Goines On: The loaner

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When the Goineses returned from visiting their son and his family and in-laws in Minnesota, their 2011 Volvo V50 (a small station wagon) wouldn’t start. They were glad they hadn’t had to park it at the airport because a neighbor had offered to drive them. Back home on Monday evening, they needed to shop for groceries in the morning. Hard to do with a car that wouldn’t start.
    The car’s battery had previously misbehaved, so Goines assumed it had run down during its 11 days of idleness. The first neighbor Goines approached had a lithium recharger and had their car going in a minute. The Goineses had never even known there was such a device. Goines had expected to have to push the car out of the garage so the neighbor could pull his car alongside for a jump.
    “We’ve got to get one of those,” said Mrs. Goines. Goines agreed, it was cool. They immediately drove their car to Walgreens to pick up a prescription, but the drive-thru line was longer and slower than ever. At least, sitting there with the engine running seemed a convenient way to recharge the battery, so what the heck?
    They drove around a little more after obtaining the prescription, thinking the battery might be recharged enough to start the car the next day for the shopping.
    But not so. The battery was as dead on Tuesday morning as it had been when Goines tried to start it the previous evening. Not wanting to bother the same neighbor again, Goines went next-door this time. This neighbor also had a portable lithium charger – though several times as big and a lot heavier-looking than the other neighbor’s – and it had the car going just as fast.

Even before calling on the second neighbor, Goines had called the Volvo dealer and was pleased to be connected with a familiar service adviser (Jade), who told him they were pretty booked up until Thursday. Could she schedule him for Thursday morning? Yes, okay.
    Now that the car still wouldn’t start without a jump, Mrs. Goines called Enterprise to see how much it would cost them to rent a car for three days. More than they wanted to pay.
    Goines called Jade back and pleaded with her to work him in that day, because he couldn’t continue to ask neighbors for a jumpstart, and a rental car would be too expensive. He could drive their 2011 over right now and wait as long as it took. Jade said it sounded kind of like an emergency, and because he was a valued customer, she would see that the mechanics worked him in.
    When he arrived, Jade said it would be a couple of hours or more, but they didn’t have any loaner cars right then, so she was sorry he would have to wait. Goines didn’t mind; the dealership had a very nice lounge – except that they still weren’t serving coffee and snacks, because of the pandemic. Goines passed the next three hours with a book (John P. Marquand’s 1943 novel, So Little Time) and his iPad.
    At last, Jade came into the waiting room to inform Goines that they didn’t have the required battery in stock and couldn’t locate one anywhere. They had even identified a candidate battery from another manufacturer that might work and had located and obtained one, but when they tried to install it, it wouldn’t fit. They were going to have to order a battery from Volvo itself, but that would mean waiting five days. Fortunately, a loaner had just come in….

The loaner was a big, new luxury SUV with so many new electronic features that he needed Jade to give him a short tutorial in the use of the instrument panel – at least enough to get him on the road and home safely.
    Over the next couple of days, the Goineses – especially Mrs. Goines, who was really into black screens and was a whiz at instruments – became more and more enamored of the vehicle’s navigational and other controls, and on Wednesday Goines heard her utter, “I could really live with this car.”
    Goines had to admit that he was wondering whether he was even going to remember how to unlock the doors of their 2011 when they got it back on Monday. All he had to do with the loaner was have the key in his pocket – both to open the doors and to start the engine. He fantasized about asking Jade whether they could put the 2021 model control system into their 2011, but he knew it would be a joke. Their dashboard wasn’t big enough for the screen, and there would be all of those additional cameras to install for the 360˚ view….

Mrs. Goines went with Goines when he returned to the dealer on Monday.
    They drove home, not in a big – or even a little – 2021 SUV, but in a 2021 S60 (sedan), under a lease contract. They didn’t need to own a car anymore. And they probably wouldn’t need one of those little lithium chargers either.

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