ways in which it is doing so. In the beginning COALs were very much about the cars and their stories and more recently have included more about the settings of the lives around the cars which has been great. Thank you, it’s been a great ride which like all of them passed by way too quickly.
A fine series about your life and the roles your various cars have played in it. To some, a car is just another appliance, and we sometimes overlook the part they have in our lives. You’ve done a wonderful job of weaving both together. Well done.
Thanks for such a great COAL series. I too was “right sized” at the end of 2008. Turns out my new manager needed to make this right sized so his daughter could slip into my job!
That was the end of the dealership hell jobs for me, and the housing collapse allowed me to get a really good deal on a foreclosed investment rental house, (which has doubled in value since 2010) and having never married I am still in possession of 2 paid for homes.
I wish you all the best and hope the two of you have a long and happy life together.
Nice series, thanks for the contributions.
RL, you’ve made so many people happy today. May you and your lovely lady enjoy many years and miles of happiness and laughter together. Oh, yeah, cool truck too.
PS — I considered myself a good writer until I read your stuff. I sincerely hope to see your byline atop future articles.
You speak the truth with your PS, I’m not nearly as impressed with myself as I was before reading this series! 🙂 And I’d also love to see more, the subject doesn’t really matter.
Geez, Jim , you could have at least thrown me a bone….?
Ha, I meant I can relate your statement to myself, not casting any aspersions on you! 🙂
Thanks for a great series. My carpool buddy has an identical truck, even the same year, color and tow package, except in shortbed. Two annoyances, fuel economy hardly any better than some full-sizers, and the trans downshifts whenever the brakes are applied and keeps right on dragging until he hits the gas.
I’ve looked forward to reading these every Sunday morning. Thank you so much for sharing your stories with us!
Your series has been an engaging, nostalgic, wrenching, and on both automotive and personal fronts, educational read. I’ve learned a lot of wisdom about life, relationships, and work from reading it. Also, since I live and work in Manhattan, it’s been great being able to relate to locations and occurrences in places with which I’m familiar.
I also continue to be a little jealous of you guys who worked hard and did well in the early 80s! Seems like more of a correlation then than now.
I’ll really miss the series, it had become an integral part of my Sunday morning reading. But thank you for sharing it all, and so well. I am happy you have found what sounds like contentment after a long slog.
What else can anyone say? This series has turned out to be the best of anything I’ve read on CC. It was informative, heartfelt, sociologically thought provoking, and extremely well thought out and written. Thank you for putting so much of yourself into sharing this. It’s clearly been appreciated, and I’m glad to read in your closing commentary that you’ve found it rewarding. My hat’s off to you, sir.
Indeed, MTN has said exactly what I would like to say though far better than I could say it. Thank you so much Mr. Plaut for providing these wonderful reads for the CC community. Hope to see more of your writing in the future.
And Dennis has said exactly what I would have said to MTN. 🙂 Thanks, Mr. Plaut.
Great series! I am going to miss them with my Sunday morning coffee. Learned a lot about a few cars I had dismissed in the past. I am even temped to find a PT cruiser…
Great series Ive enjoyed it, Ive also had several HP products most of which died due to poor quality parts installed, Steve jobs claimed they made their money out of printer ink possibly though the brand new HP printer I have refuses to recognize paper,
Those US model Toyota pickups differ quite a lot from the Hilux version we have the V8 motor seems popular in the oil rich places the Tacoma is marketed or used as a gun platform, most of ours have the D4D diesel engines, Any how I have to go to work now so au revoir Mr Plaut its been a pleasure.
Well, you know the business model for printers is to price the actual printer cheap (and they are) but make the bulk of the money and the profits on the ink cartridges. It’s normal to spend multiples of the initial printer cost on ink refills, at least for the home printers.
Just like Gillette – sell the razors for little money, but make it up on the blades.
Brilliant series…thanks!
Any chance of getting this entire odyssey combined into one article?
Please??
Pretty Please???
pssst: search, cut and paste into your word processor.
If you click on RLPLUAT at the top of this article, it will take you to all of his articles in reverse order.
Indeed it does!
Thanks, SOITWW.
Any story that ends with Tacoma is a great one.thanks for teaching me afew things that i did not know before.have a nice rest of your life.
I have one question, does Debbie like to listen to “A Prairie Home Companion”?
I’m going to miss Garrison’s nostril-whistling. Joking aside PHC was very witty entertainment.
I will say one thing, when it comes to cars, you certainly do not have a “type”.
»Thundrous applause«
I just want to add my congratulations on an excellently written series, my attempts now seem even more feeble and unworthy after reading these. I’m glad that your personal life seems to have found a happy place. I have (fortunately) never been through a divorce but one of my sisters has been married and divorced four different times. Somehow she was able to remain friends with all three of her ex-husbands (she married one guy twice). I don’t think that I’m a big enough person to do that, but, as always, different people react in different ways.
I can certainly identify with your work situation; I was “right sized” from a job I had held for 15 years early in 2008. The primary stockholder (the widow of the company’s founder) was trying to sell out and wanted to make the company more appealing to any prospective buyer. I was at the peon level and thought that I was safe but was not. Out of the 30 or so people who were let go all but 2 or 3 of us were over 50, just enough twenty somethings got the ax to prevent any thoughts of an age discrimination lawsuit. I did get a reasonably good severance package but having to look for a new job when one is 55 is not easy. It took 7 or 8 months but I did find another job, one I was able to retire from at the end of 2014.
Oh yes, Carly Fiorina; a good friend had worked at HP for 25+ years when she took over. He was fortunate enough to be able to take early retirement but many were not so lucky. Now the mere mention of her name is enough to send him into a towering rage. He sold all of his HP stock as soon as he could, even though it cost him some money to do so.
It was a great pleasure to see Fiorina rejected by the CA electorate when she ran for US Senate in 2010. Most of us here laughed when she surfaced as a Presidential candidate earlier this year.
Well—eating breakfast will go back to being the first thing I do on Sunday! Wonderful mixture of gearhead stuff and human interest.
I haven’t followed Carly Fiorina very closely but at some point she told told some story about an aborted fetus, still alive, kicking on a table:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/jurisprudence/2015/09/carly_fiorina_lied_about_planned_parenthood_video_gop_debate_fact_checking.html
It’s one thing to hold a position (in this case, pro-life). It’s another thing to support it with lies.
In a perfect world, you would have met Debbie in the first place. She looks very nice in the photo! I suspect that post-divorce, a condo or co-op would have suited TIP better than a house on 2/3 acre.
Assuming that the Google Maps screenshot is from your home computer, nice to see that you’re a fellow Mac user!
The Willie Nelson reference reminded me of the joke: What happens when you play a country-western record backwards? You get your wife back, your house back, your pickup back, your dog back ….
Sorry to see the series end, and I gather I’m not alone in this. I hope your life stays drama-free!
Sorry to see this end—it has been a highlight of my Sunday reading. And it looks like 3rd times the charm re: the ladies—as it was with me.
I have been enjoying reading your weekly installments, and will miss your writings on Sundays for a while. However, one little ray of light I have is that I did not pick up on your series until the 1967 Tempest. Maybe I will dole out the preceding installments over the next few Sundays.
Thanks for the fine writing and I hope you are enjoying your now-stable life!
Thanks sir,
not only cars but also a life, and well written.
Just one wife for 35 years (and still goiing) could sound boring but is surely not.
Trying to keep her smiling every day is not easy but very rewarding.
Nice to read love is holding on.
Gonna miss this Sunday series, yes sir. You’re quite a memoirist. It’s hard to be good at memoir and yet you walked right up to this plate and hit weekly home runs.
Kind of sad to see the series end, but very happy that Debbie and you found each other! “Hold the line, Love isn’t always on time” is the song that comes to mind. After all those years I’m glad you finally found a woman that understands and appreciates who you are. You deserve it!
Beautifully written COAL series!
Maybe all of us laid off in 2008/9 should post our stories. I’m sure many similar threads will run through it. 😛
You’ve written a splendid “auto-biography”, using COAL as the “grain of sand in the oyster” to illuminate your life. The praise earned in earlier comments is well deserved, and I shouldn’t bore by repeating it. I hardly have a reason to be on the Internet on Sundays now. 🙁
My best to you and Debbie! Paul Niedermeyer deserves some recognition as your publisher/editor as well, I should say.
Thank you for a wonderful series! Loved that you weaved your life experience with your choice of automobiles. You are truly resilient in your relationships and magnanimous as well. Best to you!
Enjoyed this series, thanks for posting it.
Thanks for a truly interesting COAL series. Here’s hoping your typical day in retirement is driving the Miata to the docks to go sailing.
I haven’t comment on any of your COAL’s yet, as I usually read them quite a bit after they are posted as I haven’t had much time for CC lately. That said, to reiterate what others have said, I thoroughly enjoyed your COAL series. You are a great story teller and hopefully you continue to write for this site.
Thank you sincerely for a truly engaging, fascinating, and in the end heartwarming look at your life, and the times and events surrounding. Oh, and the cars, too… It takes a lot to put yourself out there like that but you are quite the storyteller! I’ll miss seeing more entries in this series but I’m also really glad to see that you’ve ended up in a good place and with a wonderful person. Keep us posted should more vehicles cross your path in the future! Cheers!
Thank you for a series of enjoyable reads.
RL,
If COALs are Pop Music, you, dear sir, are The Beatles. You’ve set the bar very high.
Thanks for sharing your vehicles – and your life – with us.
I thoroughly enjoyed each installment of your COAL’s. Between the background, the vehicles and your style of writing, it was definitely an engaging read and one eagerly awaited.
I am glad there was a positive outcome for you at the end with you meeting Debbie. The tone you set early on was clear to me that your marriage to TIP did not endure. Seeing that you had a amicable divorce makes me feel better about my own, as I did likewise.
Your insight to DEC/Compaq/HP was a nice story within a story. My Dad briefly worked at Lucent after moving us halfway across the US and then was shortly thereafter “right-sized”. He has always been quiet about it, but his reaction to a certain figure emerging in politics now is clear to me. Thank you for taking the time to share your cars and the circumstances with us.
+1 for the Traveling Wilburys. Not that that adds much when the story was already at, like, 10,000.
God Bless You. You had me laughing and crying through this series. Words escape me.
I was really looking forward to your stories, thanks for sharing.
Fantastic writing the whole way through. I really enjoyed reading your stories, and I find myself hooked on coming back to the site now after reading them! Thanks for sharing with us.
Bravo Mr. Plaut! Truly informative, reflective and entertaining. The best to you and Debbie on your journey….
A bit late for the standing ovation, but clap clap! I enjoyed this series on multiple levels, the cars, the relationships, the insight into the corporate world. Thanks for weaving it all into such an outstanding story.
I’m also very relieved to find that your curve ball filled adventure has arrived into a good place. Best wishes for the future, and find something else to write about!
In a way, you came full circle with your VW experience. You’d sold the bug during your first marriage because of (no doubt justified) concerns about the bug’s crashworthiness. And then the Passat’s much better crashworthiness came through for you and TIP.
I never saw any of them before, but have now read every word. Bravo!
I too missed them the first time around. Your writing style captures the imagination, and I have lived the moments and events right along with you! I only wish I had a small portion of your talents. Congratulations, and I sincerely wish you nothing but continued happiness, Mr. Plaut.
Bravo RL! I missed saying this the first time around, but absolutely, Bravo.
So much of what you write about connects with me; not the least of which is your career with DEC, Compaq, HP. As a more or less permanent resident of the Greater-Boston area (I live about 3 towns away from Maynard) and someone who first encountered workplace computing in the days of VT-100 terminals down the hall from the DEC-populated computer center, your career in that previous generation of computing history resonates with me. I am surrounded by neighbors who got their careers started just about the same time as you and who have weathered the subsequent ups and downs of the industry. I will say that few have as many good stories, or at least the ability to tell them as well, as you.
Keep writing! We need updates 🙂
Very, very happy for you. I trust your sons Chris and Will appreciate the life you have led, and the lessons you can pass on to them. Well done.
Ah, yes. Carly Fiorina. At the church where I work, the office manager/parish administrator when I started had been “right-sized” from Lucent and came to Arizona for a fresh start. After all your trials and tribulations, I’m glad you have found a place of contentment.
I remember DEC’s competitor in the PC market, the Rainbow. It’s a footnote now in computer history, along with all the CP/M and MP/M machines and one of the original killer apps, Wordstar.
Alas for those who want to escape music in our Episcopal parish; we have music at both Sunday services (yes, even the 7:45 a.m.!). Someone (maybe a significant donor with deep pockets?) must really want the organ at 7:45…. I consider it my warmup for the 10 a.m. service.
This has been the best series on Curbside. Your writing is clean, concise and emotive.
Well done.
Bravo, encore.
Ah, the boyfriend, that angle surprised me in my divorce, never thought of that angle everything was normal I thought. What surprised me more was the response from friends, what you didn’t know what was going on. Friends?