They do what with clunkers?

I am just dying to stroll into Scary Harry’s Used Car Emporium and say, “Boy, have I got a clunker for you!” Wouldn’t that just about give the “what-goes-around-comes-around axiom a whole new meaning?

Now I don’t know a whole lot about the Cash for Clunkers Program (I don’t think anyone does), but if I can find something funny about it, think what the late-night hosts are likely saying. I do think that you only get to buy the equivalent of two-seater lawn mowers with your cash, which means you might have enough to go ahead and do just that.

If you know me, you are likely surprised that I don’t have the Clunker Program thoroughly researched and dissected because even if I don’t have a qualifying clunker, one that I can unload on Scary Harry, I have had and driven my share of clunkers.

It is partly my own fault. I seem to be the only one in my family who considers that a car is a means of conveyance—a way to get to the grocery store and back again. Maybe you could use it to get to the ball game or the bank, too.

But my family members have collectively and separately held the mistaken idea that cars are for other things. Some of them think that the purpose of a car is to enhance your social position. Some think that a car is for saving. (Using it will only put mileage, scratches or dents on it.) And others think that cars are for fixing up, whether they run, or will ever run, or not.

I’m all for fixing a car if it doesn’t run or if it won’t pass inspection, but if it has a perfectly good black rubber steering wheel cover in it, I don’t see the point of putting on a new oak and chrome one.

Speaking of fixing cars, I’ve told Mr. B. many times that he should be in the auto parts business. The auto parts business is something I do know something about. I should. I have been sent to the parts store as many as five times for the same part. I know how the auto parts stores work. According to my calculations, it would cost about $1,364.000 to build a car from scratch using parts from the parts store. You might come out ahead buying the ingredients to make dinner at home, but don’t try it with a car.

One of the reasons, just one, that I have to go to the parts store so many times is that we look like we run a used car lot. (Don’t even think about unloading a clunker at the Butterbean car lot though.) Mr. B. belongs to the group of family members that thinks cars are for fixing up. Due to patriarchal authority, we have many cars that need fixing up.

We nearly got arrested once for abandoning the Duster. Well, it did look that bad, but it was only out of gas. We paid $50 for that car, and the officer told us we got took. Would we dust a Duster? No, we would fix it up.

Since we already have a fleet of lawn mowers (some of which run), I haven’t been thinking of trading in my SUV for one. Okay, I just now did a little research. My SUV does qualify, however by Butterbean standards it is hardly a clunker.

A clunker is a car that is so bad that it’s windshield wipers are falling off. We launched the left one into the Great Salt Lake once simply by turning them on. And speaking of wipers, I’ll bet that there have only been two cars in the state of Utah whose windshield wipers were activated by hitting a bump in the road, and we have owned both of them.

It takes two good men and a pipe wrench to open the windows in the pickup, but we don’t roll them up very often because when we do, the air pressure in the cab begins to decrease in spite of the fact that we have never yet gotten off the ground.

Now, I know that wipers and windows do not a clunker make, but neither do they a lawn mower make. And in the what-goes-around department, trading in for one does not a deal make either. It’s like throwing money out one car window and hauling it in the another. You are going to lose some along the way.

There is still the issue of what they do with the traded-in clunkers. I read that they run them on a solution that seizes the engine. I also heard that they are crushed and sold as scrap metal. Either way, the Butterbean car fixer-uppers are quite alarmed. What a waste of fixable cars.

So, if your car is going to qualify for the program, it has to be a gas guzzler, over 18 mpg combined city/highway, whatever that is; it has to run; and it has to have been manufactured after 1983.

Sounds like a perfectly good fixer-upper to me.