Back in my home town of Roanoke, VA., there wasn’t a whole lot to do if you were in early 20s, so my friends and I would meet up at each other’s house and play Spades, Madden on the Play-station or just take a drive. I was home from college during a break back around Spring of 1997. I was driving my father’s Seattle Silver 1992 Honda Accord. I really loved that car. It was clean with burgundy cloth interior and a sunroof. The stock alloy wheels had a big Honda logo in the center caps and I did my best to keep them clean at all times. I was really proud of that car and thankful my father would let me use it exclusively when I came home from school. One night after playing cards with friends, we decided to break out and go for a ride around the city. We were riding through the Northwest side of the city on one of the main streets when all of a sudden, the car just cut off mid-drive. It was like someone snatched the key right out of the ignition and the car just rolled into a dead stop… Now first of all, talk about embarrassing for me. I had just gone through a long debate with my friends on how great Hondas are and how tried and true they would always be no matter what and right as I said I’ve never had a problem with this car, God stepped in and said, “Oh Really?” LOL
I had two of my friends, riding with me after I had dropped another friend at his house and one of friends started giving me the business. Now when I say this, I mean he went in on me about Hondas and trashing my dad’s car and everything. I tell you right now, HOT wasn’t even the word I was feeling right then. My other friend thankfully had a cell phone with him at that time and called his girlfriend to come and get us. He then asked me if I wanted to call my dad and let him know we got stranded. I looked at him and said, “Hell naw, I ain’t calling him right now, are you crazy?!” It was just after 1am; My father being a big-time disciplinarian and a school principal for the Roanoke City, and every body knew who he was? And I’m about to wake him up at 1am so he can cuss me straight out in front of my friends? Yeah right. LOL….
What made this whole situation so bad was my other friend would not stop trashing my dad’s Honda. I mean throughout this whole time we’re waiting for my friend’s girlfriend to come get us, he was just going in on me. It was like amateur night at a comedy club, I mean he was doing a whole comedy set on Hondas. What broke me into pure laughter was when we he said, “You know, the other week, man not even five days ago, my dad went to a dealer and was checking out this beautiful pearl green 1993 Honda Accord EX with leather. Man, it had a clean white interior, with sunroof visor, five spoke alloy wheels, brand new tires, and not a scratch on it. My dad said he drove it and fell in love with it on the spot. And right now, after going through this, I am so glad he didn’t buy that piece of sh*t…” I fell out laughing… I couldn’t even keep a straight face. All of us were laughing our tails off so hard because the whole time, I truly thought my friend was gonna say something nice to lift my sprits a little bit and he suckered me into that one…
So, my friend’s girlfriend finally came and picked us up. She dropped me off at my dad’s house where I had to let him know what happened. And, you guessed it, he went in on me too. I told him what happened and he thought I did something to cause this issue, whatever it was. He had the vehicle towed to our local Honda dealer the next day and asked the service manager to let him know what he found. So apparently, one of the fuses which supplied power to the ignition just went out; literally it just burned out, which cause the car to cut off like it did. The service manager told my father they had several replacement fuses in their shop so they replaced it at no charge. After that, I always kept a few spare couple of fuses just in case if something would ever happen again, I’d be ready. From that day on, I never had another issue with my dad’s Honda and it actually turned out to be one of my favorite vehicles I’ve ever owned. It took me a few days to get over what my friend was saying about my Honda, but needless to say, he ain’t catch a ride in my car for a while after that… 😊