This week my husband and I are driving a tiny car.
Our truck is in the shop getting some body work after a little mishap coming home from skiing one slippery Saturday afternoon in December.
Driving the little white number reminds me of the first car my husband Matthew and I owned together. It was a 1959 Volkswagen bug with silver running boards.
Instead of an engagement ring, we sprang for a $1,000 car.
It was a fun ride — and much faster when the prairie wind was pushing us from behind.
Fast forward a few cars later, Matthew spied a green VW camper van on a lot south of Winnipeg while working one summer afternoon and decided it would be fun to make a trade.
Our three daughters loved the “Ninja Turtle” van and we had lots of fun. We camped with it and made some long trips. Admittedly, we struggled to pay the repair bills because Matthew was in school and I was staying home full-time.
On a return trip to Nelson from a wedding in Winnipeg one Labour Day weekend the VW downsized itself to a three-cylinder.
As we chugged onto the Kootenay Lake ferry, we hoped it would make it up the ramp when the ferry landed in Balfour and survive the hills of Nelson. It did. Barely.
When our fourth child was arriving, and we were outgrowing the van’s seating capacity, we gave it to my tree-planting cousin with full disclosure he’d be spending at least $1,700 in repairs to get it running.
Next we bought my brother and sister-in-law’s Astro van.
It had 325,000 kilometres on it when we got it, but it ran faithfully for four years until we sold it to a family in Prince Rupert planning a trip to Tumbler Ridge.
We bought a used black Mazda MPV off a friend of Matthew’s from work.
While we thought the Mazda was pretty cool, when we took the children for a test drive, our eldest daughter began to cry.
“This van only has seven seats,” she sobbed. “Does that mean mom can’t have any more babies?”
Matthew assured her that mom and a baby could always ride in a side car. We all giggled.
The MPV turned out to be our lesson that it’s expensive to buy an older car with a loan. Making payments and car repair bills can be challenging.
So once our bigger kids were leaving home, and I was back to work, we bought our first-ever brand new vehicle with a loan and drove it without any issues for seven years.
But when we moved to Williams Lake and started hauling firewood for the wood furnace in the house, we decided we might need a truck.
Two months after arriving here we traded in the car and bought the used truck we own now. It’s great for hockey gear, skis and bikes, and we can even sleep in the back of it.
Through 30 years of marriage we’ve owned 10 vehicles. Despite various peanut gallery protests over the years, we’ve only owned one at a time.
At one point we joked about graduating to his and hers when our three girls and three boys were all at home, but the kids reminded us we had enough trouble affording one car, let alone two.
Monica Lamb-Yorski is a reporter at the Tribune Advisor, her column is called Keeping Afloat