Glorious Noise Going Nowhere

     My broken Toyota pickup truck has been sitting in our yard for over half a year. I see it each day and think, my poor truck. It’s not my truck that’s feeling bad at all through. It’s just a motor vehicle with no feelings. Pathetically sitting there, covered with cobwebs and leaves that shows blatant age and stagnation, it’s going no-where and has no reason to go anywhere anyway. When I think how sad the truck looks, I might be thinking of myself. I feel like I’m just sitting still doing little more than whining.

     I haven’t exactly had a stagnant past 7 months. It’s only lately that I’ve felt burned out, like a car running on vapors sputtering and coasting. It has started to show in my blog. If you read last week’s lame entry, you know.

     And I just think, if only my truck was working… if I could just get out on the road in it, everything would be alright. I’ve been feeling bugged, burned out and bilious for awhile now, not all the time, but more frequently and for no apparent reason. I keep thinking that it’s because I need a sabbatical. That’s when I wish my truck was working. If only…

     I reminds me of a story where the prevailing thought was “If only the car was working” and “I just can’t wait until that car is done and then…”

     Back in 1985 my good friend Eddie had a car in the works. Works, meaning it was having a lot of restoration and body work done. It was supposed to be a stock 1967 Mustang Fastback. But the bored out 302 motor replaced the stock 289. It was rumored to have a limited slip differential too, not stock. Eddie and I dreamed of the day the car would finally be done. What frustrated us was how the shops doing bodywork and paint seemed to be taking their time.

Eddie had a road nemesis named Martin with a blue Dodge Dart. Martin provoked Eddie with his own souped-up hot rod acting like he was king of the road. We knew the Mustang would blow the doors off of anything existing on the road. Whenever I saw Martin in his Dodge all I could do was think, if only that car was working. And the months went by.

The summer of ’85 was young. The whole summer was. I was at the beach with a group of friends one morning. Then one friend’s eyes widened and he pointed. Pulling up in the parking lot was a dark metallic red 1967 Mustang Fastback. The engine sounded like artillery. Eddie was usually as cool as the other side of the pillow. Today was no exception as he casually stepped out.

We all were at the car in moments. The car’s vanity place said: 1Trick. Eddie drove me around the parking lot playing George Thorogood’s Bad to the Bone. The inside of the car was clean and white. There were turn signal indicators in the reverse-facing hood scoops. Built in a year before they were the law, it had no seat belts.

Eddie let me out and took two girls for a ride. I followed in my dad’s Mazda sedan. At a shopping center parking lot, Eddie got out and I saw one of the girls bounce into the driver’s seat. They tooled around the parking lot and then headed out toward the avenue.

The universe, time, and space did a magic twitch of the hand at that moment and things came together. Looking right at the stop sign, I saw Martin in his blue Dodge. My first thought came automatically. I wish Eddie had his Mustang… Then like a hard dope-slap to the back of my head, the next thought came. Eddie does have his Mustang.

Eddie saw Martin too. His head was out the passenger window and he was calling Martin’s name in a long noise like a roaring volcano. Martin gunned the Dodge engine, answering the challenge.

No-one got out of Eddie’s car. The girls both tumbled backwards into the rear seat and Eddie dove into the driver’s seat. The One Trick vanished after him in a cloud of tire smoke. I figured they were headed to an empty stretch of highway to officially have it out. I didn’t bother to try to follow.

The center of our universe back then was the Ihop, so we waited there. Eddie pulled up in the Mustang a little later. The girls were quiet and dazed and went to the ladies room. Eddie sat and filled his coffee cup.

“Did you win?” I asked.

“Yeah,” Eddie didn’t sound that thrilled. He wasn’t being his usual cool self either. He looked a little disappointed.

I asked for details. In the cool of the restaurant, Eddie said that he had beat Martin in the race, but probably not in a quarter-mile. He had burned out for too long and the Dodge had gotten ahead. Posi-Track or not, he must have floored it right away and just sat there making smoke. Eddie eventually moved forward and got past the Dodge, but if it had been on a regulation track, it probably wouldn’t have been soon enough.

The excitement leading up the events may have been better than the actual thing. The best part of it all for me was the slap of realization that Eddie did in fact have the Mustang.  And in the years following, it made a great story to tell. I can still hear the sound of Martin revving the Mopar motor being drowned out by Eddie’s battle call. 

The bored 302 with chrome accessories

My lower half posing at the rear of the 1 Trick 

So here I am today, thinking that all could be made right if only this little pickup truck would move. I still don’t know if it’s the differential or a U-joint. One of the tough things about this is that the truck is not an essential in my life. I can’t justify an expensive repair for it if I can take the family van places.

But even broken, the truck has helped me a least this time to recall an awesome story to share and a truth to reflect upon. If I spin my wheels in exhibition and noise, I won’t move forward. Time to quit whining about the truck being broken and move on.

Scary Ailments in the Mystique of Summer

     For a child in elementary school, a day in the middle of summer is an invincible island surrounded by both wonder at the unknown and disregard for anything unpleasant.   The last day of school was weeks ago and is little more that a quickly dismissed memory.  The beginning of the next school year is in the future.  The future meant flying cars and Mars Colonies.  September was invisible and unknowable.  If it wasn’t happening right now or as soon as the cool of the coming evening, it didn’t exist.  Yet while the unpleasant was never considered, any type of wondrous possibility could happen.  Evil robots may have replaced the neighbors in the house with the surrounding eight foot wall.  A lightning bolt could have almost hit one of us had it not been for a quick dive onto a rubber inner tube.  And we all wanted to believe that a giant squid had actually come up out of the local lake and sat on our friend’s face.  If he told us its butt stank, we had to believe.

     One afternoon while reveling in nothing to do, a friend came into the yard and announced to us that he had found a dead bird.  I don’t think I had ever seen anything dead before and didn’t know if any of my friends had either.  We were all about 7 or 8 years old.  When we played dead in pretend games we copied how actors in the movies did it, splayed out, eyes closed.  But most of the time we couldn’t keep our upturned faces from grinning.  Of course we all wanted to go see the dead bird.

     I think there must have been 5 or 6 kids that set off from the green backyard, teaming with drifting cottonwood fluff, for the quiet afternoon street.  There was at least one girl, an older sister.  The sun was bright and no-one wore baseball caps back then unless they were in a game.  I was the last in the group.  Maybe I was a little scared of looking at something dead.   We all followed our friend to a vacant lot.  Nothing grew there, and at one corner everyone gathered and made a little circle.  Dust rose with everyone footsteps.  I moved into the circle and looked down.  There was a little dead sparrow.

     Its eyes were open to the bright daylight.  I don’t remember seeing blood or anything broken looking.  The only true sign that this bird was dead was that it was lying motionless on the hot dusty ground.  I didn’t feel frightened.  There was a little sense of awe and something else.  Seeing something dead wasn’t as scary as I thought it would be.  I felt just a little relief at this.  I thought how uncomfortable the bird would be if it were alive.  It must be really dead.

     Apparently, however, the bird didn’t look dead enough for another boy and he reached forward to touch it.

     “No!” the girl shouted.  “Don’t touch it. You’ll get Fizzy-Whiz.”

     Now I felt a little frightened.  Dead things weren’t supposed to be scary, right?  But what was Fizzy-Whiz?

     Part of the group of kids looked shocked or as frightened as I felt.  The boy with his hand stretched out to the bird, however, looked doubtful.  His sister leaned in.

     “Mom got Fizzy-Whiz once,” she said. 

     The boy withdrew his hand.  At that moment of our hot dusty afternoon the magic of summer that made anything possible also made very real the condition known as Fizzy-Whiz.  The circle around the dead bird widened.  Perhaps for each young mind there was a different image of this syndrome.  I think the more vivid someone’s imagination, the worse it could be.  The boy who had been sat on by a squid almost leaped back. 

     Second grade started months later.  Cavernous corridors and polished wooden floors replaced the infinite expanse of outside.  The magic of summer and trepidation of dead things faded to sentence diagrams and word problems.  And in the structure, security, and school bells, not everything was possible anymore.  Everything must have a rule or reason.  But sometimes the most awe-inspiring ideas cannot be squelched even there in the confines of a public education.  Because the mystique of summer never completely faded that year.  No-one ever even thought about touching a dead thing again.

    

           

The warm taste of Summer

Spring this year seemed wanting to remind us all of the cool wet winter that ended in March. Sycophant to the memorable winter where rain came down on both sides of the walls to our home and we kept towels on the sills and floors, spring gave us more rain and even snow in April. Then she saw her time of end rushing close and warmed. The last day of spring had triple digits. The first day of summer was blinding sidewalks, prickly grass and shade that provided no relief.

“You’ve got to pick those oranges,” Manuel the landscaper told me. The oranges were already scattered around the tree in our backyard. “There gonna be sweet too. But it’s time to pick them now.”

A lot was new to me including having a big backyard and fruit trees. I was thankful to have someone experienced advising me. I planned out what to do and Friday morning went to work.

I picked out the few good oranges on the ground around the tree. The rest were bug eaten or rotting. I got an 8 foot stepladder and set it up under the orange tree. Then I went inside and summoned my three youngest. It was mid morning and already hot outside on this the 4th day of summer. The ceiling fans had been at work non-stop for as many days. The air conditioning was set in the high 70’s and the house was cool and dark. The kids were incredulous that their father wanted them to come outside for a project.

Once outside Sarah took a large wicker basket and I gave Jamie and Nathaniel a beach towel. At the tree I had them put all the windfalls in the compost. I showed the boys how to hold the towel like firemen might hold something similar to catch a person jumping from a building.

Then I climbed ladder and began picking and dropping. Some oranges needed a good twist and tug, others just came off in my hand. The boys caught them in the towel and Sarah gathered them out and put them in the basket. Jamie and Nathaniel vied for the scarce patches of shade. An occasional orange that was extra heavy loosened Nathaniel’s grip and his end of the towel dropped and the orange rolled away. When I moved the ladder the kids took turns holding or gathering. Soon the basket was full and so still seemed the tree. Sarah ran and got a laundry basket and we continued.

Finally I had circled the tree and picked every orange I could reach. Up out of my reach were a dozen or so more oranges glowing in the morning sun. I had Sarah stand on the bottom rung of the ladder and climbed as high as I could and picked a few more. Then I pulled a branch close to me but couldn’t reach what was on it. When I let it go and it sprang back it released several oranges and they dropped to the ground.

The thoughts of “Why didn’t I think of this before?” and “this is just cheating” came to me at once. I warned the kids below and got a good grip on the tree. Then I shook.

Oranges fell all over. The boys gave up trying to catch and worked on not getting hit. I shook the branches until the shower stopped. Just before I climbed down I grabbed an orange that had fallen and stopped wedged in front of me. At the bottom of the ladder I felt sticky juice on my hand and saw that the orange had a thin split that was now dripping. After a small taste I lifted the orange over my head and squeezed. The fresh orange gushed out into my mouth and over my lips and face. It was warm and sweet and there is something about squeezing juice from an orange right out of a tree that feels almost decadent. This is what the Joad family dreamed of crossing the desert on the way to California. This was what Adam and Eve did before the fall of man. This was a taste of heaven.

The kids found more oranges that had split when they fell. Soon we were all dripping juice all over our faces and savoring the taste. I was able to rip my orange open and eat the insides out. I called Benjamin outside to share in this and then Prajna. Harrison wasn’t home and doesn’t care for oranges.

I took some oranges to work that day to share and we still have dozens in the house that Sarah will squeeze to make juice. Some of the juice will be made into popsicles.

Goodbye Spring, and thanks for the cool weather. We might miss you come late August. But summer with its ferocious heat arrived on Tuesday. And on Friday we drank in not only juice warm and fresh but a good bit of that magic that comes with summertime.