Ruby's Last Hurrah

The Background
Shortly after returning home from my mission, my Grandma Turner gave me her car, a red 1996 Ford Taurus, since she could no longer drive.  I got a one-way ticket to Oregon to go pick up the car and drive it back to Utah.  I named the car Ruby.  After having it for a few months, the transmission went out completely and I spent around $2400 to get the transmission rebuilt.

Ruby was the only car I ever had.  She has made several trips across the country and has been more or less reliable though the years.  She hasn't had air conditioning since before Eliza was born, but we managed just fine.

In May we bought a 1997 Plymouth Grand Voyager to accommodate our growing family and for a few months we were a two-car family (though we spent most of that time in California with only the van).  It wasn't practical for us to keep Ruby as a second vehicle since Mike rides the bus to school for free (if he drove, he'd have to pay for parking).  While occasions come up where having two cars would be nice, usually one vehicle is sufficient.  Now that we have A/C in the van we are spoiled, so the hot car feels unbearable (especially now that the kids are old enough to complain about it).  When we get to where we are going after law school, we will probably want to find a second car for Mike to drive to work in (preferably one with A/C since he will be wearing a suit year round), but since we didn't know how much longer Ruby would be around, we didn't want to drive her across the country again and just hope that she makes it long enough to make it worth it.

We decided to sell her before the registration expired at the end of October.  We put an ad up on Craigslist and within 24 hours we had 11 eager buyers.  We planned on going down the list in order, but we ended up selling it to the first person to contact us.  We probably could have sold it for more, but we're just happy to have it sold and move on (we were selling it the week the baby was due/overdue).

The Adventure
Now that you know our car's personal car history, the point of this post is to tell you about Ruby's Last Hurrah.  In the two days between the buyer's test drive and bringing the money/doing the paperwork, we had nearly a full tank of gas to blow.  Mike used the car to pick up his mom from the Bloomington airport, but we still had lots of gas.

I had been planning to take Mike's mom down to Arthur, IL (about 40 miles away) to get some canning supplies in bulk.  On Friday morning, I randomly remembered that it was the day for the Arthur Produce Auction.  I had thought about it earlier in the week, but didn't make plans because I though surely my overdue baby would make his/her appearance by then.  It couldn't have worked out more perfectly.  We had a car full of gas to use up and the auction was starting in just over an hour.  We rushed to get everyone ready and then piled in the car.  We were pretty tight in there (or so we thought), with Mike's mom in the backseat between the two car seats and my mom up in front.

We went to the produce auction just for the experience.  I had already been this season and did all the canning and freezing I could handle being 9 months pregnant (apples, tomatoes, peaches, green peppers, butternut squash, and onions, in case you wanted to know).  The grandmas enjoyed seeing how the auction works and the kids loved seeing the horses and buggies.

Near the end of the produce part of the auction (they auction bulk flowers as well) they began selling the pumpkins.  Pumpkins are sold by the huge cardboard crates that you see them in at the store (that require a forklift to move).  For each lot (huge cardboard bin) the auctioneer says how many pumpkins are in the lot, then the bin is auctioned off at the per pumpkin price (they multiply the agreed upon price by the quantity when you pay).  There were lots of bins of pumpkins, but not lots of people interested in pumpkins.  Prices were super low.  I did the math and realized that I could get an entire bin of pumpkins for cheaper than I could buy two at the grocery store.  I couldn't help myself.  I bid on and won a bin of 38 large pumpkins for $.20 each for a total of $7.68 after tax.

The only thing we had to figure out was how to get them home!  We were able to fit 33 pumpkins in (in the trunk, under feet, on laps, etc).  An Amish lady gave me a dollar for the other 5.  We still had one more stop (Beachy's bulk foods store) before heading back to Champaign.  Since I wasn't holding any pumpkins as the pregnant driver, I had to get out first so I could de-pumpkin everyone else so they could get out.  Then we had to repack everyone along with the goods from Beachy's.  Fun time!

Quirk #116: Trunk does not stay open.  We have a baseball bat that we keep in the car to prop the trunk open (and we included it in the sale of the car because we are so nice).  This quirk becomes advantageous when we have an oversized load.

 

Wondering what we did with 33 jumbo pumpkins?  Stay tuned!