Margret Sloan

When I was a girl, my father would drive to the service station and an attendant would come out to the pump, fill up the car for you, wash the windshield and offer to check the oil for you while the gas was flowing into the car. If your tires needed air, he would refill the tires. All of these services were free with the price of the gas. If you needed the oil changed, a flat tire fixed, or a new headlight, the mechanic in the service bay would take care of it for you and not charge much for the little bit of time it took to put in the new parts as long as you bought the parts from the station.

Nowadays you do all of that yourself. Which is fine if you are handy with tools and have someplace like a covered and lit garage to work on your car. The rest of us have to resort to our own devices. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I can’t afford to take my car to Firestone every time a little happens to my car when they are going to charge $100 for every little maintenance job. Last week I took in the car and asked for an oil change and a new air filter. The bill was $100. That’s absurd – I was expected to pay $35, tops.

I’ll have to find someplace else to take care of these routine maintenance issues for me, because I can’t afford the excessive Firestone charges.

A friend of mine is a convenience store manager, on the morning shift. I see her once a week or so, and I try to make a point to buy a few things from inside the store in addition to buying my gas there, as she gets bonuses based on the sales from sodas, candy bars, potato chips, and the other things they sell inside.

I was distressed to find that someone robbed her store last week. Thank goodness she was not working that night and the person running the store was not hurt, but it is disconcerting to think they my friend is truly in danger of being robbed or shot at any time. The thieves took a van and rammed the front doors with the van, then hauled the ATM machine and cash register into the back of the van and drove off.

This morning they are traffic bollards across the front of the store to prevent anyone from ramming the front doors again. Bollards are the tall round posts that re installed in the pavement and spaced a few feet apart to restrict traffic.

It’s a shame we have to resort to obvious crime deterrents like bollards in front of your place of business, even in the nicer neighborhoods. When I mentioned this to my boss, he thought getting bollards would be a good idea for our own building. With a little surfing we were able to find a website that provides all kinds of bollards – I never knew there were so many different types and uses – and we found exactly what we want to order. We will need movable bollard because of our landlord and the lease restrictions. That’s no problem, the same website carried movable and temporary bollards, too.

We used the website www.trafficguard.net because their site has color photos of the different types of bollards and clear, easy to read and understand descriptions of their products. You don’t have to be in the construction business to figure out which ones will meet your needs, and if you have any questions you can call their tool free number and talk to a customer service representative before placing your order.

My teenage years were a constant clash of blue collar parents and a hippy generation. I had long straight hair, love beads and blue jeans with flowers embroidered on the legs.

I do thank my folks for the giving me the use of the Volkswagon bus when I got my driver’s license. I drove the Beetle Bus every day for 4 years and loved it.

So imagine my surprise when hubby found a 1969 Beetle Bus on the internet and bought it, supposedly for me. But I think he really just wants it for himself – he is spending hours and hours working on this new little Beetle Bus project. I was worried about finding the spare parts we’d need to fix it up and restore the bus to drivable condition. Hubby had that covered already – he found a website that specializes in Volkswagon parts.

The bus that we have in our garage now is just like the one that I used to drive. The only thing stopping us from driving it around town is the transmission. We used the website for Beetle restoration and found the parts we need to rebuild the tranny, and as soon as that is finished we’ll load up the family and go out for a nice little drive, singing songs by the Turtles, the Monkeys, and the Partridge Family.

There’s a list of things that every smart woman should keep in her car trunk for emergencies. I started with this:

• Blanket large enough to cover 2 people
• Heavy flashlight and extra fresh batteries
• Hand warmers
• Gloves
• Ski hat
• Bandanna
• Socks, 2 pair white men’s tube socks
• Six bottles of water
• Six packs of beef jerky
• Hard candy
• Atlas
• Reflectors and/or flares
• Bandages, gauze, band aids
• Neosporin
• Inhaler
• Benadryl
• Motrin
• Telescoping magnet
• Screwdriver
• Channel-locks
• Crescent wrench
• Duct Tape
• 2 Large plastic trash bags

That’s probably a good general list for anyone, but for me I also keep a couple things specific to our needs:

• Knife
• Jumper cables
• Pack of Trail Mix
• 2 packs of Peanutbutter Crackers
• 1 qt motor oil
• Notepad and pens
• Chewing gum
• Pet hair removal roller
• Plastic water bowl
• Extra dog leash

The Forbes website has a special interest article called, “Female Drivers’ 10 Favorite Vehicles” with an article about how General Motors vehicle line director Mary Sipes incorporates a woman’s perspective into their design process. Auto experts say that women want different things from a car than men, and that safety, comfort, practicality and value are women’s top priorities.

10. Chrysler Pacifica
9. Hyundai Tiburon
8. Mazda CX-7
7. Honda Pilot
6. BMW Z4
5. Nissan Versa
4. Toyota Yaris
3. Hyundai Elantra
2. Kia Spectra
1. Honda Fit

The owners of a Honda Fit are 80.46% female. How’s that for dominating a market?