On the one hand, we have to feel for the tens of thousands of General Motors workers who are waiting for the other shoe to drop. For the families that will be wondering where the next paycheck will come from.
On the other hand, I think back to when General Motors and I parted company for good. And I wonder how many others there are like me.
It was 31 years ago and I was buying my first new car. Until then, I had bought nothing but used cars. Get a cheap beater, run it until it falls apart, and then find another one.
But I had finally landed a job on a good newspaper and did some moonlighting on weekends, so it was time to start the process.
The process in those days and before was to buy an inexpensive model. Something like a Chevy. Then, if your income grew, you might later move up to something like a Buick. The Century, if you wanted something to peel away from a light, or the Roadmaster, if you wanted the feel of a road yacht.
And there was the ultimate status symbol: the Caddy. Get behind the wheel, sink down into the plushness, stick a cigar in your mouth, pull into traffic, and you were telling the world that you had it, baby, and you were flaunting it.
I was at the first step. So I carefully and prudently picked out a two-door Chevy with a stick shift and a 6-cylinder engine. That was when a 6-cylinder was the mark of the real tightwad, since gas was so cheap.
It had few accessories. A radio, whitewalls, but no power anything. It was, however, new. And after 24 monthly payments, it would be mine.
A month after I bought it, I went on a vacation to Door County, Wis. Halfway there, the car did something strange. The gearshift made a noise, something like "boing?" and jumped from third gear into neutral.
I was traveling at highway speeds at the time, so the leaping stick shift was unnerving. Had it happened at the wrong moment, it could of got us killed.
I slammed it back into third. But a few miles later, it did the same thing.
By the end of the vacation, I was driving with one hand while holding the quivering stick shift in third. It was like an arm-wrestling match.
When I told the dealer's service department about it, they said they'd take care of the problem. A few days later, I had the car back. The next time I was on a highway, it did the same thing.
After several more trips to the dealer, with the same results,
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