DAY 54: Tuesday, December 1, 2009: You called pest control, and they told you to just belch once.

Spring, 2009: The past can send me sideways, and flashbacks are much more vivid these days.

The only thing I’m not confused about anymore is that I live in a constant state of confusion, which is very confusing, but gimme a sec and let me explain about someone bruised, battered and naturally blonde beyond belief yet still able to make decent toast if conditions are right, which they never are, because they had to go put a little pressure button on the damn thing, instead of just making us hold the springy handle down and peer into the slot, to see what color our bread has become.  They’re probably going to install a tiny video camera soon, to watch and even record the browning process, but you could simply go and use one of my favorite cooking tools of all time, the propane torch.  It’s like painting bread with an airbrush, only much hotter. 

Lately my wife Janelle says the kitchen is completely off limits, because I get “creative and overzealous,” or my favorite description of all time; “lethal.”  I mean, what a wicked witch, you know?  A hot, sultry, spike-heeled, strutting, take the tall hat off now and God Almighty she’s throwing the hair around and I’m taking a break and WHOA MAMMA!   HIT ME WITH THE BROOM!  HIT ME WITH THE BROOM!  [Long cigarette break].

Somehow the marriage works and where was I — Rhode Island! 

I need to take a mental road trip back to a more innocent time during the pursuit of intelligentsia, attending a quaint little college, down there in quaint little Rhode Island, once voted “Most Quaint” by The New England Literary Journal of Historical Introverts.

I need to go back, so close your eyes for a moment and try to envision the inner workings of a toaster, then a crazy poet with funny hair, then pretend you’re driving with my wife, then get your damn hand off her knee unless you’re a lesbian, which has me all distracted and confused now, but then kind of steer toward two artists conversing in a university office, then open your eyes to read, then close them to envision yourself in a small convenient store, and get me tons of money from the ATM.

Okay!  Here we go! 

I knew a great writer named Saul Borden[1] who lived in a garage, and often called himself Saul Paradise, but only when he was writing prose or poetry.  The Great Swamp Gazette published him down there at the University of Rhode Island, and he was also a great jazz drummer who got a full ride to Berkeley in Boston, before some kind of short circuit (controlled substance) melted crucial brain cells till it was over just like THAT, and yet . . . a great fire burned deep within his soul, you know, and he wrote truly spectacular stuff.

“He did not!” my lovely Janelle said, driving into Manchester last night.  “Maybe at first, but wasn’t he that really weird guy with the crazy eyes, bushy sideburns, and long hair?”

I looked in the rearview mirror, mumbling, “Turn to your left hon, and describe what you see to the folks listening at home.”

She confirmed my likeness to Saul, mumbling “Oh . . . there’s that.” 

Anyway, the Great Swamp Gazette would light up like Cape Canaveral during launch when his work came in, and they published an illustrated book of his poetry, which became a very big runaway smash hit in a local way, like maybe some stoned kids at the library.  Their tuition money paid for it, so what the hell; we thought it was pretty good prose, and we were not a bunch of drug-sucking freaks sitting around naked, reading Saul’s stuff to each other with incense and chopstick food and Stevie Nicks singing softly in the background, and those cool lava lamps glowing and black light showing and hold all calls we’ve got a vibration going.  Dig?   Nothing even CLOSE to that my very skeptical friend, because we were VERY serious literary types of writer kinds of types, and I think the music was more like Tom Waits or Bob Dylan.  For some reason the famous crooner Tom Jones comes to mind, after tons of potato chips.

Where was I?  Oh yeah . . . confuuuuuuusion.

So one day Saul Borden slash Paradise is in the office chilling-out, and I’m telling him some very serious literary ideas for a great story or some other useless shit, and he suddenly says, “Hey man, you’ve got a very funny head.”

I’m thinking whoa there Saul, I may have a head the size of Saturn and eyebrows the color of glowing plutonium kryptonite, but calling my goofy skull funny is not going to get you any more press in this low life bohemian rag.  When all is said and done, I’m the big cheese who ran frightened students out of here and blackmailed administration.  I’m the guy who sweeps up every night and discovered your sorry ass when I passed out in your landlord’s driveway, thinking it was my house . . . several . . . miles away . . . but then discovered you living in that garage.  And yes!  It was me feeding the editors your feeble efforts to fill empty space at deadline.  So I’m no different than a lot of high-paid agents, except I’m not paid and I’m not an agent.  That leaves only HIGH, or like, whatever.

This had to be addressed in no uncertain terms, so I sat up straight and burned my lap without feeling anything, saying, “Yeah, Saul, my head’s an omnipresent anomaly.  So like, what’s your point?”

Whereas he said, “No, no,” backtracking to clarify.  “I mean you think in really strange ways, like you get all these crazy thoughts and it’s really funny.  You have this strange way of looking at things, so I think you’ve got a really funny head, like on the inside, and you’re going to write for television.” 

He suddenly got very, very serious; leaning forward to share a great secret, saying, “I think you’re going to end up as a truly great television writer.”

I was confused as always, but curious and deeply flattered, asking, “Really?”

He was nodding, saying, “Yes . . . yes . . . some kind of sitcom or something.  It’s going to be funny as hell!”

I was pretty happy about that, since I was actually watching some television back then, like Seinfeld, and a lot of commercials between Seinfeld, so it was a very touching compliment, and later that night, I passed out in another strange driveway, realizing my true destiny:

I didn’t have a chance in hell of ever becoming a television writer.

I could impregnate Tina Fey right now (dressed as Sandra Palin, don’t ask), black mail the living hell out of Charlie Sheen (dressed as Sandra Palin, don’t ask), and hold Jason Lee hostage (dressed as Charlie Sheen, don’t ask); I still couldn’t get a gig writing comedy for television, for one simple reason:

I can’t make toast.

So now I’m sitting here in my early fifties and an office chair, with a highly advanced six-year-old daughter sleeping peacefully, guarded by a very bossy little Jack Russell cuddled under the covers (they’re a burrowing breed), and two spidery greyhounds slinking around like shadows, my wife curled up with a laptop and a cooking show, thinking how grand life can be with a very funny head.  Me, not my wife.

I lost my job like a lot of good folks out there, cut down and keelhauled by a large corporation without any warning whatsoever, given my walking papers by one of the most apologetic managers ever created by long-term demonic possession and lots of tobacco, but one thing is still certain:

I really can’t make toast.

Also, I fell into a very serious trap writing this saga, and had to immediately scrap almost fifty pages right off the bat, but it was all great therapy, slamming the Survey Department for using me up like some kind of cheap little whore, dressed as a dirty smutty Sandra Palin in that little dress she wore on SNL with Tina Fey, and hey ho . . . sorry about that, breathe deep breathe deep break the capsule grab the filter mask and hey now mama, we’re right back into it.

So anyway, where was I?  Confuuuuuuuuuusion.  Excuse me while I go torch myself a grilled cheese sandwich. 

 -   -   -

Flashbacks are much more vivid these days . . . wait.  This all sounds familiar, so let me try again, and change the channel:

I do live in a constant state of confusion, where thoughts seem to fly around without much control, yet I often do things that many simply cannot, because they’re smarter and know better. 

For example, I’m writing all this down as I’m driving home, with a notebook nestled in my lap, and the right upper corner brushing the steering wheel, dealing with lights and turns and the whole bloody gig, and yet other skills elude me, like simple mathematics.  Geometry is brutal for me, and working with numbers in general is like a half-opened can of sardines; they can’t be counted or ignored, and they all stink to high heaven. 

This is very bad news for a land surveyor, or anyone who likes tiny fish, and it’s really not a good career move when the “math side” of your brain is like the Badlands east of Rapid City, where you wake-up in a prairie dog town with an empty gas tank and no idea how you got there, and your license plate says Massachusetts and you’re so lost and confused, even that squashed sidewinder looks like a long lost friend.  You see, that would be the “math side” of my brain, or just another flashback, it’s hard to tell these days.

Anyway, back to toast and Tina Fey, or land survey.

For the last decade (rounding up a few months, just to use the word “decade”), I was a land surveyor, environmental scientist, and balloon trainer, which pretty much makes me crazy as hell, finishing off any sanity left after getting shot, stabbed, pummeled, threatened, nearly drowned (four times; once in a toxic river), and worst of all, scolded by a six-year old girl when I chew with my mouth open, during supper.  We’ll leave the gassy greyhound for another day, because she really sports an active colon.  These things are all entirely true, and good for a lot of laughs.  That’s where the “crazy as hell” part comes in.“You have a very funny head,” Borden slash Paradise told me, back at the Gazette.  More recently, a very attractive project manager in the Environmental Department said, “You’ve got a million funny stories.”  My favorite comment comes from Cedar Rapids, Iowa . . . oh, that was a television news flash flashback.  Say it quick three times!  Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Where was I?  Iowa!  No, my favorite comment comes from a close friend in HR, at my last lost career, who said, “You’re a high-powered magnet for really weird shit.”

That is the most beautifully truthful thing anyone has ever said about me; direct and to the point, with just a touch of gutter profanity.  I mean, if I leave the house even for a few minutes — and sometimes if I don’t — it’s going to come after me.  IT’S GOING TO FIND ME.

Tomorrow night: Part II

[1] Not his real name or choice of panty hose.

MY OLD CALLING CARD

DAY 53: Monday, November 30, 2009: Hungry animals follow your crumb trail.

When I think of “animals” and “crumbs”, I think of the mice that move into this old house every winter, and weeks of trapping.

My 7-yr. old daughter loves cute little mice, which means a live trapping system, using a plastic container with a seesaw tipping bait platform that drops the vermin safely into a ventilated apartment, and tips back up again, blocking the exit.

On the way to her school, we pull over by a small waterfall and watch the little mouse smash on jagged rocks below, laughing our asses off before a good, long hit of Thunderbird wine.  It’s so much better than fishing.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!  Kidding, of course.  We drop them into the forest beside the falls and Gwenny says good-bye — “Watch those owls and whatnots” — and it’s on to school.

Some day I’ll finally realize that the same damn mouse keeps coming back . . . the hunters around here would mock me if they knew, but that’s cool.  Some day I’ll explain climate-controlled supermarkets with brightly-dyed and drugged meats wrapped in clear packages, available at very reasonable prices.  No hunting required!  No weapons!  Check out hot babes to the sounds of generic Muzak!

Ahhhhh, the country life.  Now a squirrel has moved into a space above the porch ceiling, and I’m so tempted to pull out the Moisin Nagant sniper rifle and blow it’s furry little head . . . sorry.  Gotta repair the entry point and maybe put a squirrel house up in the tree.

CALL OF DUTY - SQUIRREL PATROL

 Tree; I hardly hugged thee.

DAY 52: Sunday, November 29, 2009: You wanted to try jogging once; the first step is still underway.

Are you still running?  Lifting?  Moving and grooving? 

C’mon . . . fess up!  If you’re just reading this for laughs, then . . . thank God.  Diets suck!

Okay; I got a good post for Monday.  I promise.  It will be story time hey!  Remember when Bill Murray drained the pool in Caddy Shack because someone threw a Baby Ruth candy bar into the pool, and they thought it was a turd?  Then he ate it in front of the owner’s wife, who passed out?

Damn . . . flashbacks aren’t so bad after all!  

DAY 51: Saturday, November 28, 2009: You don’t bring coolers to the beach, you pack food in caravans.

True Confession:  I love greasy greasy diners, and the greasier the better; I wanna see a river of grease coming from the dumpster, with floating slabs of white fat.  You go in there and everyone is named after a food item; Cookie or Grits or Tootsie, and Cookie is cleaning the glasses and snapping flies.  Cleaning and snapping . . . squeak squeak squeak, snap!!!  And it’s just like Amsterdam, where laws like “no smoking” don’t exist.   They’re still in the fifties, and it’s open 24-7, making those magical hours from Friday night into Saturday morning, or Saturday into Sunday, almost like a surreal freaky circus hour, with drunks and truckers and hookers and more drunks and college kids and strippers and strange old guys and casanovas who struck out and dealers and buyers and rarely any couples ever . . . and . . . and . . . waitresses named Tootsie who are more hardened than Spartans, with shredded obliques.  Good times, good grease, good traffic jam in the arteries. 

Whew!  Glad I got that out of my system. 

DAY 50: Friday, November 27, 2009:  You didn’t try out for the football team; you were the football team.

Not to be the devil’s advocate, but there are some fat people who made it work:

Alfred Hitchcock

Rosanne

John Candy

John Belushi

Jackie Gleason

Berl Ives

It’s hard to envision them shredded or just thin, and yet . . . only Rosanne is still alive, below the neck.  Hold it . . . let me Google Gleason . . .

Yeah; died in ‘87.

Alrighty then!  Weight loss is healthy!  Happy Black Friday (in America).  They can rush the damn stores at 4:00 a.m. to save fiddy cents on tooth paste; I’m sleepin’ in.

DAY 49: Thursday, November 26, 2009:  You broke a truck scale, checking your weight.

It’s Thanksgiving, so eat like you mean it!  Happy happy happy!

The goal is to bloat your stomach so much, you undertstand the gross person you used to be!

Hey there, slim!

If you’ve been dedicated, then I want to see pictures!  C’mon, now!  I know you’re out there!

Or not.  Happy Thanksgiving!

DAY 48: Wednesday, November 25, 2009:  When you walk past tree workers, they hold on for dear life.

The vibration, get it?  Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! 

Okay . . . it’s friggin’ late, and I gotta get to bed for some sleep, so I can be a good father tomorrow, and take my daughter to school so she doesn’t have to suffer that hour bus ride from hell, through the backwoods hills with a bunch of . . .

Well, you get the idea. 

Read the previous post!  It was a lot of drunken work!  Eeee-ha!

DAY 47: Tuesday, November 24, 2009: Candle companies buy you food as an investment.  They want your fat.

Okay, so it’s a theme from “Fight Club”, what the hell do you expect, 365 brand spankin’ new jokes from a burned-out husk of a human being?

Story Time!  I have two cars that are complete opposites, sending very mixed signals.  The commuting days are over now, the younger mob having sealed my fate with a corporate decision, but the commuter car is still ticking along, just in case I find work down the highway.  It’s a light blue Hyundai Accent with four doors and four cylinders that cries “grandmother of ten”.  You have to rev the hamster wheel hard to hear if it’s running, and hope for a long downhill run to pass anything larger than a salad crouton. 

It sits outside in the driveway, a solid tribute to core values and responsible travel.  It’s cuter than a button, and twice as slow.  You just want to hug it like a baby, and it’s not hard to catch.

Every morning I used to dutifully warm it up and get into ultra conservative mode, whispering along at 35 mpg, moving aside for anything faster than Dutch Elm disease.  I was doing my part, taking tiny sips from the well as supplies diminished, and being frugal as hell.  Shame on you dastardly heathens, cruising along in gas guzzling luxury wrapped with leather and surrounded by polished teak wood, but hey — thanks for a drafting wind break.  I’m not tailgating that space shuttle; I’m just being sucked along by a giant vacuum vortex.

I even dressed differently driving my little car, opting for soft summer colors with a shot of L.L. Bean or Wal Mart runway selections.  Coffee was upgraded to tea, and the song stylings of Jose Feliciano could be heard on my tape player, or perhaps Linda Ronstadt singing Spanish opera.  I was almost in the earth day zone of my English Lit professor, who could be seen riding a funky bicycle to class every day, suit jacket flapping like wings as he pedaled to another Shakespeare lecture.

The other car damns me to hell forever.  It’s a dark gray 1986 Z 28 Camaro with black highlights, stuffed with a 520-horsepower NASCAR engine and a suspension built for launching John Glen.  It can surpass 200 miles per hour, and people move over from the approaching sound.  It has an old school mentality with some new school technology, and like Frankenstein, is always a work in progress.  The shifter sports a “pistol grip” ala Hemi Cuda, but it’s dialed-into an exotic polygraphite suspension, with some kind of Edelbrock stabilizers in back.  A low profile open air cleaner barely prevents that freakish motor from pushing through hood vents, and if the carburetor ever becomes exposed, small birds will be sucked down its yawning throat.

I’m going with a black leather jacket and matching tee if it’s not too warm, and sometimes if it is.  Shaving is optional on Camaro Days, and black jeans or chinos complete the image of a complete loser trying to be cool.  Shades are required, and the music coming out of there is classic rock or blues, from Led Zep to Leadbelly.  It would be great to hear it over the engine, which drowns out anything short of nuclear war.  

It’s registered in Maine because Connecticut put an emissions facility in lock down after their computer screamed, “BURN THIS CAR AND KILL THE OWNER.”

So what does all this say about me? 

Schizophrenia?  Physically insecure?

Final stages of Rabies?

I’m thinking the two cars say, “Frugal and understated yet muscle bound and nostalgic. Mary Tyler Moore meets Speed Racer in a Korean health bar, then goes out for shots and beer, before fancy coffees and a quick peck on the cheek, with a later return for wild sex involving colorful toys from Amsterdam.”

“I really hate that race car,” my wife likes to say.  “Every time you take it out, the house shakes and I say a rosary.  State police keep creeping by the house and setting speed traps on every dusty road in the area, way out here in farm country.  They’re spreading thin just for a chance at that thing.”

“I drive it pretty slow,” I retort.  “Mostly, anyway.  Once a week during the summer, weather permitting.”

She smiles or smirks; hard to tell these days.  “More reasons to sell it.”

“Lots of jealousy there,” I tell her.  “Their pathetic Ford Interceptors are no match for the BEAST THAT HUNKERS BENEATH THIS HOUSE.  Also . . . the radar detector and signal scrambler RENDERS THEIR SILLY SPEED TRAPS UTTERLY USELESS AGAINST MY RAW AWSOMEESS.”

She kicks a tire and stalks off.  “My car needs an oil change,” she mumbles.  “And you’re polishing chrome.”

I ignore another blatant metaphor and retrieve the oil filter wrench.  How did things get so crazy?  Where is the justification for such a beast?  Who the hell am I?

CAUTION:  ENTERING DEMENTED GEAR HEAD TERRITORY.  ENTER AT OWN RISK OF CAR GUY LANGUAGE AND THINGS THAT NORMAL FOLKS EAGERLY AVOID LIKE THE PLAGUE:[1]

- “But I was still cursed with my duality of purpose; and as the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl for license . . . this brief condescension to my evil finally destroyed the balance of my soul. And yet I was not alarmed; the fall seemed natural, like a return to the old days before I had made discovery.”

-Robert Louis Stevenson 

Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde

I guess it started in high school during the mid-seventies, a very opportune time for gear heads pumping gas and saving money for used muscle cars, which were cheap and readily available.  I had two friends and a nerdy math teacher with Shelby Cobra Mustangs.

Mr. B had all the makings of a kid who got wedgied in half during his early formative years. Fittingly enough, he taught algebra and geometry.  He was a very slight fellow with frizzy black hair, and a peace button during the Nixon administration.  I also seem to remember a green-striped, environmental flag patch, which would put him in serious peacenik territory, but man oh man; when that gun metal ’68 Shelby Cobra GT350 rolled into the parking lot, we were brutally humbled.

It was like Steve McQueen in Bullitt with his ’68 fastback, but with more extreme opposites at play.  Mr. B may have put me to sleep with blackboard equations during the day, but where did he rumble and roar at night in that gun metal Shelby?  Where did he clean his claws?  What bouncers at what crazy clubs mumbled, “There’s the man,” when Mr. B came in like an F-16 throttling down?

My best friend Mark the Shark had a white ‘69 Charger with a black vinyl top, one year off from Bullitt’s nemesis.  It was long and sleek and added to Mark’s nickname, but had a 318 engine and automatic tranny, which attracted criticism from the gear heads.  Still, Mark added a nice dual exhaust, and the overall effect was pretty cool.  Carl Young’s brother had a ’69 Charger R/T, and the 440 made it almost exactly what Bullitt chased through the streets of San Francisco.

The infamous Barsano brothers ran a ’57 Chevy powered by a crazy-built 396, until one of them decided to pull a wheelie in front of the high school, and his right front tire wheelied right off the car during a crashing front end landing.  He was okay but embarrassed, and it was great lunchtime entertainment.  Eventually they dumped that motor into a ’68 Camaro, and one day during another wheelie, the drive shaft shot out and almost destroyed a door on the fire station in town.  They were kind of using a “trial and error” approach.

Hemi Harrington had a Road Runner and was legendary.  One day he ran the police, and they finally caught him by following a twin trail of burnout marks, leading from a stop sign on Main Street to where he was parked, in the town’s only supermarket lot.  One  afternoon he test-drove a Pantera and lost control on Nobscot Mountain, launching it into the woods.  What a fun guy!  Nesto had an incredible dark blue ’72 Olds 4-4-2 that he bought off a racecar driver.  We could only guess at the horsepower, but that thing had a 455 built to the gills, and all the bells and whistles.  Frank Panetta had an older version 4-4-2 from the sixties, with a stunning medieval knight mural on the hood and several show trophies.

Little Steve was a certified psycho, who thought running the cops was equivalent to playing backyard football.  When they caught his SS Chevelle one day (after involving two towns), he switched to a ’68 AMX, and was undefeated in this deadly little game.  Needless to say, we never got into that thing for a ride, and would rather walk ten miles than ride shotgun at over a hundred, with flashing lights in the rearview mirror.

Neilbo had the sweetest ride of all, a bone-white, dual-quad 427 AC Cobra.  He turned a wrench in the Shell station where I worked after school and on weekends, and one day he roared out pretty fast, with a state police car witnessing the tire smoke and pulling him over.

“Flip the hood,” the officer said.  “I just want to see that glorious engine.”

Neilbo’s beater was a black primer ’69 Mach 1 Mustang, with a stroker 390 that was over 430 cubic inches.  One day he needed parts fast, and told me to take the beater, using some of the most cherished words I’ve ever heard:

“Let the horses run, Danny.  I want to see some serious smoke.”

I really underestimated the power of that thing, and almost lost control shredding tires as I rocketed west on Route 30.  There was lots of rubber in all four gears, and keeping the nose straight was the funniest thing on earth, wrangling that steering wheel like a thrashing snake. 

In retrospect, I should’ve been beaten and shot.  Tire smoke marked my trail for two blocks, and the shocked expressions of witnesses would have put me to shame these days, but hey; youth can be a different perspective, and totally self-absorbed.

Coming back to the station, I noticed the owner’s caddy parked in his slot, and started to fear for my job.

“Gerry’s wife was at the intersection when you simulated acres of burning forest with my rear tires,” Neilbo said, looking grim.  “She wants to see you.”

I will always be indebted to Neilbo; who must have told her I had been given free reign to be stupid, because she had a little smile on her face like Mrs. Robinson, watching me squirm and sweat.

“Never again,” she said.  “For customer’s sake.”

I really need help.  I am still a demented soul who thinks there is nothing better than to have your entire body pressed back into a hard bucket seat by brutal G forces, to the machine-gun staccato of a race engine pounding rear tires into hard pavement, as a scooped hood rises high and DROPS for each gear shift.  The smell is better than any perfume imaginable; raw gas getting sucked, burned and blasted out back.  I have no reason why this is great; not a damn clue.

I’m not one for show cars, though.  Don’t want to stand in front of an open hood to display chrome and inner workings.  I appreciate collectables, but my back alley red-headed step-child can blow the doors off your stock SS, R/T, GT, or special whatever, without even straining.  I have no idea why this matters, but I’ve got these cool black decals on the front quarters, above three angled stripes just behind the tires.  It reads, 500 HORSEPOWER, and beneath that, COPO INTERCEPTOR.  It looks factory, and collectors always ask about it.

I usually feign a kind of nonchalant, ignorant attitude, explaining that yes, it is actually over five-hundred horses, and no, I don’t know the exact details of its rare heritage. 

“Apparently they made five of these for the long desert stretch between Vegas and L.A.,” I mumble.  “To catch crazies and drug-runners, blasting through in exotic cars, but it’s just a vague rumor.  There’s no records available.”

They probably rush home to look it up on the net, and come up empty-handed, which adds another hundred grand to the asking price of a farm field beater with extreme sleeper upgrades.

It isn’t collectable art to be towed around, and it sure won’t be in a small town parade.  It may, however, destroy the planet at light speed, all for the distant beat of nostalgia and occasional rocket runs on big empty highways, during the hours all decent folks are sound asleep.

Where was I?  Massachusetts!  Neilbo’s friend Chris had my own personal favorite, a tequila orange ’68 Shelby Cobra GT350 with a Paxton supercharger, pushing close to 600 horses with a little 289.  It was usually in the shop after a piston went through the hood, or a drive shaft went through somebody’s picket fence, but when everything hit right, it could pace a damn Daytona car.  Whenever he pulled into the station, you could actually feel the ground vibrating beneath your feet.

One day a mechanic drove in with a white ’67 Mustang GTA fastback, and I saw my future.  He was an ex-con with greasy black hair and questionable side incomes, and had done a sloppy job converting the automatic tranny to a hearst four-speed, but I was blind to such trivia.  When he said a thousand dollars would drive that beast away, I started working overtime.  Instant Steve McQueen; hello chicks, bye-bye college.[2] 

I had it less than a day when disaster struck, driving to the insurance company behind my father in a thunderstorm.  Two kids flew through an intersection at close to 70, and t-boned me right on the passenger door.  The kids were driving a rear engine Corvair, so their front end vaporized upon impact, giving them severe facial damage.  I was knocked out into the street, and came back to reality in Emerson Hospital, shaken but otherwise undamaged.  The Mustang was actually saved, but the unibody construct was seriously compromised, and one rear tire stuck out more than the other.  I sold it shortly thereafter. 

Yet another classic Mustang was given to a very good friend from his brother, who had a few tours of Vietnam.  He had bought the ’69 Mach I while on leave, and tucked it into his parent’s garage for safe keeping, until he was out.

The fighting over there had been mind altering, and when he returned, the car was like any other inanimate object, so it was handed off to his brother, Kevin.

“I’m selling it for college money,” Kevin said, putting us all into terminal shock.  “It’s worth a lot of money, and I’m putting it to good use.”

He would be the rare one among us, with good grades and common sense, who was going on to much bigger things.  We laughed when a super nerd named Arty opted-out with a VW bug, but now he’s a multi-millionaire.  In retrospect, my wife had a very valid point with the Camaro, lurking down there in its lair.  Also, our carbon footprints humbled the Grand Canyon.  Paleontologists built a museum around them.  

But there were times my friends, there were times:  Bruce Springsteen was singing “Thunder Road” on a hissing 8-track, the girl and sun were both hot, the Mustang was running sweet, and Officer Dudley looked dashing in reflective shades, explaining how one more ticket would get me an army gig down in Fort Benning, where most sport vehicles had 50-caliber guns attached.  Ha-ha!  What a great dude!

There was a small parade of muscle cars sucking paychecks after that little Mustang, starting with a gold ’71 Challenger R/T, going to a bright orange ’68 AMX, then a black ’68 Charger 440, and an almost new ’86 Camaro, and now — the king of all — the ’86 Z 28 Camaro, with a motor built to outrun small planes.

Each car had a lot of fun miles, but I have to come clean and confess that — like Little Steve — I reached for new levels of stupidity by running the cops; once with the 383 Magnum Challenger R/T in the mountains of Vermont, and twice with the black 440 Charger in Massachusetts, with speeds surpassing 160 mph.  All three were at night, with a big lead and empty or quiet roads.  They quit early and probably called ahead; I was long gone and never close enough for a plate description.  Again, beaten and shot comes to mind, and I regret every minute, putting innocent lives at risk for a quick rush.  In the top ten list of totally stupid and careless acts, those three runs are pretty high up there.

And please take note:  Nostalgia is a very funny lens to look through.  All those years of missing college and working for speeding tickets are long forgotten.  All those stupid and dangerous driving stunts, late night breakdowns, and untold bills are pushed aside by hot babes and late night runs to fun destinations.  And now there are plenty of wealthy old playboys out there bidding six figures for rides we took for granted, so we must have known something, with a small streak of good taste in our twisted little brains.  You may even call us deeply prophetic, or perhaps pathetic, but like Chevy parts or Harley Davidson motorcycles, it’s all somewhat interchangeable.

These days I’ve got special rules for the racecar.  I’m into the middle lane cruise, like parting the seas for HIS RUMBLING BEASTINESS.  Absolutely no tailgating, no cowboy moves without signal lights, and under no circumstances do I take a challenge from kids, drunks, or worst of all, soccer moms running late.  Rumble along, growl like a wolf, part the seas. 

These days a boring ride is often a very good thing, and if I’m driving my little daughter, the only excitement I want is on the radio.  But hey, go ahead and giggle when the wind pushes my little Hyundai around, and discarded cigarette butts knock it off course.  I’m doing my part here, moving over as you smirk and bull rush the tiny rear bumper.  Go ahead and have your brief moment of gas guzzling testosterone, because on the day you chuckle on by, I’m doing the right thing and paying homage to my smart friends back in the day.  I’m being safe, and slightly dismayed at your insolence.

Tomorrow, I may rumble up the middle lane as a fuel hungry predator cruising schools of helpless guppies, and ye shall tremble!  Ye shall know me by the sound of sick and brutal horsepower!  Amen, brothers and sisters, pay homage to the rebirth of a terrible thundering dinosaur, and quiver upon my passing!  

What’s that?  My wife just got home?  Ha-ha!  Excuse me while I go do some dishes and . . . er . . . vacuum.  Hey!  Have I told you about the two vacuums in our house?  One is a regular old Hoover Runabout . . .[3] 

I blame all of this on years of surveying.  That ink blot is a Camaro.  Now it’s a Hyundai . . . Camaro!  Hyundai!  Cougar!  JESUS!  IT’S JESUS!  SELL IT ON eBay!!!

[2] Minor detail:  Upon close inspection of the fiberglass Shelby hood, Neilbo discovered it was from a car he used to own, that was stolen.  He let me keep the hood, but things did not go well with the other mechanic after that. 

[3] Author’s note:  Last summer I was driving on the Charter Oak Bridge going into Hartford, and saw an early Corvette being hauled by someone who obviously wanted to hear the Camaro’s engine roar, so I quickly obliged by blowing transmission parts all over Hartford and parts of Canada.  Perfect.  The local tranny shop scolded me for having “sick horsepower” and a “small penis”, quoting prices just short of the national deficit.  The car is now being employed as a very successful mouse condominium.  My wife still kicks the tires.  There’s another metaphor. 

Extreme Opposites

Scattered Memories

DAY 46: Monday, November 23, 2009:  They can’t draw blood without a drilling rig.

I gave blood once, and they arrested me for attempting to poison helpless patients.

Not to get all Shaolin, but I was raking leaves for hours today, and it was very meditative, while working obliques with graceful sweeps of the rake, listening to the gentle, soothing sounds of black cap chicadees and distant woodpeckers.  Dieting exercise was never so zen . . . now to crank that freakin’ leaf blower.  Screw the dragon; I need some screaming horsepower.

Be the leaf blower.  Make a mighty wind.

DAY 45: Sunday, November 22, 2009: You have several satellites.

Of course you do . . . you’re a heavenly body! 

I’m watching Saturday Night Live right now, and the guest is this guy who was the kid on “Third Rock from the Sun”, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, which means I’m WFO (wicked f*cking old, in Boston speak).

Anyway, they just ran one of the funniest fake movie trailers ever, splicing footage of Sarah Palin with the movie “2012″, showing end of the world scenes with Sarah Palin speeches, and it was vintage SNL, matching the days of Akroyd and Murray and the rest, which is pretty damn rare these days.  And the Dave Mathews Band is guest music, which is a pretty good gig.

Three fingers on my left hand are actually numb and bleeding, from four hours of playing electric guitar, which means I have issues.

Serious issues.

“You’re going back down there?” my lovely wife asked, when I came upstairs for water and a bathroom break, after playing Catfish Blues, Red House, Green River, and Black Magic Woman, over and over and over, because, well, it feels damn good.

Issues. 

Gibsons and Fenders hang on the walls, next to pictures of Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton.  The last time I played, it was a contest during the summer, and I took first place against several good players.  Yay. 

I decided it would be a good note to end on (pun alert), as real life took over.  Lead guitarists are a dime a dozen, and in the end, it’s just about playing music and spreading that great, elusive feeling.  It’s not about competition.  Nowadays, I can’t remember half the songs I used to play, and my tender, uncalloused fingers stumble like drunken spiders, muffing big chords or sliding to the wrong fret for that flat sound that makes you swear, adjust the gain, and swill another brew (THAT should make me play better).    

Anyway, blah blah woof woof.  I told her I’d be up for SNL, and she went to bed, where our daughter had claimed my side of the bed hours ago.

Looks like a night in the den again.

Ahhhh . . . weekends.  They complete me. 

Damn my fingers hurt; in a good way.