New Car Fever?

I kinda got out of the new car rat race a long time ago. 1977 was the last time we bought a new car for a family vehicle and it was a full size Chevrolet station wagon. I had determined it was to last us 10 years, so the cost of owning it, not including driving it, was only $600/year, plus license plates and insurance. At the time, that broke down to about $75/month, just to own it.

Things have changed a lot since those days and prices are much higher now than they were then. That car cost about $6000.00 and gasoline was about $0.70/gallon (over 3 times as high as it was when we got married in 1966!). Insurance was about $120/year, instead of $160 every six months. It still wasn’t too easy to make car payments of $200/month, especially since I had taken a 20% pay cut and was only making $12,000/year.

There had to be a better way and being a little mechanically inclined, I began driving used cars only. Being pretty selective in what I would drive reduced the cost by a large amount. I didn’t buy it unless it got at least 20 miles per gallon (MPG). I disdained automatic transmissions, because they use more fuel and are more prone to problems. I reverted back to the days of my first automobile, a 1961 VW Beetle, and thought of durability and economy of operation. So, we drove a lot of VWs, Toyotas and Nissans.

Owning a foreign car repair shop made me aware of the strengths and weaknesses of many of the brands and the problems and attending costs of certain features. “Bells and whistles” are nice when they’re new, but they’re money pits when they get some age on them. As far as I’m concerned, computer controlled cars and accessories are a nightmare to work on and expensive to repair, so I avoid them if possible.

I was successful for many years in having simple, easy to repair automobiles, because I bought carbureted, non-fuel injected vehicles. They operate on a 3.5 pound fuel system that’s much safer than the 30+ pound fuel injected systems. It used to be rare to see a automobile fire, but with fuel injection’s rise in usage, it’s much more common now. The simple reason was mostly because of electric fuel pumps, that continue to run after an accident, spewing high pressure gasoline to be caught on fire!

Some will object and claim fuel injection makes for better fuel economy, but it’s hard to beat 35 highway MPG that was obtainable with a 1600 cc 1975 Toyota Corolla, even with the A/C on! My 1973, 1976 and 1979 Datsun 620 pickups would get 25 MPG, with the A/C on, and 30+ years later the new fuel injected trucks aren’t doing any better.

The paint on the 1973 Datsun is still pretty good, it’s just regular enamel, without a clear coat. I made a mistake about 5 years ago, breaking my rule, and bought a 1995 Jeep Grand Cherokee with clear coat paint, automatic transmission and lots of bells and whistles. When the clear coat began to peal, I checked the price to repair it and was shocked at the suggestion it would take $2500 just to strip and renew the clear coat! Then the overdrive quit working and mileage fell to 16 MPG, another $1500 to repair that. Then the computers started acting weird, so I just parked it and bought another vehicle. It would have taken more to repair it than what it was worth!

Now, I’m driving a 1984 Chevrolet 3/4 ton diesel pickup. It gets 20 MPG on the highway and can haul what needs to hauled, including a 20 foot gooseneck trailer. I bought it for $500 and it only has 104,000 miles on it now, after I’ve been driving it several years. No computers and it has a standard transmission. I replaced the Jeep with a 1987 Mercedes Benz 300 D Turbo. No computer, no clear coat and it’s a diesel. It has over 200,000 miles on it, but may last up to 1,000,000 miles (Mercedes has mileage awards, in the form of medallions for the grill, for 5 levels, beginning at 155,000 miles and going to 1,000,000 miles) . It gets close to 30 MPG, with the A/C on. It was less than $4000, but I had to drive to Austin to get it. (250,000 km is the same as 155,000 miles)



So, tell me how many years you have to drive your new vehicle to make those $300-$500/month payments for 60 months look a little more economical. It certainly won't pay for itself in fuel economy, because new fuel injected cars and trucks don't get any more miles per gallon than the older models did.

Unique positions in life

I just got back, the early part of this month, from a family reunion in St. Louis, MO. Since my mother was the oldest sibling, I happen to be older than one of my uncles. I was sorta sandwiched in between the last two children and that's actually a unique position. Reunions always bring back memories of the far distant past and this one was no exception. The last visit I had to St. Louis seemed to have encompassed a visit to all of the old "home places" I was familiar with. One on Allen Ave. and one on Oregon Ave. Here's one of the favorite picture taking places on Allen with most of the family, at the time, present (I'm right in the front).


Allen was pretty far back in my memory, but still there. I attended Hogdin Elementary (I don't even know how to spell it anymore) during part of the 2nd grade, while we were waiting to move to Texas in 1952.

Shortly after we moved, they moved too. The "new" house was on Oregon Ave. and looked like this in 1952.



There was a plum tree in the back yard that was big enough to climb in (we don't have any that big around here!). I understand it was an old farm house that had been modernized from its 1850s state, but that may be just "legend".

Part of the year's excitement was after I got out of school for the summer. We got out a week earlier than St. Louis did, so I was there for the last day of school, when a trip was taken to Forest Park Highlands!

The Highlands, as we called it, was originally built in 1896 and burned in 1963, so it had a long history that included being a part of the World's Fair in 1904. Some of those buildings are still in use for their intended purposes.

A tour can be made of the Highlands at this site:
http://www.forestparkhighlands.com (I can't get it to come up as a hyperlink)
There's a video of the fire at that button on the home page, but there's also pictures of the Comet roller coaster and the Flying Turns. It was a great place to visit and provided many great memories!

Sometimes, memories put someone in a unique place, but it may only be unique to that one person. I stayed the week not too far from Herculaneum, MO, in Jefferson County. Most people are unaware of the Doe Run lead smelting operation there and the prominence of making shot and the material for bullets at that location. Here's a mural at the state capitol depicting part of its history. (click on the image for the full view)


I keep looking for a good picture of the shot tower, but never seemed to find one, until now!


The Shot Tower was built in 1856 (By 1813 three shot towers had been constructed on the bluffs) to produce lead shot ammunition. Molten lead was poured from the top of the tower and as it fell, it passed through a series of sieves until it was the proper size for ammunition, and then it landed in a tub of cold water. The balls were then caught in a water basin and taken to an adjoining building to be turned through cylinders to round and smooth the pellets for use as projectiles in firearms. It's one of the few remaining shot towers in the country and the only one west of the Mississippi (barely!).

In 1808 Moses Austin and S. Hammond laid out the town of Herculaneum at the mouth of Joachim Creek near the site of the abandoned New Hartford. "Moses Austin (October 4, 1761 – June 10, 1821) was a leading figure in the development of the American lead industry and the father of Stephen F. Austin, a pioneer settler of Texas."

Stephen F. Austin University is in Nacogdoches, Texas, about 25 miles south of here, so it does sorta come full circle and shows the unique way things link together and all brought about by an excursion into the memories of the past.

A Long Dry Spell

You may be wondering why I haven't posted anything is about a year and a half. Well, would you believe I have just figured out how to reset my password to be able to access the site?

Don't laugh, it may happen to you, when you get as old as I am.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to finally have a media where I can express my views and maybe bring some reason back to the world as I know it. After the Presidential elections, I was really wondering if there were any reasonable people left. For some reason, the idea of putting someone in the highest office we have in America that had zero leadership experience was so completely foreign to me, I was in shock, and I continue to be in shock, as I see my once great nation being dismantled.

I don't know that I can see a redistribution of wealth taking place, as Joe the Plumber was told would happen, but I do know the value of the dollar has dropped drastically in the past 10 years. From 2001, when gold was less than $300/ounce, it took until 2006 for the price to double. From 2006 to the present it has doubled again. From January of 2009 to right now, the price has risen from $800/ounce to over $1200/ounce. That's over 50% in a year and a half! Here's a 10 year chart on gold prices.



As the government continues to spend what they don't have, there are many who are trying to hedge on a devalued dollar by buying gold. But that's not all! Silver has increased by about the same percentage! That's going from about $4.25/ounce to $17.25/ounce in the same period. Here's the chart for silver prices.



This all means, if the precious metal prices are any real indication of buying power, you can only buy 1/4 now of what you could buy in 2000 with the same amount of money.

I looked at my electric bill this month and saw $450 with $103 going to power factors for the production costs. Every time I go into the grocery store, I see higher prices than the week before and this is the change everyone was hoping for? Here's the 10 year prices for natural gas, which doesn't vindicate the gross increase in power cost adjustment.



We have a serious financial problem and no one seems to care what happens to the average person and their abilities to afford what we consider the basics in life.

The charts can be viewed in their full size by right clicking on the image and selecting "Open in a new window", or something like that. That's not the same as what I posted in the comments, but I didn't remember I could edit that into the original post.

What's with the oil spill?

It seems like there has been a loss of interest in the Gulf oil spill spewing from the botched BP well. That's really unfortunate that the attention span has been exceeded and has now moved on to more important things, like Lindsey Lohan deservedly being sent to jail.

There has been so much mismanagement and dereliction of responsibilities it makes one wonder if anyone in the present administration really cares about the Gulf coast's environment. We have out of control bureaucrats making decisions when they don't have a clue about the ramifications of those decisions. They only think in terms of the small niche they occupy without any consideration for the big picture. An example, the worry over whether berms requested by Bobby Jindal would have an adverse effect on the environment, even though it's a forgone conclusion that oil in those wetlands would damage that which they purport to be concerned about.

There is going to be some short term damage, but even that could have been averted if there had been an active effort made to prevent the oil from reaching shore, by whatever means necessary.

It's something that could have been avoided with proper action, but instead we got inaction and hands tied for those who would have done something constructive.

The world isn't going to come to an end with this oil spill, since I have land that is an old well site (that surely had oil spilled at times) and I cut hay on it every year. Here's what it looked like when I first began getting it back in shape.

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y121/Paul5388/Goldenrodtractor2.jpg
(I don't know why I can't get the image to appear, but the link is good for a copy and paste)
It's not exactly a barren piece of ground is it? It hasn't been destroyed to never be in condition to grow anything, is it? However, it also didn't have an uncontrolled amount of oil dumped on it for 3 months like what's happening in the Gulf!