I like winter. I like the quiet of it. Everyone is hiding inside their homes so there seems to be less traffic in the evenings and the air smells wonderful. The cold watery smell of the air mixed with the smell of leaves rotting and being burned and the smells of wood fires mix together to make the smell of winter. Last night I was up on a ladder and putting up Christmas lights on the house and smelling all those smells. I had on fingerless gloves, a stocking cap, and a scarf to keep me warm. I had to have a light with me because of the sun’s early retreat and it felt lovely and wintery.
I like winter. I kind of miss burning wood for heat though. I have plenty of reasons not to, pollution, the effort, the expense (I think it works out to be more expensive than turning on the heaters) and all the other reasons listed in a previous entry. But I do miss the notion of being in touch with my heat source a little more. I guess that’s progress.
I get a little dreamy headed during the winter, I find myself thinking of the future a lot and what I hope for with that. Lately it’s been moving. I keep finding myself thinking about moving to Spokane. I like that city, part of it anyway. I think it would be nice to live in one of the nice old craftsman houses on south hill. I would like to be within walking distance of this one big park that has a nice Japanese style garden and a rose garden and just all kinds of good stuff. I’d like a front porch and basement. That’s been my day dream lately. It’d be nice. I always think that if I go somewhere else, that suddenly I’ll sit down and race through pages and finally I would have completed a novel. Maybe I would. Spokane always feels good when I’m there.
I’m excited about Christmas. Not so much the day as the season. It’s a cozy time. It gets dark before even the earliest of dinners and there are pretty lights everywhere. It’s really kind of the last time before the Azaleas and Rhododendrons start blooming that there is anything to look at. In fall you get to watch the leaves change and make their way to the ground and then watch as they blow about on the ground. Then you get Christmas lights, but once they are gone, it’s just soggy and cold until things start blooming. Sometimes, I find myself writing history books in my head
"In the early 21st Century, homes were decorated with crude electric lights as part of a holiday seasons. This electric displays ranged from modest to lavish and where a kind of status symbol among the peoples of the era."
Every day it seems like more houses are lit. I’m looking forward to seeing them on my evening walks. I like the feeling of the cold air against me when I walk in the evening. It makes me feel human. I think that we might spend too much time in artificial climates as a people. I think exposure to cold air might keep us healthier, that’s just a hunch.
Last night as I was putting up lights, I started to recall photos of my grandfather and his brothers and sisters. Even those of my parents and their siblings. IT seems like many of the great ones that really testify to the condition of their lives and the times during which they lived where the ones where they were doing chores or doing something. Things like their tools and appliances speak to the era of the photograph and I see now how people can look at them and it could make them feel like they have lived for so long. I need to remember to get more pictures of us doing things around the house and basic living.
I like it as seasons change especially the first moment where you realize "Yes, now it’s winter (or spring, summer, or Autumn)." I know that people say that in the Pacific Northwest, we don’t have much in the way of seasons and that it’s all just varying grades of gray and rain with two weeks of summer, but these people aren’t paying attention to nuance.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Thursday, November 15, 2007
My Life With Cars
As I settle into life, which I now feel like I am doing, I realize that the sad reality of that settled easiness is that I own so few cars. When I was younger I owned a lot of different cars. This was of course due to not being able to afford very good cars and my own insistence that I would work on them myself and the belief that you can not work on car that was built after 1985. I have cloister phobic hands and new cars seem too cramped and somehow so intimidating to work on due to their abundance of wires and whatever else all that clutter is. I’ve been told that I’m an idiot and that they’re no different to work on than the older cars that I thought were more easily fixed. I was thinking about it last night, and the truth is, I’ve never done much major automotive repair. I guess what I mean is that I’ve never done any engine or transmission repair. When that’s needed, I get rid of the car. I’ve swapped some engines on cars at this hot rod shop that I used to hang out at, but that was different and I always had expert supervision hovering nearby to tell me that I was an moron.
I love my truck right now. I’ll get more into that later, but I miss the quirks and uniqueness of all my other cars. I miss the way some of them stood out and the way some of them blended in to everyone but me. I recall them all just as fondly as old friends.
The Silver Mullet: The Silver Mullet was my first car. It was a 1981 Plymouth Horizon, a little two door hatchback. It was grayish silver, and powered by 100% rock ‘n roll. What a car. Easily my favorite car ever. It wasn’t fast, but I drove it like it was. My dad bought it for me for $90 at an auction at the tow yard that he worked at. He put a few hundred dollars in parts into it and did the labor himself to give me a car that if I totaled it the way most new drivers do, he wouldn’t be out much. I had to pay for the insurance and gas myself, so it shuttled me to my second job as dishwasher at an Italian restaurant. Oh the Mullet. I had a pair of cheap handcuffs hanging from the review mirror and a quiet riot patch stuck to the cracked maroon dash. I swear that the car gained about 5 horse power the day I put the patch up. A buddy of mine who’s always been a tinkerer put a cheap tape deck in it for me. The really nice part about the instillation was that he used ridiculously thick green wires that he for some reason left at about 3 feet long. This gave my the unique ability to set the tape deck in the passenger seat for easy operation. I held it place with a note book note book that eventually took the form of a large and hideous flower due to it’s pages becoming shredded from being shoved back into place so often. The amazing thing about that car was that I could take corners pretty fast in it and it would slide around the corner in a very race carish looking drift. Prior to my owning it, it had power steering, but I’m guessing the pump broke or something because it was never hooked up as long as I owned it. The steering was very stiff, which added to the race car feeling, but left me sore at night the first few weeks I was driving it.
I scared the shit out of people when I drove that car. I knew, or at least thought I knew how the car handled so well that I wasn’t afraid to push the limits of safety. The girls that were willing to ride with me, squealed and giggled when I took corners fast or did a hilariously pathetic burnout which made me feel like a comedian and a super sexy test pilot all at the same time.
Towards the end of my owning it, The Silver Mullet began blowing the blackest smoke I’ve ever seen come out of a car from it’s tail pipe. It wasn’t only the blackness of smoke which was amazing, but the volume of it. At night, it would actually make the headlights of cars behind me almost invisible. The even greater part about it was that I could usually make it do it whenever I wanted by putting it in second and letting off the throttle for a moment then putting it back on to just the right spot.
But the mullet started to develop some quirks with the shifter linkage that I thought I couldn’t look past, but in retrospect should have. And I sold it to a guy named "Chewie"that was a friend of a friend’s father (Honest Rocko). I even let him keep the handcuffs. I saw him at a party and he told me that the car had been in a (not so) high speed chase with the police when his old lady took it and ran away on a crank induced, week long road trip of mayhem. After that it was then sold to some other guy. I like to think that it’s still out there somewhere rasing hell and blowing black smoke and being the symbol of anarchy that it will forever be to me.
The Cut-Dog: The Cut-Dog was a 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlas. Man that was a lush ride. I bought from some guy named George that my dad worked with. I liked it cause it was big and had pimpishly soft interior. It also had that great power steering that big cars of that era had. I could turn the wheel with two fingers. I bought it for $750. Me and The Cut Dog were with each other but a short while due to the thrown rod, but that car will hold a fond place in my heart because it was first car I ever hit a 100 mph in and I just felt so damned cool driving it all slow like a gangsta. It was blue through and through and even found some sweet diamond tuck blue pillows that I kept in the back seat. The cut dog ruled, but it was apparently not meant be, but I’ll always love him.
The Dart: I think the Dart was briefly named Norm, but it never really stuck. I had almost bought the dart right before I bought The Cut Dog from my friends neighbor, but she couldn’t find the title and it was never transferred into her name and my dad told me not to. But then the title was located and my friend Chris bought it as a back up car. After The Cut-Dog threw a rod, Chris agreed to sell it to me for $100 with the condition that once I got a new car, I sold it back to him for the same. The Dart was a 1974 Dodge Dart. It was brown with tan interior. The slant 6 that powered that thing ran wonderfully and passed emissions without a problem. It was a nice car. It had some quirks though. When it was cold, it didn’t like to start unless I took off this one vacuum hose (I think it was a vacuum hose) off of this one part of the air cleaner assembly, but then it didn’t want to run with that off. So I would have to pop the hood, unhook it, jump in the car and start it, jump out hook it back up and then roll. This was particularly fun when it died at intersections.
The first nail in the coffin of the Dart was an accident with some retard that couldn’t see because the sun was in his eyes, so he did what any normal person would do, he took a left in front of me. So I got $450 for the car from the insurance company, but then brakes gave out a while later, and I was lazy so I just got rid of it. Chris didn’t want it back. The Dart was cool and I had it while I was hanging out at a hot rod shop so it gave me some credibility. Muscle cars were considered cool enough around there, but they were just cars to be driven while you were building or between real hot rods. I also like how brown it was. I felt like I was sitting inside a big turd with wheels.
Barney: After the Dart was my second favorite car I’ve owned, Barney. Barney was a 1969 Buick LeSabre. It was big. It had a big engine and it was Raspberry Mettalic. A less careful observer would think that it was actually purple, but it was Raspberry Metallic. Though it’s purplish quality accounts for it’s name. The car had been owned by one family since it was new until just before me where it was sold to the same family that had introduced me to "Chewie." The patriarch of this family was Honest Rocko. Rocko was about 7 feet tall or more and not small in the girth. He was a Philadelphian born biker with a pony tail down to the middle of his back. He was always buying and selling cars and was scary as hell, so when he nick named me "shit lips", I didn’t argue. I was shit lips. Dealing with Rocko was right out of a movie. He would buy low and sell high, but he always was a good guy and I loved seeing him in public because he was the kind of guy that you were proud to walk up to and shake his hand, even if he did call you shit lips. Rocko was the one who told me that Barney was not purple. He knew because his buddy’s daughter had picked out the color from Mayco; Raspberry Metallic. Also, when he had some carpet installers in his house, one of them commented on the purple car and before Rocko could threaten to kill him if he called it purple again, the other carpet installer said "That’s raspberry metallic. When I worked at Mayco, I sprayed hundred of car that color." This made Rocko happy. I’m imagining that it was the Rocko family that named the car Barney. They had a particular skill for words and names.
So I had Barny for a about a year or so. The coolest thing about the car is that nobody ever wondered if they saw you driving, they knew if they did. I didn’t drink during much of the time that I owned Barney, but still hung out with a lot of people that did, so I was often the designated driver, and Barney came in handy for hauling about a dozen drunks around. Barny and I had lots of mis adventures due to no working gas gauge and let me tell you, that’s a big car to push around.
My favorite story about Barney though, is one time when I got pulled over. It was late and I don’t remember what I was doing, but I know that it was nothing bad. Anyhow, I got pulled over and the cop shined his light in my car. I had a flash light sitting on the seat of my car because I didn’t have a dome light.
"What’s the flash light for?" He asked.
"Seeing stuff in the dark." I said. I really didn’t mean to be a smart ass, but it came across that way.
"The reason I pulled you over, was that you match the description of a prowling vehicle." I just laughed.
"Really?"
"Well I thought it was brown."
"No sir," I informed him. "It’s raspberry metallic."
Barney had a bunch of problems, though none terminal, when I sent him to the scrap yard. I was given a ton of shit from Rocko for not offering them the opportunity to buy Barney back and the guy who owned it before Rocko told me that I "broke (his) heart (by scrapping it)." That made me feel kind of bad.
Phillip: Phillip was a 1963 Valiant 4-Door. It was named by a friend at the time who also showed me how to lower the front end with the torsion bars. We didn’t lower it a ton, just enough to give it a little rake. It was red that had somehow managed to avoid fading much. I think I bought it from my Dad after he bought it from an auction. Another slant six car. It ran okay, but it was always really underpowered and the throttle had about an inch and half of movement on it. Had I bothered to look into this like Rocko did when I sold the car to him, I would have found that a simple adjustment on the throttle linkage would have fixed this. I liked Phillip a lot even though I ended up doing quite a bit of work on it. One day, when changing the a tire, I snapped off about four of the lugs on the back tire, before my dad came out and told me what an idiot I was and told me that the big "L" on the end of the lug indicated it was a reverse thread lug, so you had to turn "righty loosey" So I had to replace all of those which was a learning experience during which the car came within about 2 inches of falling on me. Good times. At some point, I had to replace the master cylinder and broke a brake line in the process. So I got to bend my own break line. That was fun. I managed to break the return spring the master cylinder by doing some thing stupid which required me to rig a bungie cord between the steering column and brake peddle. Somewhere else in there I messed something else up so every time I pushed the brake peddle I was met by a shower of sparks. I liked that car a lot. Eventually, like all the other cars, I got sick of messing with it and sold it to Rocko for one of his sons.
Phillip was cool, he was low and old and not an old lady car, but not a real meat head car. The dash was all metal and painted red. On the dash I had a sticker that I got from a sticker machine that read "I make boys cry." I thought it was really funny. Everyone liked Phillip even though the interior was just a plaid flannel blanket tucked into the seat and you got honked at when driving up hills because he was a little on the slow side. I wish I still had Phillip.
The Bronco: I tried to name the Bronco at one point, but it was "The Bronco" as nothing else ever fit. It wasn’t really a Bronco, it was a 1989 Bronco II. It was my first attempt at what I considered a "respectable car." It had a newness to it that none of my other cars had even it was well over 10 years old when I bought it, but laquer wasn’t faded much, it didn’t have old car interior and it just looked like a car that you never had to be embarrassed about. I bought from some guy at my work, who bought from some chick’s parents. It had some problems, but to be honest, I never really bonded with the car, even though I owned it for a couple of years. It didn’t have much character and I never wanted to work on it when stuff broke. I took it on a lot of fishing trips, and the four wheel drive came in handy every now and then, but it the fact that I thought it was "respectable" in the end was why I hated it.
One time, I got a call from my buddies who I was leaving with on a road trip the next day, but one of the cars had not yet been built all the way. I think it was a ‘36 ford or something and we had spent the weekend getting it ready, but some of the finishing touches were still being put on it. I had to work before we left the next day and I had to go home early from the shop and then they started calling telling me to come back. I still lived with my folks and they were calling real late, so I got pissed and told them to "fuck off" and hung up. So I get up in the morning and I’m running late for work there is some note on my car. It was a poem from my buddy that read something about me getting pissed and Jack being nimble and quick and then standing under the horses rear end. I just threw it to the side and went to back up and my car wouldn’t move. I put it back in reverse, and tried again, but it still wouldn’t move. I got out and walked around the car and didn’t see anything. Eventually, I discovered that I they had jacked up my car, put jack stands under it just high enough to keep the wheels off the ground, but just about a quarter inch high, so I didn’t notice when walking around it. Pretty funny.
It was my first car with a CD player, which was cool, but that broke too. At some point, it was suffering from starter problems and I just got pissed at it and went out and brought my current car.
Taco: Taco is a 2005 Toyota Tacoma. First brand new car in anyone in my family has owned. To say I love Taco is an understatement. I adore him. He has no options. Manual locks and windows. Standard cab. So it’s a cozy car. I left the sticker that was on it at the dealership that read "2005 Motor Trend Truck of the year" for almost a year. Once when asked about why I didn’t take it off, I answered "You don’t buy the 2005 Motor Trend Truck of the year to keep it a secret." I still feel the same. It’s a 4 cylinder engine. It gets great gas milage and we’re pals. Sometimes at night, I drive around and listen to music and smoke a little dope on all the back roads that remind me of being a kid and I’m comfortable in Taco. Taco has dignity, he is a utilitarian vehicle, not a lot of fluff, but he’s still a nice car. He’s dirty on the inside, but cleans up very nice. I’ll drive him until’s he’s dead.
I love my truck right now. I’ll get more into that later, but I miss the quirks and uniqueness of all my other cars. I miss the way some of them stood out and the way some of them blended in to everyone but me. I recall them all just as fondly as old friends.
The Silver Mullet: The Silver Mullet was my first car. It was a 1981 Plymouth Horizon, a little two door hatchback. It was grayish silver, and powered by 100% rock ‘n roll. What a car. Easily my favorite car ever. It wasn’t fast, but I drove it like it was. My dad bought it for me for $90 at an auction at the tow yard that he worked at. He put a few hundred dollars in parts into it and did the labor himself to give me a car that if I totaled it the way most new drivers do, he wouldn’t be out much. I had to pay for the insurance and gas myself, so it shuttled me to my second job as dishwasher at an Italian restaurant. Oh the Mullet. I had a pair of cheap handcuffs hanging from the review mirror and a quiet riot patch stuck to the cracked maroon dash. I swear that the car gained about 5 horse power the day I put the patch up. A buddy of mine who’s always been a tinkerer put a cheap tape deck in it for me. The really nice part about the instillation was that he used ridiculously thick green wires that he for some reason left at about 3 feet long. This gave my the unique ability to set the tape deck in the passenger seat for easy operation. I held it place with a note book note book that eventually took the form of a large and hideous flower due to it’s pages becoming shredded from being shoved back into place so often. The amazing thing about that car was that I could take corners pretty fast in it and it would slide around the corner in a very race carish looking drift. Prior to my owning it, it had power steering, but I’m guessing the pump broke or something because it was never hooked up as long as I owned it. The steering was very stiff, which added to the race car feeling, but left me sore at night the first few weeks I was driving it.
I scared the shit out of people when I drove that car. I knew, or at least thought I knew how the car handled so well that I wasn’t afraid to push the limits of safety. The girls that were willing to ride with me, squealed and giggled when I took corners fast or did a hilariously pathetic burnout which made me feel like a comedian and a super sexy test pilot all at the same time.
Towards the end of my owning it, The Silver Mullet began blowing the blackest smoke I’ve ever seen come out of a car from it’s tail pipe. It wasn’t only the blackness of smoke which was amazing, but the volume of it. At night, it would actually make the headlights of cars behind me almost invisible. The even greater part about it was that I could usually make it do it whenever I wanted by putting it in second and letting off the throttle for a moment then putting it back on to just the right spot.
But the mullet started to develop some quirks with the shifter linkage that I thought I couldn’t look past, but in retrospect should have. And I sold it to a guy named "Chewie"that was a friend of a friend’s father (Honest Rocko). I even let him keep the handcuffs. I saw him at a party and he told me that the car had been in a (not so) high speed chase with the police when his old lady took it and ran away on a crank induced, week long road trip of mayhem. After that it was then sold to some other guy. I like to think that it’s still out there somewhere rasing hell and blowing black smoke and being the symbol of anarchy that it will forever be to me.
The Cut-Dog: The Cut-Dog was a 1984 Oldsmobile Cutlas. Man that was a lush ride. I bought from some guy named George that my dad worked with. I liked it cause it was big and had pimpishly soft interior. It also had that great power steering that big cars of that era had. I could turn the wheel with two fingers. I bought it for $750. Me and The Cut Dog were with each other but a short while due to the thrown rod, but that car will hold a fond place in my heart because it was first car I ever hit a 100 mph in and I just felt so damned cool driving it all slow like a gangsta. It was blue through and through and even found some sweet diamond tuck blue pillows that I kept in the back seat. The cut dog ruled, but it was apparently not meant be, but I’ll always love him.
The Dart: I think the Dart was briefly named Norm, but it never really stuck. I had almost bought the dart right before I bought The Cut Dog from my friends neighbor, but she couldn’t find the title and it was never transferred into her name and my dad told me not to. But then the title was located and my friend Chris bought it as a back up car. After The Cut-Dog threw a rod, Chris agreed to sell it to me for $100 with the condition that once I got a new car, I sold it back to him for the same. The Dart was a 1974 Dodge Dart. It was brown with tan interior. The slant 6 that powered that thing ran wonderfully and passed emissions without a problem. It was a nice car. It had some quirks though. When it was cold, it didn’t like to start unless I took off this one vacuum hose (I think it was a vacuum hose) off of this one part of the air cleaner assembly, but then it didn’t want to run with that off. So I would have to pop the hood, unhook it, jump in the car and start it, jump out hook it back up and then roll. This was particularly fun when it died at intersections.
The first nail in the coffin of the Dart was an accident with some retard that couldn’t see because the sun was in his eyes, so he did what any normal person would do, he took a left in front of me. So I got $450 for the car from the insurance company, but then brakes gave out a while later, and I was lazy so I just got rid of it. Chris didn’t want it back. The Dart was cool and I had it while I was hanging out at a hot rod shop so it gave me some credibility. Muscle cars were considered cool enough around there, but they were just cars to be driven while you were building or between real hot rods. I also like how brown it was. I felt like I was sitting inside a big turd with wheels.
Barney: After the Dart was my second favorite car I’ve owned, Barney. Barney was a 1969 Buick LeSabre. It was big. It had a big engine and it was Raspberry Mettalic. A less careful observer would think that it was actually purple, but it was Raspberry Metallic. Though it’s purplish quality accounts for it’s name. The car had been owned by one family since it was new until just before me where it was sold to the same family that had introduced me to "Chewie." The patriarch of this family was Honest Rocko. Rocko was about 7 feet tall or more and not small in the girth. He was a Philadelphian born biker with a pony tail down to the middle of his back. He was always buying and selling cars and was scary as hell, so when he nick named me "shit lips", I didn’t argue. I was shit lips. Dealing with Rocko was right out of a movie. He would buy low and sell high, but he always was a good guy and I loved seeing him in public because he was the kind of guy that you were proud to walk up to and shake his hand, even if he did call you shit lips. Rocko was the one who told me that Barney was not purple. He knew because his buddy’s daughter had picked out the color from Mayco; Raspberry Metallic. Also, when he had some carpet installers in his house, one of them commented on the purple car and before Rocko could threaten to kill him if he called it purple again, the other carpet installer said "That’s raspberry metallic. When I worked at Mayco, I sprayed hundred of car that color." This made Rocko happy. I’m imagining that it was the Rocko family that named the car Barney. They had a particular skill for words and names.
So I had Barny for a about a year or so. The coolest thing about the car is that nobody ever wondered if they saw you driving, they knew if they did. I didn’t drink during much of the time that I owned Barney, but still hung out with a lot of people that did, so I was often the designated driver, and Barney came in handy for hauling about a dozen drunks around. Barny and I had lots of mis adventures due to no working gas gauge and let me tell you, that’s a big car to push around.
My favorite story about Barney though, is one time when I got pulled over. It was late and I don’t remember what I was doing, but I know that it was nothing bad. Anyhow, I got pulled over and the cop shined his light in my car. I had a flash light sitting on the seat of my car because I didn’t have a dome light.
"What’s the flash light for?" He asked.
"Seeing stuff in the dark." I said. I really didn’t mean to be a smart ass, but it came across that way.
"The reason I pulled you over, was that you match the description of a prowling vehicle." I just laughed.
"Really?"
"Well I thought it was brown."
"No sir," I informed him. "It’s raspberry metallic."
Barney had a bunch of problems, though none terminal, when I sent him to the scrap yard. I was given a ton of shit from Rocko for not offering them the opportunity to buy Barney back and the guy who owned it before Rocko told me that I "broke (his) heart (by scrapping it)." That made me feel kind of bad.
Phillip: Phillip was a 1963 Valiant 4-Door. It was named by a friend at the time who also showed me how to lower the front end with the torsion bars. We didn’t lower it a ton, just enough to give it a little rake. It was red that had somehow managed to avoid fading much. I think I bought it from my Dad after he bought it from an auction. Another slant six car. It ran okay, but it was always really underpowered and the throttle had about an inch and half of movement on it. Had I bothered to look into this like Rocko did when I sold the car to him, I would have found that a simple adjustment on the throttle linkage would have fixed this. I liked Phillip a lot even though I ended up doing quite a bit of work on it. One day, when changing the a tire, I snapped off about four of the lugs on the back tire, before my dad came out and told me what an idiot I was and told me that the big "L" on the end of the lug indicated it was a reverse thread lug, so you had to turn "righty loosey" So I had to replace all of those which was a learning experience during which the car came within about 2 inches of falling on me. Good times. At some point, I had to replace the master cylinder and broke a brake line in the process. So I got to bend my own break line. That was fun. I managed to break the return spring the master cylinder by doing some thing stupid which required me to rig a bungie cord between the steering column and brake peddle. Somewhere else in there I messed something else up so every time I pushed the brake peddle I was met by a shower of sparks. I liked that car a lot. Eventually, like all the other cars, I got sick of messing with it and sold it to Rocko for one of his sons.
Phillip was cool, he was low and old and not an old lady car, but not a real meat head car. The dash was all metal and painted red. On the dash I had a sticker that I got from a sticker machine that read "I make boys cry." I thought it was really funny. Everyone liked Phillip even though the interior was just a plaid flannel blanket tucked into the seat and you got honked at when driving up hills because he was a little on the slow side. I wish I still had Phillip.
The Bronco: I tried to name the Bronco at one point, but it was "The Bronco" as nothing else ever fit. It wasn’t really a Bronco, it was a 1989 Bronco II. It was my first attempt at what I considered a "respectable car." It had a newness to it that none of my other cars had even it was well over 10 years old when I bought it, but laquer wasn’t faded much, it didn’t have old car interior and it just looked like a car that you never had to be embarrassed about. I bought from some guy at my work, who bought from some chick’s parents. It had some problems, but to be honest, I never really bonded with the car, even though I owned it for a couple of years. It didn’t have much character and I never wanted to work on it when stuff broke. I took it on a lot of fishing trips, and the four wheel drive came in handy every now and then, but it the fact that I thought it was "respectable" in the end was why I hated it.
One time, I got a call from my buddies who I was leaving with on a road trip the next day, but one of the cars had not yet been built all the way. I think it was a ‘36 ford or something and we had spent the weekend getting it ready, but some of the finishing touches were still being put on it. I had to work before we left the next day and I had to go home early from the shop and then they started calling telling me to come back. I still lived with my folks and they were calling real late, so I got pissed and told them to "fuck off" and hung up. So I get up in the morning and I’m running late for work there is some note on my car. It was a poem from my buddy that read something about me getting pissed and Jack being nimble and quick and then standing under the horses rear end. I just threw it to the side and went to back up and my car wouldn’t move. I put it back in reverse, and tried again, but it still wouldn’t move. I got out and walked around the car and didn’t see anything. Eventually, I discovered that I they had jacked up my car, put jack stands under it just high enough to keep the wheels off the ground, but just about a quarter inch high, so I didn’t notice when walking around it. Pretty funny.
It was my first car with a CD player, which was cool, but that broke too. At some point, it was suffering from starter problems and I just got pissed at it and went out and brought my current car.
Taco: Taco is a 2005 Toyota Tacoma. First brand new car in anyone in my family has owned. To say I love Taco is an understatement. I adore him. He has no options. Manual locks and windows. Standard cab. So it’s a cozy car. I left the sticker that was on it at the dealership that read "2005 Motor Trend Truck of the year" for almost a year. Once when asked about why I didn’t take it off, I answered "You don’t buy the 2005 Motor Trend Truck of the year to keep it a secret." I still feel the same. It’s a 4 cylinder engine. It gets great gas milage and we’re pals. Sometimes at night, I drive around and listen to music and smoke a little dope on all the back roads that remind me of being a kid and I’m comfortable in Taco. Taco has dignity, he is a utilitarian vehicle, not a lot of fluff, but he’s still a nice car. He’s dirty on the inside, but cleans up very nice. I’ll drive him until’s he’s dead.
Phone Sex With Grandma
Phone rings. It's picked up after 5 rings.
"Hello." It's my grandmother.
"Hi Grandma." I said. "What are you doing?"
"I'm sitting here in my birthday suit right now." I was stunned. Was my grandmother misinterpting my friendly call as an attempt at phone sex?
"Thanks for that, Grandma." I say after a long pause.
"I'm just about to get into the shower." She sounded throaty, like a crazy woman trying to be sexy.
"Are you going to be there at noon?" I ask.
"Why, I imagine so." She says, still sounding like the worst phone sex operator ever.
"Okay, I'm going to come up to play cards on my lunch hour if that's okay."
"That will be fine. I better go take that shower, I'll see you in a couple hours."
I need to go pray.
"Hello." It's my grandmother.
"Hi Grandma." I said. "What are you doing?"
"I'm sitting here in my birthday suit right now." I was stunned. Was my grandmother misinterpting my friendly call as an attempt at phone sex?
"Thanks for that, Grandma." I say after a long pause.
"I'm just about to get into the shower." She sounded throaty, like a crazy woman trying to be sexy.
"Are you going to be there at noon?" I ask.
"Why, I imagine so." She says, still sounding like the worst phone sex operator ever.
"Okay, I'm going to come up to play cards on my lunch hour if that's okay."
"That will be fine. I better go take that shower, I'll see you in a couple hours."
I need to go pray.
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Portland The Demon
The end of summer when I was fourteen still smell like freedom. The fact that school was very near didn’t sour the day as I walked passed the car dealership with best friend Luke, and a pretty young lady who neither of us had a pure thought about. It was a warm day and Luke and I were silently fighting for the position next to the girl that allowed us the best vantage from which to look down the front of her shirt as we walked.
"You guys smoke weed?" The voice sounded like it belonged to the loveable dolt on any number of sitcom.
"Yeah." I answered. Truthfully, I had, but I didn’t on a regular basis. But that day I was happy to show off for the young lady who was there. I turned around to see two guys that I would have placed in there late teens or early twenties. The one who was speaking was tall, had a shaved head, was wearing a striped shirt and had a deformed ear. The other guy was a nondescript grubby kind of guy.
"Come on then." I received a concerned look from the girl, which only made me feel like I was being much more dangerous. So I followed. My buddy whispered something to me about maybe I shouldn’t, but I felt like being brave. So we all followed to a row of some of the grubbiest places that sat behind the Dairy Queen that even though I had lived in that town all my life I had managed to blind myself to their existence that they were so run down and gross looking. But then I was alone in a room with these two guys that I didn’t know, while my buddy was sitting on the front porch with the girl that I was trying to impress. But this was one of the few moments in my life where I was able let my anxiety be overpowered by my sense of adventure. So I sat there on a faded bedspread on the corner of a bed that I was sure prostitutes had earned their living on.
The bald guy with the deformed ear was named Josh. He placed a bud on a Coors Light tall can that had been made into a pipe and handed it to me.
"That’s just my thing." He seemed to begin talking in the middle of a sentence. "I just want to get everybody in the world to try weed, just once." He said paused to take the pipe back from me and hand it over to the grubby guy who took a big hit and exhaled through his rotten front teeth. "I’m like that song," Josh continued. "More human than human, that’s me." I hated that song then, it wasn’t quite obscure enough for me and I was suffering from the delusion that the only good music was obscure music. Josh trailed off as we passed the pipe around a bit more. I realized that my friends were outside still and I thanked them both for the dope and apologized for taking off so quickly. They said not to worry and to "pass it on."
Luke, the girl, and I went out to coffee at some Italian restaurant, where a couple of years later I would be a dishwasher. Where I recall acting a lot more stoned that I was, but I got a couple of approving looks from our breasted companion, so I kept it up.
I don’t remember that afternoon, I’m assuming it ended with us finding some other people and we went to wherever or maybe my mom came and picked me up.
A while later, Josh was back. He was at the park that my friends and I sat around at and smoked a lot of cigarettes and talked a lot about nothing, but those were important and brooding times. We had a revolution to plan. Josh showed up and started talking to him. He was working at the fair selling wax likenesses of people’s hands. After the fair, Josh never left, but he quickly was renamed "Portland" one day he "got real high on meth and rode my bike all the way to Portland." That was a hell of a haul, we were 30 miles south of Seattle. He was there at the park for the next couple of years. He was always telling people how he was from hell and he was sent back to earth for battling with Satan. It was that same fight with Satan, where he broke one of his horns, hence his deformed ear.
Portland was a joke to most of us. The crazy guy. Those who smoked weed got high with him, and it always seemed like the folks who were homeless and the most confused about life ended up being pals with him for a couple of weeks until things started looking up. But the was there. Once he had a puppy and when my mother came to pick me up, she asked who’s puppy it was. Portland looked my mother in the face and said in his television surfer dude voice
"He’s a dragon from hell."
Another time, I was at taco bell with my girlfriend and buddy and he was there and kept staring at my girlfriend’s tits.
"Get off my burger." I said to him. I thought it was really funny to call her "my burger." I think I got it from a Cosby show re-run.
"Wrong place, bud. Tacos." My friend laughed hysterically, while I scrambled to think of a witty retort. I didn’t need to, Portland engrossed in rolling up a paper napkin with some red sauce in a burrito wrapper. He then walked up to the counter and demanded a new burrito because they forgot to put beans in his. He was asked to leave.
Looking back, I guess I really liked the guy in a way. He was a familiar and unique fixture in my youth and I always like telling people who knew him that I met him back when he was "normal." I remember once, he was sad just sitting on a park bench. Staring off into space. I shot the shit with him a little bit, I asked him about the other guy that I had first met him with. He said that he hadn’t heard from him in a while that he should try to get a hold of him. I remember how much he just radiated sadness that day. I could even feel it when I walked away from him and went and sat on the other side of the park.
Portland was always just there for the next few years, a local oddity. He got more and more strange and maybe more dangerous as time went on. He was said to have chased a little girl with a sword. The rumor was that he said "I want to see your guts." He apparently spent some time in jail for that one. Eventually, Portland hung himself from a highway overpass. I’ve never believed that he thought he was going to die. I’m sure he just thought he didn’t need air or a neck to survive or that maybe he was just going back to hell to finish his battle with Satan. My favorite joke for a while was "Has anyone seen Portland hanging around." I’m a little ashamed of that now.
"You guys smoke weed?" The voice sounded like it belonged to the loveable dolt on any number of sitcom.
"Yeah." I answered. Truthfully, I had, but I didn’t on a regular basis. But that day I was happy to show off for the young lady who was there. I turned around to see two guys that I would have placed in there late teens or early twenties. The one who was speaking was tall, had a shaved head, was wearing a striped shirt and had a deformed ear. The other guy was a nondescript grubby kind of guy.
"Come on then." I received a concerned look from the girl, which only made me feel like I was being much more dangerous. So I followed. My buddy whispered something to me about maybe I shouldn’t, but I felt like being brave. So we all followed to a row of some of the grubbiest places that sat behind the Dairy Queen that even though I had lived in that town all my life I had managed to blind myself to their existence that they were so run down and gross looking. But then I was alone in a room with these two guys that I didn’t know, while my buddy was sitting on the front porch with the girl that I was trying to impress. But this was one of the few moments in my life where I was able let my anxiety be overpowered by my sense of adventure. So I sat there on a faded bedspread on the corner of a bed that I was sure prostitutes had earned their living on.
The bald guy with the deformed ear was named Josh. He placed a bud on a Coors Light tall can that had been made into a pipe and handed it to me.
"That’s just my thing." He seemed to begin talking in the middle of a sentence. "I just want to get everybody in the world to try weed, just once." He said paused to take the pipe back from me and hand it over to the grubby guy who took a big hit and exhaled through his rotten front teeth. "I’m like that song," Josh continued. "More human than human, that’s me." I hated that song then, it wasn’t quite obscure enough for me and I was suffering from the delusion that the only good music was obscure music. Josh trailed off as we passed the pipe around a bit more. I realized that my friends were outside still and I thanked them both for the dope and apologized for taking off so quickly. They said not to worry and to "pass it on."
Luke, the girl, and I went out to coffee at some Italian restaurant, where a couple of years later I would be a dishwasher. Where I recall acting a lot more stoned that I was, but I got a couple of approving looks from our breasted companion, so I kept it up.
I don’t remember that afternoon, I’m assuming it ended with us finding some other people and we went to wherever or maybe my mom came and picked me up.
A while later, Josh was back. He was at the park that my friends and I sat around at and smoked a lot of cigarettes and talked a lot about nothing, but those were important and brooding times. We had a revolution to plan. Josh showed up and started talking to him. He was working at the fair selling wax likenesses of people’s hands. After the fair, Josh never left, but he quickly was renamed "Portland" one day he "got real high on meth and rode my bike all the way to Portland." That was a hell of a haul, we were 30 miles south of Seattle. He was there at the park for the next couple of years. He was always telling people how he was from hell and he was sent back to earth for battling with Satan. It was that same fight with Satan, where he broke one of his horns, hence his deformed ear.
Portland was a joke to most of us. The crazy guy. Those who smoked weed got high with him, and it always seemed like the folks who were homeless and the most confused about life ended up being pals with him for a couple of weeks until things started looking up. But the was there. Once he had a puppy and when my mother came to pick me up, she asked who’s puppy it was. Portland looked my mother in the face and said in his television surfer dude voice
"He’s a dragon from hell."
Another time, I was at taco bell with my girlfriend and buddy and he was there and kept staring at my girlfriend’s tits.
"Get off my burger." I said to him. I thought it was really funny to call her "my burger." I think I got it from a Cosby show re-run.
"Wrong place, bud. Tacos." My friend laughed hysterically, while I scrambled to think of a witty retort. I didn’t need to, Portland engrossed in rolling up a paper napkin with some red sauce in a burrito wrapper. He then walked up to the counter and demanded a new burrito because they forgot to put beans in his. He was asked to leave.
Looking back, I guess I really liked the guy in a way. He was a familiar and unique fixture in my youth and I always like telling people who knew him that I met him back when he was "normal." I remember once, he was sad just sitting on a park bench. Staring off into space. I shot the shit with him a little bit, I asked him about the other guy that I had first met him with. He said that he hadn’t heard from him in a while that he should try to get a hold of him. I remember how much he just radiated sadness that day. I could even feel it when I walked away from him and went and sat on the other side of the park.
Portland was always just there for the next few years, a local oddity. He got more and more strange and maybe more dangerous as time went on. He was said to have chased a little girl with a sword. The rumor was that he said "I want to see your guts." He apparently spent some time in jail for that one. Eventually, Portland hung himself from a highway overpass. I’ve never believed that he thought he was going to die. I’m sure he just thought he didn’t need air or a neck to survive or that maybe he was just going back to hell to finish his battle with Satan. My favorite joke for a while was "Has anyone seen Portland hanging around." I’m a little ashamed of that now.
Monday, November 5, 2007
Copper Tunnel
The receptionist and I had exchanged a couple of emails about why she needed part of Friday off. She sent me the following in all seriousness and when I buzzed her to ask her if she was joking she ended up hanging up the phone in shame.
that's right I did work my fingers to the bone, that is why I feel like I have copper tunnel now
that's right I did work my fingers to the bone, that is why I feel like I have copper tunnel now
Friday, November 2, 2007
A Mere Creation's Meditation Regarding Time
Time, not the clock or the calender or the any of the other inventions of man that are suppose to measure the inertia of the universe, but time as a universal factor or power consumes my thoughts either as an almost undetectable veil dimly coloring the light that illuminates my every thought and perception or as a conscious thought that I approach as a riddle and never a river. When I look at my reflection I usually see myself aging and falling to a pile of dust before the mirror, but at my most innocent of moments and those when I feel the most put upon by the world, I see my maturity melt away leaving the child that I once was; a child, consumed by things that thoughts cannot combat. Time is my advisory. It seems as though even God is resigned to letting time have its way, but then a mortal should not try to look through God’s glasses. When one pursues perfection in everything or anything, time is a cruel mistress. It is necessary to submit oneself to her will in order to be a student of anything because if we attained knowledge with a mere desire, it would come with no wisdom, and yet we are always running from her trying to negotiate a last attempt to achieve our ultimate goal. In the end though, she cuts us down and leave us unfulfilled and with perfection not achieved. So why as finite beings, do we pursue perfection in a universe that doesn’t allow for it?
Every autumn, I love to watch as the leaves try beg for God’s Mercy in displays of unnecessary beauty and every time I take it in, I find myself thinking we’re approaching some apex of grandeur. Though I’ve never believed that I was witnessing that moment of rapturous beauty. I try to tell myself that every moment is exactly as it should be because that’s all it can ever be, but I’ve not been able to believe that in soul.
This all ties into the my quest for some universal truth that I believe God has hidden for me to find like an Easter Egg, but more and more I suspect that the truth I seek is the realization that my hands cannot affect the flow of time and perfection is not obtainable by mere creations.
Every autumn, I love to watch as the leaves try beg for God’s Mercy in displays of unnecessary beauty and every time I take it in, I find myself thinking we’re approaching some apex of grandeur. Though I’ve never believed that I was witnessing that moment of rapturous beauty. I try to tell myself that every moment is exactly as it should be because that’s all it can ever be, but I’ve not been able to believe that in soul.
This all ties into the my quest for some universal truth that I believe God has hidden for me to find like an Easter Egg, but more and more I suspect that the truth I seek is the realization that my hands cannot affect the flow of time and perfection is not obtainable by mere creations.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)