Liz's Rusty Chevrolet

Posted on Thu Nov 27th, 2025 @ 8:30pm by Captain Elizabeth F. "Liz" Beurling

1,059 words; about a 5 minute read

Mission: Christmas Vacation
Location: Lac-Megantic, Quebec
Timeline: Christmas season 2397

Liz had finally arrived back in Lac-Megantic to spend her holiday shore leave. As this was her first Christmas as a new mom, she had some errands that she needed to run. She had done some holiday shopping at Zellers while on assignment aboard the Myogi, but knew she wouldn't be able to pick up the items right away, so she had opted into their layaway program. Now that Liz was home, though, she would pop over to the Zellers store where her items were being held and pick them up.

Liz nearly defaulted to her first choice of transportation; her trusty motorcycle, of which she hadn't ridden any kind since she was pregnant, but she stopped herself when she remembered that it would be difficult to get all of her layaway home on a motorcycle. So, she began looking around for her other method of transportation: Liz quickly found it, buried under a good nine inches of snow; and that was her 1995 Chevrolet Caprice. Normally a collector's item among vintage automobile enthusiasts, this particular example of the Caprice, though, reflected the hard life it had lived.

Liz had bought the Caprice on a dare during one of the brothers' visits to a salvage yard to get parts for their bikes and any other junk that would make for interesting wall art for their new clubhouse. Because all the tires were flat, Liz had the car towed to the clubhouse where they offloaded all the junk they threw into it and Liz had gotten to work on it. She found out pretty quickly that the car barely ran, and would die the moment she put it in gear. Several replacement parts later, Liz had gotten the Caprice into a driveable state, but it still ran like utter shit. Best Liz could figure is that the one replacement computer she got to consistently work with the car wasn't exactly factory fresh, and things like the timing and fuel injection were off. The Caprice probably needed a complete teardown and rebuild of its entire powertrain to even come close to running acceptably, and that was effort Liz didn't want to put into a car that came from a literal junkyard.

With a sigh so heavy, Liz could see the cloud of her breath, she grabbed the nearest snow shovel and began clearing snow from the Caprice. Once the car was cleared off enough, Liz's next challenge was to get the car going- something that was easier said than done, especially given how long it had been since it had last been run. Priming and spinning the engine over to pull fuel into the system was a job that took several minutes and finesse to keep the engine from getting flooded.

"Come on, come on..." Liz muttered as she turned the Caprice over. She felt she was close to getting the engine to light off. "Come on, you can do it!"

At last, the engine roared to life in a cloud of blue smoke being expelled from the exhaust.

"Alright!" Liz exclaimed.

Once the engine had been running long enough to shift into gear, Liz set off on her errands. Turning on the radio, Liz forgot that she had left a cassette in the tape deck that had a traditional Bavarian band's instrumental Christmas album on it. A hint at the last time the car had been driven:

[To the tune of Jingle Bells]

Dashing through the snow
In my rusty Chevrolet
Down the road, I go
Sliding all the way
I need new piston rings
I need some new snow tyres
my car is held together by a piece of chicken wire

Oh, rust and smoke
The heater's broke
The door just blew away!
I light a match to see the dash
And then I start to pray-ay!
The frame is bent
The muffler went
The radio, it's okay
Oh, what fun it is to drive this rusty Chevrolet!

Of course, any holiday shopping expedition in Canada wasn't complete without a stop through Tim Horton's for a coffee and a sweet pastry.

I went to Tim Horton's
To get some Christmas cheer
I just passed up my left front tyre
And it's getting hard to steer
Skidding down the highway
Right past Lac-Megantic cops
I had to drag my swampers to get the car to stop

Oh, rust and smoke
The heater's broke
The door just blew away!
I light a match to see the dash
And then I start to pray-ay!
The frame is bent
The muffler went
The radio, it's okay
Oh, what fun it is to drive this rusty Chevrolet!

On the way to Zellers, Liz hit a pothole on the road, causing the improperly fastened Tim Hortons lid to pop off as she was drinking it and hot Tim Horton's coffee to spill onto her crotch. It hurt, but not as bad as childbirth had been a few months earlier.

Skdding to a stop, Liz grabbed several of the napkins she had stored in the vehicle to wipe up what she could. Fortunately, the interior was already pretty trashy, so one more coffee stain wouldn't hurt it...

Bouncing through the snowdrifts
In a big blue cloud of smoke
People laugh as I drive by
I wonder what's the joke?
I've got to get to Zellers
To pick up the layaway
'Cause Santa Claus is coming soon
In his big ole rusty sleigh!

Oh, rust and smoke
The heater's broke
The door just blew away!
I light a match to see the dash
And then I start to pray-ay!
The frame is bent
The muffler went
The radio, it's okay
Oh, what fun it is to drive this rusty Chevrolet!

Rust and smoke
The heater's broke
The door just blew away!
I light a match to see the dash
And then I start to pray-ay!
The frame is bent
The muffler went
The radio, it's okay
Oh, what fun it is to drive this rusty Chevrolet!

At last, Liz arrived at the Zellers store where her layaway was being kept. Having survived the drive there, now all Liz had to do was contend with all the other factors that made holiday shopping stressful...

Posting by

Captain Elizabeth F. "Liz" Beurling
Marine Commander
USS Myogi

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