Instead of just writing about stories, I'm about to tell one, apropos of, really, nothing.
I find that whether I'm happy or sad, hot or cold, rich or poor, I get what I'd call (for lack of a better description) "alien transmissions." Once it was the urge to write a poem about a lobster; another time it was a poem about blueberry yogurt; another time it was about bees buzzing under a glass in a bar (entitled "Bees Under Glass"). I also seem to have a need for humor, even when I feel basically like an open sore.
My first car's last journey is pictured here; it's Photoshopped to death to cover for the fact that the photo started out horribly underexposed (hey, I had a cheap camera then), but not so much that you can't see the details: the smashed-in side, the fact that it's being towed away, my neighborhood (at the time) in
Ridgewood, Queens.
That car and I went through a lot together.
I first got the idea to buy a car right before my fifth year of college. I had effectively decided to drop out of school for a semester so I'd finish in May rather than December and, truth be told, to wait for my then sort-of boyfriend to finish college (notwithstanding the fact that he was flunking every class and known in his dorm mostly for his tendency to get knock-down, drag-out drunk and fall out of bed).
Sight unseen (I had mailed in my application), I had already been hired to work full-time as a nurse aide, and I thought that it might be a good idea to have a car to get to work---I'd gotten by with just walking and riding a bike before then.
I'd also been working in a factory---
Interbake Foods in North Sioux City, South Dakota.
The point is---I had a little money, but not too much, I was taking a semester off, and I had a job lined up.
And so Dad and I (I was 20, so Dad still figured in these decisions) made a trip to the used car lot on Floyd Boulevard in
Sioux City, Iowa.
We looked at several cars, and this is the one I liked, mostly because it was red (in car heaven, I assume it's still red, though I can't really say for sure).
It also did not have power steering, air conditioning, an FM radio, or automatic transmission. My theory, given that my funds were very limited: the fewer frills it had, the fewer possibilities that things could go wrong with it.
An approximation of the conversation between my father and me follows (I will refer to him as MBF, or My Beleaguered Father, and I'm A for Anne).
A: I want the red car.
MBF: I think you just want that car because you feel sorry for it. What about this nice brown car? It has power steering.
A: I just like the red car.
MBF: But, Anne, you can't drive a stick shift! You don't even know how to drive this car! You can't even drive it off the lot! But you can drive this brown car right away.
A: I'll learn. Dad, I just like this car.
MBF (sighing): It's your factory money---I know. I'm just saying that this brown car is very nice.
A: It's shiny. It's red. I like it.
Car salesman (CS): I see you looking at that car. Are you interested?
A: Yes.
MBF: She's not sure.
A: Yes, I think I want this car. It says $1100 on it, though, and I can't afford that much.
CS: Well, maybe we can cut a deal. How much can you afford?
A: $600.
CS (after raucous laughter): I'm sorry, but that is just not possible. Can you afford any more?
A: No. I really only have $600.
NOTE: This wasn't hard bargaining. That's really all I could afford.CS: Well, I'll take your number down in case we get another car. But, really, don't expect it.
A: Okay.
MBF (secretly relieved): Oh, well, we can keep looking.
We left the used car lot, but I wasn't sweatin' it too much. I figured somehow I would get a car. In fact, I think I probably went swimming.
A few days later, the used car salesman called. "It's very strange," he said, "but that car you wanted didn't sell at auction. Do you still want it?"
I did! So, anyway, I bought the car. I remember looking out at it the next morning with pride. It was so red and so shiny.
The next week I fell up a hill and tore all of the ligaments in my left knee.
Orthopedic surgeon's suggestion: avoid surgery by letting the leg heal on its own, but wear a brace.
It was difficult to learn to drive the car in hilly Sioux City, and the leg brace just added to the challenge---but I did it. And I was glad to have the car because, without it, the usual options of walking and biking just weren't in the picture for awhile.
That August, my friend Kristin flew in so we could make the Triumphal Journey back to
Seward, Nebraska (my college town) when my job and her classes started.
In the meantime, my sister and I had outfitted my car with a few accessories: a button with Val Kilmer's picture on it attached to the column (I thought he was SO HOT in the film
Real Genius), a styrofoam dolphin and penguin that hung from the rearview mirror, and a kazoo in case anyone complained about the lack of an FM radio.
The Triumphal Journey to Seward began, so-called because I was returning to the place where my sort-of boyfriend had stolen all of my luggage just a few months earlier. And I was returning with a Shiny Red Car.
We got as far as Onawa, Iowa, which is, oddly enough, the birthplace of the
Eskimo Pie.
There, the radiator overheated and Kristin and I had to wait overnight for the service station technicians to repair it. The car's first Triumphal Journey had lasted about 30 minutes.
But then it was fixed.
We continued on, and we arrived in Seward. A neighbor later told my parents that every morning at 5:30 a.m. she heard me trying to pump the gas and actually get the thing to start.
But start it did, and the car eventually took me to both my nursing home job and an additional job at Sheldon's, a bar in Garland, Nebraska (oddly enough, Garland is the home of Poet Laureate
Ted Kooser). I even backed it into a ditch once, but that's another story.
On its biggest voyage, the car drove from the Midwest to New York City with my friend Andrea and me in tow, putt-putting up mountains (despite its 4-cylinder engine) at a rousing 40 mph.
And so it happened that the car's real Triumphal Journey was emerging onto the
Brooklyn-Queens Expressway for the first time and actually making it to my first NYC-area home in Flushing.
Later, my friend Rachel's mom told people back in Nebraska that she was very afraid because I was actually driving the old Fairmont on the Long Island Expressway (if you've ever been on the Long Island Expressway, you'll understand).
I drove that car to upstate New York time and time again. It went camping when I did. One day, I drove it all the way out to
Montauk just to see a lighthouse and take some photos. It didn't complain when I took it to Jones Beach.
I drove the car to Vermont's ski country twice in two subsequent winters with trusting friends along, and it putt-putted up those mountains, too, amid snow and ice. It just kept going.
Once, when I was away for a few weeks, someone stole the battery out of the car. I got a new battery and a chain for the hood to avoid future theft. The car kept going. It just looked tougher.
Sure, there were a few repairs along the way, some of them costing hundreds of dollars, but the car's greatest injury came when a driver coming down
Bushwick Avenue in Brooklyn didn't look where he was going. Unfortunately, simultaneously, another driver backed out of a driveway without looking where she was going, and the poor parked Fairmont got the side injury you see in the photo. The driver's side door would never open again.
I made the necessary insurance inquiries and found out the driver who struck the car was uninsured; the driveway driver who caused the accident was insured, but her insurance would only pay half the cost of the car's worth. The insurance estimator said the car was worth $500, so the half they gave me was $250.
I still drove the car for the next year until inspection rolled around, though it was pretty difficult to get in on the passenger side and over the stick shift, especially in a skirt.
In the meantime, the car developed a serious drinking problem---I couldn't give it oil fast enough.
Finally, inspection time came and I knew it wouldn't pass, so I reluctantly called a junkyard owner who gave me $50 for the car. They towed it away down Metropolitan Avenue and I took pictures. I told the guy who towed it, "I know it's kind of weird to take pictures of my car."
"Not at all," he said. "A lot of people do it."
And so, the Fairmont's five years in my possession ended. Five years for $600 with $300 back at the end, I thought as I watched my car fade into the sunset and smog of Metropolitan Avenue, headed for an unknown junkyard.
Not a bad deal.
