About every ten years I buy myself a new car, whether I need it or not.  And truthfully I don’t ABSOLUTELY need it. The old one usually has only 250,000 miles or so on it and runs just fine.

But it’s a darn nice, every-ten-year Christmas present to myself!

And where’s the awkwardness come in?   It’s that in-between time when I have two cars, the very adequate old paid-off one and the new one, loaded with nice new features, but also with years of debt.

It’s all mental:  That 2010 Honda is comfortable, runs well, could last another five years probably.  Why blow all that money and get into car payments again?

This will go on for a week or so.  One day I’ll be fine, the next day the doubts will be back.   Happens every ten years.  I’m getting used to it.  And then finally the old one is gone, the new one gets comfortable and I’m settled into it for a decade.

One thing that helps me get over this is to remember the bad times.

Like that day in deep southern Ohio a year or so ago when I managed to nurse my limping Honda off Route 32 into the small settlement of Wellston, founded of course by a man named Henry Wells.  The alternator had quit.

I would have to be towed, I knew, but I had the trailer and canoe with me. I don’t have towing coverage for it and I did not want to leave it sitting along the road, especially overnight.

Fortunately just across the road was the Homestead Country Market (Website and Facebook).  It’s a friendly-looking, Amish-oriented deli, bakery, fresh produce and general food store.

So I went in looking for help.  The Amish salegirls, reticent around this tall male stranger, quickly got me to the owner, Chris Hershberger.  Yes, he’d be happy to keep an eye on the trailer for me.  And he even offered to move it from the roadside to behind the store if needed for the night.

A tow truck was dispatched from the appropriately named Ron’s Garage and Wrecker Service in nearby, and larger, Jackson, Ohio.

Ron’s is a scruffy place,  a repair shop that doesn’t cater much to people who hang around for their cars.  No waiting area to speak of, just a largish interior office/dispatch space with some worn desks and chairs, lots of greasy overalls and random visitors, and not much in the way of smiles.

The situation reminded me a lot of Ethiopia, oddly enough.  I was the stranger, didn’t speak the language very well, and was mostly to be ignored.  The natives would carry on in their own way at their own speed regardless of what I said or did.  In the face of some early pessimism about even being able to get an alternator that day I made it clear I expected it to happen and for me to be on my way that afternoon.

And then, as I often did in Ethiopia I decided not to keep bugging them about it, but to just let them sort it out.  The hours rolled by, nothing much was said to me and not much seemed to be happening with my car beyond the initial diagnosis and dismantling.  Then, in the mid-afternoon, a delivery guy showed up with a cardboard box.  An hour later I was happily heading back to the Homestead Country Market to pick up the trailer and be on my way.

The second lousy time with an old car could have been far worse than it was.  The transmission on my 1999 Dodge Caravan failed at about 265,000 miles.  It happened in Manchester, CT, a few miles from my daughter’s house, and it delayed our departure to Florida by a couple days.

Just that afternoon, Sue and I and Jennifer and her family had returned from New Hampshire in that car.  Visions of all of us stranded on the Mass Pike somewhere were not very pleasant.

So, the occasional pang of guilt about replacing the old with the new is eased by the reality of getting stranded by an older car’s problems.

And I do like to travel…