I need to give an account of the trip to New Mexico with Daddy in June, but for the moment, here are some photos.

Daddy's New Toy

On Wednesday I received word that the insurance company considered my dad's car totaled and planned to send him a check. After taking my dad to the body shop, I took him to the Ford dealership and told the salesman what we were looking for. I had already done my research, so I knew what we could get for the money, and more importantly, I knew what my dad really wanted. For him to be happy, his new vehicle needed to be a big American truck or SUV from the Consumer Reports' "Used Cars to Avoid" list. Even if he might prefer an Extravaganza, even he couldn't imagine why he would need anything bigger than an Explorer, which is still plenty muscular.

So far the only problems with the Explorer are its color (white, like 75% of the SUVs out there), a tendency for the radio antenna to hum in a crosswind, and a lack of things for my dad to complain about. It's big enough, it's American enough, it's comfortable, it has the right trailer hitch, and the door pockets are big enough to hold lots of junk.

Now, for my part, I'm surprised it doesn't have a locking gas flap. My Corolla, with its itty bitty gas tank has an inside fuel door release, but the Explorer, a veritable rolling Fort Knox of Fuel, has no such protection. I also wonder what the big deal about leather seats is. As a luxury extra, they're a bust. I drove from my valley, which was a balmy 92F to my dad's valley 70 miles north and ten degrees warmer. The air conditioning kept my front cool, but my back was damp when I got out of the car. Oh, well, I prefer sheepswool, and if I'm going to Pep Boys to buy a front window sunshade and a locking gas cap anyway, I'll see what they have in the way of shearling seat covers.

Perhaps I should continue to pretend it's a chore, but it's actually kind of fun driving an Urban Assault Vehicle. For one thing, it's a lot harder for SUVs to intimidate me when my car is the same size as theirs. And my dad seems to enjoy having a chauffeur.

Fun, fun, fun...'Til daughter takes the car keys away

I have had an interesting summer, including taking my father back to his hometown in New Mexico in the hopes he might stay there for a month or two, and then having to drive him back to California to get his implanted defibrillator replaced a couple of weeks ago. This last week, however, has been nuts.

Nobody will ride with my dad when he drives because he pays too much attention to his passenger and too little to the road. He almost splattered the two of us and his service dog on a cliff in New Mexico last year the last time I rode with him, and my sister and nieces report similar, if less dramatic, instances of inattention. I had hoped he drove better when he was by himself, but I still half-expected to get a call someday that he had caused an accident. I only hoped it would not be serious.

Last Wednesday, I got such a call. Nobody was hurt, but the other car was totaled, and the insurance adjuster is still trying to figure out whether my dad's car is worth more than the repairs. My dad was so rattled that a bystander had to call us to let us know about the accident, and before he gave the phone to my dad, he told me my dad had run the light and suggested it might be time for him to give up driving.

When my dad brought up the subject the morning after the accident, I didn't try to talk him out of it as he had probably expected. Instead, I agreed that it seemed to have come to that.

My dad's account of the accident changed with each retelling, with him assuming less responsibility at every subsequent iteration. He had gotten to version number five, where he had a green arrow and the other guy used the parking lane to dart around traffic stopped opposite, when he decided he needed to have me take him to the intersection so he could show me what he meant.

I know the intersection well, and I thought he knew what he meant; it is a possible scenario. Even though I thought it unnecessary, I drove him to the intersection, parked in the parking lot where I had gone the evening of the accident, and got out. My dad looked around and told me I had come to the wrong intersection. I pointed to the curb where his car had been parked and then to the curb where the other guy's car had been parked, but my dad insisted that we look at other intersections nearby.

I refused to walk in the hundred-degree heat, so we got back in the car and drove all around and through the actual intersection plus all of the ones with traffic lights within about a one-mile radius. My dad remained puzzled, and when we got home, he sat down with a Thomas Guide to try to figure out where his accident had actually occurred.

I don't care what the witnesses say. Even if the accident proves to be 100% the other guy's fault (not likely), my dad's not driving again.

Oh - in the meantime, my younger son made a U-turn into another car on Saturday evening, and I had to drive the 60 miles to where he did it make arrangements for a tow and so on. My poor son was devastated and was just sure our insurance rates were going to go up besides the cost of fixing the car. Once I managed to explain that our insurance rates were already very high because he and his brother are new drivers and expected to cause accidents, and that all we'd have to pay to fix the car was our deductible, he managed to cheer up some. At least his car will probably only be in the shop for a couple of weeks. Besides this, most of the sixty miles he drove to the scene of the accident were on Los Angeles area freeways. If he was going to have an accident, I'm profoundly thankful he waited until he was on a little backwater residential street to do it.

Considering it from my younger son's point of view, I can see why he'd be distraught, though. When my older son, after a series of lesser accidents that cost us thousands in body work (if no injuries, thank goodness!) totaled his car on a fire hydrant in January, we got him an old clunker to drive. When my dad wrecked his car last Wednesday, I told him he couldn't drive anymore. My poor kid may have been envisioning getting stuck with The Grandfather's 1988 Jeep Comanche truck, which would be enough to strike terror in the heart of anybody (but my dad, of course, who can't understand why nobody else loves his truck).