Columbus Monthly / June 2010 / June / Finale: At least it runs

 Email  Print

Finale: At least it runs

Getting an oil change is one of my least favorite chores, but the best place for me to do it is at the Valvoline in Clintonville. I realized this the day I accidentally trapped an employee inside the trunk of my car.

I’ve had my blue Volkswagen Beetle for 12 years. The cheerful vehicle has carted my friends to high school, been packed full of boxes for the move to Ohio State and has survived many minor acts of vandalism. But it still runs.

Back in 1998, the Beetle was a status symbol, one of the first new Beetles inspired by the original version. I’d drive down the road and children would point excitedly at my car. If I passed another Beetle owner, we would wave to each other and grin with shared enthusiasm.

By now the enthusiasm has faded. The electrical system has gone senile and at times I’ll put the key into the ignition only to have the theft deterrent system shriek wildly. I could easily switch it off with the panic button on the remote lock. But the panic button fell off sometime around the turn of the millennium.

Many establishments simply refuse to work on my car. Its little body is so compactly designed that you pretty much have to remove the entire engine to replace the windshield wiper fluid. More than once, I’ve driven to national chains only to be laughed at and told to go away because, “We don’t work on those things.”

So I was thrilled when I discovered this particular Valvoline. I went there to see if they could change the oil and replace a headlight. I didn’t know that I also had a taillight out. Before long, all five employees were working on my car—one up at the engine looking at my fluid levels, one replacing the headlight and three trying to figure out how to access the taillight.

“I think we need to get into it from the trunk,” the manager said.

“Uh,” I responded, “I haven’t been able to open the trunk in a few years.”

The three gave me a funny look and said they probably could fix my trunk as well. One guy crawled into the backseat to see if he could get into the trunk as I apologized profusely for the random water bottles and Pringles cans littering the floor. The manager poked curiously at my open gas flap—the locking mechanism had stopped working around the same time as the trunk.

There was a thud and a muffled shout as the guy in the backseat fell into the trunk and the seat snapped into the upright position.

Then there were crashes from the front of the car. One of the staff had finished topping off the fluid and was trying to close the hood.

“Actually, there’s a trick for that,” I said, rushing to the front. I demonstrated, wiggling the latch and then dropping the hood dramatically. The hood banged down, but stayed open. The guy shook his head and said he probably could fix the latch. My face was burning in shame.

At the back of the car, the trunk opened revealing the employee, sitting atop an empty bottle of windshield washer fluid and a pile of old bedding from my first apartment. He staggered out of the trunk and started to poke at the taillight. The manager asked me if I still had the owner’s manual. I beamed with pride: I had kept it in pristine condition for 12 years.

Except there was a problem: The manual was in the glove compartment, which wouldn’t open. Last winter, someone had attempted to steal my car, but all the thief managed to do was break the lock off my glove compartment and steal a mix tape I made in 1999. I tried to explain.

“Honestly?” the manager asked.

The staff working on the taillight said they could replace the light bulb, but first they needed to pry the light out with

a tool. I remembered that I still had a screwdriver in my car from when I used one to pry open the gas flap before I bought the locking cap. I handed it to them. At this point, I don’t think they wanted me to explain anything.

Eventually, the oil was changed, the fluid levels were topped off, the lights were fixed, the hood was closed and the trunk was working—all for under $30. I apologized again and thanked the awesome staff profusely before getting in the car to leave.

It would have been a wonderful and triumphant moment . . . if the alarm hadn’t gone off when I started the car.

Christie Robb is a freelance writer.