Three things you need to know: I am from LA, a place where without access to a motor vehicle, you are completely dead in the water. Public transportation was a joke when I was growing up and you needed a car to accomplish the basics—get to work, buy groceries, get to swimming lessons at the Y. I walked to school, K-12; that was the only thing that was walkable in my youth.
The second thing: I drive a 2001 Saab. It
only has 115K miles on it, so I rightfully expect to get another 136K before I
need to think about replacing it. The battery is about two years old, but I don’t
put a lot of miles per year on it.
Third: There was snow/wintery mix on the 17th,
and up until Saturday, we’ve had many days of temperatures that didn’t rise
above 20F; they went down to single digits a couple of nights.
I had no reason to drive on the MLK
weekend, but I was going to go out to breakfast with a friend on the holiday.
She couldn’t get out of her cluster parking lot because it was an icy hill, and
when I went out to start to car, the battery was completely dead.
Well, I ordered one of those portable
battery chargers, because I knew once I got the car started, it would be okay. It
arrived on Tuesday, but when I went out to connect it, I found that the snow on
my car had turned to ice, and the hood was frozen to the frame. I couldn’t get
it open.
For a couple of days, I chipped away at
the ice, but with temps in the 20s, I was getting no help from nature. And I
needed milk. Then I remembered—my neighbors were both in Seattle, and he’d left
me the key to Das
Auto. He’d already asked me
the week before if I’d started the car, and was clearly disappointed when I
said I hadn’t, so I thought he wouldn’t mind if I drove it to Trader Joe’s.
Das Auto started straight away. It took a
while to scrape off the windshield and rear window (it’s an SUV), but while I
was doing that, the driver’s seat was heating up. Let me tell you—the most amazing
invention of the 20th Century is not the polio vaccine or rocket
engines, it’s heated car seats. Streets in the People’s Republic were clear and
I made it to TJ and back without incident on Wednesday. And I drove it the next
day to pick up something I needed for a medical appointment today. The Saab was
still frozen shut.
Thursday afternoon, I was sitting at my
desk and saw my neighbor waving at me through the front window. Back from
Seattle. I handed over the key straight away; he told me to feel free any time
to come down and sit in the heated seat. He also said we could try hot water on
Friday to free the hood.
Well, Friday morning I went out and was
ecstatic to feel the hood pop up when I pulled the latch. And that battery
charger worked a treat. I got all the icy scraped from my windows and drove
around town. Went to the library, bought bleach and tea—and felt the most
wonderful relief and freedom. Selkie doesn’t have heated seats, but I wasn’t
worried about some yahoo ploughing into me while driving someone else’s car.
If you are not a Southern Californian, you
may not fully grasp what a difference this made to me. It was as though the sun
had come out; hope returned to my life.
So my gratitude today is for having my car
fully operational again, but also for being able to use my neighbor’s car in a
pinch.
And, of course, for the heated seat.
©2025 Bas Bleu
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