RUDIMENTS, pt. 70
Making Cars
Do you need to think about yourself
that often? It's a weird question, but
one I asked of myself way too many
times. Something like solipsism, but
I'm not even sure of that - by the way,
that's actually pretty funny and almost
a real joke, about 'not being sure of'
the solipsism. I did have a friend, dead
now, alas, who used to always remark
that I was the 'most haunted person' he
had ever met. Of course, never knowing
what he meant, I just chuckled. He was
more right than he ever knew, but I
remain glad I never really responded
or picked up the cudgel, in response.
By the way and once more, 'picking
up the cudgul' is a pretty cool phrase.
-
In Pennsylvania, out on those rural roads,
often dirt, everyone drove at breakneck
speed. It was spectacularly crazy to see.
The paved roads, one and a half lanes
though they be, were treated - because
of their 'smooth' surfaces - as if they
were Indy 500 tracks. The dirt roads,
by contrast, demanded attention to
detail - ruts and holes and tracks -
but they too were taken swiftly and fast.
A good business to be in, out that way,
was the car tires and suspension business,
though most of these farmer types did
their own wrenching and salvaging. They
also mostly kept all their old, dead, vehicles,
and any walk out to the rear of someone's
beat-up old homestead would take you,
most certainly, past the last four or five
cars owned and retired from service. Also,
back then, the world had not yet really
entered, as today, the 'truck' era, and there
were no such things as 'SUV's.' Pick-up
trucks and the occasional Chevy Apache
and things of that nature were owned by
the farmer, definitely a male thing, with
rifle-racks on the rear windows and a good,
aim-able spotlight too, usually, at the
driver's outside-door area, by the rear-view
mirror. Mostly used for spotlighting deer,
fields, and barnyard areas, but sometimes
too used to shine the light onto, say, the
swiftly exiting hombre who'd just been
inside with your wife, so's you could at
least get a shot off in his direction, if not
a lethal hit. I told you life was funny back
there; a regular laugh a minute.
-
These rutted old dirt roads were certainly no
picnic. I lived up along one, and from, say,
March through May, it was nothing but a
thawed-out mud heap apt to bog down cars.
The wheel-ruts, in that mud, at first helpful,
would eventually deepen so much as to entrap
the cars, especially those, like most, which
always ended up having too little ground
clearance. The smart driver would have to
straddle the ruts, on the higher up ground,
which too would then just muck down and
start the entire process all over again. I was
bogged down a few times myself - and that
usually also ensued losing a shoe to the mud
suction as you then tried, as you had to, to exit
the car into that perverse swamp of brown tar
and slog homeward in nine inches of sticky
mud. That was only in the wet Springtime.
Snow months and Winter weather were
another, different story. As different as
replacing mud with snow, and then snow
melt and/or ice, with hidden ice too. The
only real solution sometimes was the old
farm tractor - that red International Farmall
coming at you in a bad situation sure always
looked good. A few chains thrown out and
well-placed around an axle, the tractor and
that single-focus, blazing spotlight would haul
you out of most any problem in but a few minutes.
Snow-bank or mud-hole, thirty-five degrees or
eight-below. I've done each.
-
By the heat of July and the dryness of August,
those same dirt roads were so dry-packed as to
be as good as paved anyway, except with ruts,
track and holes. That's when the real nut-cases
would still be determined to push for sixty mph,
no matter what. You'd both hear and see any vehicle
coming half a minute before it got to you. There'd
be a cloud of dust arising with the noise, and you
just knew some fool was blazing through. I lost
two roadside dogs over that issue, real sorrowful.
One was a dog I'd named 'Super-Bill' and had gotten
as a pup from the Kindness Kennels in good old
Rahway, NJ the day before I left town, in January,
in an unheated car, in 10 below weather. He and I
had made the first trip together, solo as it was, and
for the entire trip Super Bill was tucked up under
my coat, tiny as a coot, to keep warm. I remember,
when I got him, I made the turn and, on the way
out of Jersey gave him the tour of 'Cozy Corner'
as it was called, on the way over the hill to Inman
Avenue, telling him this was going to be the place
he'd never see again. I didn't mean it that way, but
turned out, sadly to be right.
-
I called him 'Super Bill' as he grew up because,
way out in the sticks like that, on our own road,
he'd always been left to run free, off-leash and
unbothered. He never strayed or ran off, just had
the run of his property and the woods, and that
was it. His only drawback (thus the 'Super Bill'
aspect) was that he felt himself to be quite
invincible. Any car coming up or down that road,
in whatever condition, was fair game - he'd run
alongside, wavering in and out, barking, and he'd
always win, get down towards the end, give it up
and turn around to return. 'Cept this one time.
A real heartbreaker. Ouch, babe.
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