Long before face masks were a thing (and God knows we'd love to be back to a point where they're not a thing) I had to get my dad out of a manual transmission car and into an automatic. One too many strokes made his left leg not do what he wanted it to. The first part was easy, find him a reliable car with a slushbox, Volvo 244 was the answer, a nice used one with lots of life left in it, the problems first manifested themselves leaving my driveway, he went for the clutch. After peeling our faces off the windshield I reminded him to glue his left foot to the floor, an automatic has a much wider brake pedal. The next problem came up when he stopped for gas on his way home, the phone call was something like, this GD car won't start, I asked, what gear is it in? The response was something along the lines of JC, who thinks of the GD sh.t. Entertaining to be sure
But, this is a mouse story, not a story about my dad, which I could write and write about for an eternity. His previous car was an '89 Honda Accord with all the bells and whistles, and, a stick shift which he could no longer handle. I tucked the Accord in a corner of my barn (we lived on a farm at the time) and let it slumber. 4 years later my niece learned to drive and she needed a car, the Accord was the perfect fit. I went and opened the door after 4 years and clearly the mice had made it their new home. I donned a Tyvek throw away suit, hooked up the negative battery cable and, to my surprise, it started right up. I backed it out of the barn and left it outside with all the windows, doors, hood and hatchback open for 2 days. I then got to the serious business of making it road worthy. I removed all the seats and shampooed them, I had to throw away the carpets though. My niece drove that car through high school and through college and she affectionately referred to it as the Mouse Mobile. Even after 6 years, every now and then you'd be treated to a little tufting of nesting material every time you turned on the defroster or the AC, and after 6 years the smell never really went away. Mouse piss is one of the few odors that can't be eradicated, ever! But, if you can get over the odre' a car can still fulfil its purpose.
