The Timeline...

It was the winter of 2005.  I had a steady job and a set of wheels but that Saturn I was driving just wasn't cutting it.  It was acting... weird, you might say.

Having been a spoiled brat whose parents had always gotten him vehicles, buying a car was a new thing for me.  A couple of years after moving back to Atlanta, I had steady employment for the previous 12 months to counter my bad credit, and armed with that I went car shopping with one singular focus:


To buy a Jeep.


Ultimately, I wanted a Wrangler.  However, having bad credit, the Wranglers in which I was interested were mostly cash cars that couldn't be financed.  And I didn't simply have $8K in cash lying around.  So I sought out places that would finance me and shopped their lots.

One particularly promising place had its offices located on a very busy major street with it's lot of cars across the small, quite street that ran along the back of the building.  I went to the sales rep to talk financing first (no point it jerking around if I couldn't get a loan) and then talked cars.  He asked what I was looking for.  Jeep Wranglers, I told him.  "Anything else you're interested in?"  Uh... yeah.  Jeep WRANGlers.  He laughed and told me that people like me were easy to shop for because we knew what we wanted.

He then used a very transparent sales tactic that I saw right through and initially put me off.  He lied and told me that he didn't think they had any Wranglers but said it was possible and I could go look myself.  This was an outright lie; he knew full well there weren't any.  He did, however, follow it up with the statement "...but we do have a Jeep out in front of the offices.  Here's the key.  Why don't you drive it across the street and take a look at what's over there.  There might be a Wrangler that they've brought in that I'm not aware of."

Again, he knew full well there were no Wranglers on the lot.  He also knew that the moment I got into that Jeep out front I was going to love it.  Hunter green.  Leather interior (my Saturn's interior was cloth), power everything (my Saturn was manual doors and all), CD player (my Saturn had radio; didn't even have a tape deck), and the ride was so smooth...

...I fell in love.  On December 31st, 2005, I bought my first vehicle.  All by my onesy.  It was a 1998 XJ/Cherokee.  I nicknamed him, of course, "The Chief."


I had a great time with that Jeep.  It was expensive because I was raped in interest but I paid that sucker off and in roller-coaster 20-something months I owned it free and clear.  My first Jeep.  I owned it, it didn't own me. 

There were times, I'll admit, on which I'd pass by someone in a TJ or a YJ a CJ or later on a JK and sigh.  I wanted to be able to take the top off my Jeep too.  I wanted to take my doors off.  But unless you do some expensive mods to it, an XJ is a closed system by design.  They're not meant for doors to be off or have a spare on the back.  Almost the same off-road prowess but a comfortable city-sensibility.  That's the draw.

And it is quite a draw, I must say.  Was my XJ the flashiest rig around?  Certainly not.  But I learned, in early August of 2009 after having paid it off over a year before, that Cherokees are in the top five most stolen vehicles in the state of Georgia.  I came home on a Friday night around 10:55pm.  At 11:05, my neighbor comes knocking on my door saying "I think your Jeep is being stolen."  (note:  his phraseology suggested it was a crime in progress)  In time it took me to toss on a pair of shoes and go out to the landing where I could see out of the building to where I had parked it, it was gone.

My XJ, the one I sweated my hard-earned dollars into was gone.  Stolen in the middle of the night.  No a shard of glass to mark it's passing.

I couldn't even be mad.  Clearly these people had cased me out, knowing exactly when to expect me home and got into it very quickly.  The fact that there wasn't any glass meant they knew what they were doing and knew how to get into a vehicle discreetly.  That also meant that it might be intact when/if it was found.  There was a little bit of hope.

They did recover it, later that night and I got it back 36 hours after it had been stolen.

Mind you, in the state of GA, once you own a vehicle that's more than 10 years old free and clear, you need only have liability insurance on it.  So I didn't have theft insurance on it.  My coverage was paid through December and I could not have altered it to add it in.  I certainly mulled over the possibility of upgrading once my policy was up, but I had a few months to decide.  After all, it did double my insurance cost.

So you can imagine my frustration when on the second Monday of November 2009, I came out of a committee meeting at (of all places) my church, to find that my XJ was not where I had parked it.  It was nowhere in the lot at all. 

It had been stolen.

Again.

I couldn't even get mad.  I was too exasperated.  Twice in the same year.  Shit, twice in four months.  It had to be a cosmic joke.

I hoofed it for about 4 weeks as I considered my next step.  I didn't expect them to find it this time.  No reason to assume such good fortune would befall me yet again.  That meant I had to buy another vehicle.  I am, however, a man possessed of an indomitable spirit.  They want to steal my XJ?  Fine.  Fuck'em.  I'll get another.  No, I'll show them.  I'll get that Wrangler I always wanted.

So on December 14th, 2009, a little over a month after my XJ was stolen, I bought a 1998 teal/turquoise TJ/Wrangler.

It was love at first sight.  Saw it online, went out to view it, it was already lifted and modded in all the sexiest of ways.  I had to have her.  I couldn't wait to get her topless (I still haven't yet; it's too cold).  She's a head turner in ways a Cherokee could never be.  And that's okay.

From time to time, people would ask me "Have they found your Cherokee yet?"  I told them they had not, nor did I expect them to.  If they found it, I told them, I didn't expect it to be in working condition.  They'd always rather curiously follow it up with the question "What will you do if they do find it?"  Well, I've always wanted that bumper sticker that says "My other Jeep is a Jeep."  I suppose I'll just be a guy with two Jeeps.  Never can have too many.

It was nothing that I considered in seriousness.  I had a sinking feeling when I walked out to realize it was gone the second time that there was something of a finality to it.  I'll admit that it hurt some, that XJ was more than just a vehicle, it represented freedom.  Freedom from my parents in being about to buy it on my own.  Financial maturity because I could buy and own something.  It was a symbol of that and it bothered me to lose that symbol.  With each passing day, with each drive of my TJ, my XJ and the possibility of them finding it faded a little more.  Always look ahead to the next Jeep, never back at the one that's gone, right?  I did miss the power and gas mileage on that inline6 though.


So imagine my surprise today when the Atlanta Police Dept called to tell me that they had recovered my Cherokee.  All indications are that it's in relative unmolested condition.


I am now one man with two Jeeps...