A Long Hot Summer's Day
A car is a multi-purpose thing in more way than you would stop to consider at first. When we were young teenager's "freedom" was the prize parents the guards, and your car, no matter the make or model, was the prison key! At 16 i was attending a boarding school 400 miles away from home . I would get 1 weekend per month off. I would get home long enough to drop my bags and grab my keys, hug the parental units and i was gone! Never went any where in particular but back then gas was cheap enough i could drive through 300 miles for about ten bucks. No one i knew appreciated the freedom that my car could give as much as I.
Fast forward 4 years, twenty or so cars and a few lifestyle changes later. I'm sitting in a Motel 6 parking lot, digging shrapnel of what's left of my ignition out of the socket in the steering column. It's 95 degrees out and my hotel rent is up in about twenty minutes. Damned CAR! It's a pile of crap '81 chevy monza. It's the latest in a looong downward line of cars starting with a very nice late model monte carlo in '87 and ending here. It is also the only thing i own , my home, and my beloved freedom all wrapped in a not so neat, greasy stained torn brown paper bag , so to speak. I'm cursing my car , i'm cursing my friends, i'm cursing life in general and i'm getting no where with this busted ignition.
Along comes Dave. Curly hair , messy. Lousy breath, drunk. Lotsa brains , no street smarts and he just cashed his pay check. Dave was an innocent character, he didn't want to hurt anyone. He just wanted to make friends with strangers , find some drugs, and maybe meet a not so innocent girl. My other friend on the other hand (the one I had showed up with),was a weasel, and I was not in a mood for making new friends. I keep working on my ignition, Dave keeps pestering me to help him find a party, (at 11:00 int he freakin morning on a Saturday), and my weasel friend keeps coming to me and asking if I´ve fixed the car so we can leave.
Finally i had enough. I formulated a plan to get Dave outta my hair. Step one: hook this Dave guy up with another tenant (we´ll call him ¨Nieghbor¨ creative hunh?) in the hotel (who DID do drugs). Step two: let them get the drugs and that would free up Dave's money. Step three: let Dave get high and mentally mailable enough, to the point where I could tell him I need some of the money because I helped him out. Step four: get the car running put gas in, get the hell out of this shit hole part of town and don't look back.
Weasel gets Nieghbor and they commence to plan , I continue to eviscerate my ignition with much vigor while Dave continues to be drunk and annoying in my ear. Weasle and Neighbor come to me and say; "OK here's the plan, we know where to take him you have to come along because he likes you and doesn't trust us."
Ok. We all pile into another pile of crap, a Seville, and go to some drug den, an apt. in a very bad part of a bad part of town. Neighbor goes into the apt complex and comes back in 5 minutes and we leave. I've always hated having anything to do with this kind of crap, too many things can go wrong around you at any time that you have NO control over. I'm as nervous as whore on her first day on the job. I'm trying very hard, . . and somewhat successfully I might say, to appear calm cool and tough.
It's here that I'll tell you just a little about Neighbor. He had come from another city with his wife and maybe a baby I don't remember, to escape his drug addiction. They ended up living in the hotel and ,Surprise! some how his addiction didn't end. Beyond that , the guy looked like the worst kind of used car sales stereotype,(insert your own mental image here. He was skinny and short).
Neighbor gets back in the driver seat, I'm in back, weasel and Dave are in the front with Neighbor, Dave in the middle. Neighbor tells Dave he has to come up with $180.00. We take Dave to a 7/11 ATM and he gets back in the car. Here's where things start to go bad. Neighbor had decided to some how get all the money from Dave, so he begins to attempt baffling him with a few old quikchange slights of hand and confusing math scenarios, Dave's really drunk but not biting,(it turns out Dave is a CPA) Neighbor decides to step things up a notch and pulls out what appears , without close scrutiny, to be an automatic pistol. It's not, it's a $11.00 B.B. gun. Dave believes it's real. Neighbor tells him; "Gimme your wallet , the whole damned thing and get outta my car!" The blood leaves my face . I am so glad I'm in the back seat where no one can see me! As Dave get his wallet out I catch his home address and read it aloud to him and tell him; "We know where you live ! Keep you damned mouth shut!" As he got out, the car lurches in reverse and we tear outta there like we robbed the place. Well, ... We take a lot of erratic turns and end up by a public pool and throw the wallet away and split the cash. All I want is to get away from Neighbor and get my car started and get the hell out of here. NOPE. Neighbor wants to take his share straight the dope house. Weasel and I are stuck along for the ride. We get to the apt. complex and Neighbor goes inside and makes us wait by the car, you'll notice i didnt say "inside " the car , he locked it up. Loooong wait. ....
A genuine dyed in the wool bandanna wearing gun totin gang banger comes out and asks us to idiotic white boys what the hell we think we're doin hangin around here. We says we're waiting for a friend. "Wait somewhere else.", He says, "and take that car with you, get out!"
We told him we couldn't take the car but we'd be glad to leave, But where is our "neighbor"?
"He aint comin back." It seems we weren't the only ones gettin money for nuthin today. I almost shit my self.
We half walked, half jogged about a mile back to the blvd. where the hotel and my car were. By this time it was close to dusk and i still hadn't got my ignition working and possibly Dave and the cops would be waiting for us. Well Dave had followed instructions and we were still relatively safe. But where in the hell had Neighbor gone , and what terrible things had happened to him? Time for worrying about that later. I called a locksmith and he finished clearing what was left of my ignition out for me and we got out´ve there went to another room at a different motel. I didn't want to have my car seen near the first one or on the roads. By this time I'm shakin. I called for pizza and was so scared that when it arrived I was afraid it might be the gangsters lookin to clean up witnesses or the cops looking for any strong arm robbers in the neighborhood IE: "us", that I almost didn't answer the door. We tried several time to get a hold of Neighbor's hotel room but his wife answered and hadn't heard from him. I could barely eat my pizza. Finally the stress had gotten the best of me and i passed out. The next morning, I called Neighbor and he answered , I really don't recall what he said happened all I cared was he wasn't murdered. I wasn't a part of it and the cops weren't looking for three idiots in a Seville.
I packed my clothes into the Monza started it with a screwdriver, Took a deep breath of "freedom" and headed back for the safety of "my part of town".
Cars can mean so much more to people than they ever think about.
Fast forward 4 years, twenty or so cars and a few lifestyle changes later. I'm sitting in a Motel 6 parking lot, digging shrapnel of what's left of my ignition out of the socket in the steering column. It's 95 degrees out and my hotel rent is up in about twenty minutes. Damned CAR! It's a pile of crap '81 chevy monza. It's the latest in a looong downward line of cars starting with a very nice late model monte carlo in '87 and ending here. It is also the only thing i own , my home, and my beloved freedom all wrapped in a not so neat, greasy stained torn brown paper bag , so to speak. I'm cursing my car , i'm cursing my friends, i'm cursing life in general and i'm getting no where with this busted ignition.
Along comes Dave. Curly hair , messy. Lousy breath, drunk. Lotsa brains , no street smarts and he just cashed his pay check. Dave was an innocent character, he didn't want to hurt anyone. He just wanted to make friends with strangers , find some drugs, and maybe meet a not so innocent girl. My other friend on the other hand (the one I had showed up with),was a weasel, and I was not in a mood for making new friends. I keep working on my ignition, Dave keeps pestering me to help him find a party, (at 11:00 int he freakin morning on a Saturday), and my weasel friend keeps coming to me and asking if I´ve fixed the car so we can leave.
Finally i had enough. I formulated a plan to get Dave outta my hair. Step one: hook this Dave guy up with another tenant (we´ll call him ¨Nieghbor¨ creative hunh?) in the hotel (who DID do drugs). Step two: let them get the drugs and that would free up Dave's money. Step three: let Dave get high and mentally mailable enough, to the point where I could tell him I need some of the money because I helped him out. Step four: get the car running put gas in, get the hell out of this shit hole part of town and don't look back.
Weasel gets Nieghbor and they commence to plan , I continue to eviscerate my ignition with much vigor while Dave continues to be drunk and annoying in my ear. Weasle and Neighbor come to me and say; "OK here's the plan, we know where to take him you have to come along because he likes you and doesn't trust us."
Ok. We all pile into another pile of crap, a Seville, and go to some drug den, an apt. in a very bad part of a bad part of town. Neighbor goes into the apt complex and comes back in 5 minutes and we leave. I've always hated having anything to do with this kind of crap, too many things can go wrong around you at any time that you have NO control over. I'm as nervous as whore on her first day on the job. I'm trying very hard, . . and somewhat successfully I might say, to appear calm cool and tough.
It's here that I'll tell you just a little about Neighbor. He had come from another city with his wife and maybe a baby I don't remember, to escape his drug addiction. They ended up living in the hotel and ,Surprise! some how his addiction didn't end. Beyond that , the guy looked like the worst kind of used car sales stereotype,(insert your own mental image here. He was skinny and short).
Neighbor gets back in the driver seat, I'm in back, weasel and Dave are in the front with Neighbor, Dave in the middle. Neighbor tells Dave he has to come up with $180.00. We take Dave to a 7/11 ATM and he gets back in the car. Here's where things start to go bad. Neighbor had decided to some how get all the money from Dave, so he begins to attempt baffling him with a few old quikchange slights of hand and confusing math scenarios, Dave's really drunk but not biting,(it turns out Dave is a CPA) Neighbor decides to step things up a notch and pulls out what appears , without close scrutiny, to be an automatic pistol. It's not, it's a $11.00 B.B. gun. Dave believes it's real. Neighbor tells him; "Gimme your wallet , the whole damned thing and get outta my car!" The blood leaves my face . I am so glad I'm in the back seat where no one can see me! As Dave get his wallet out I catch his home address and read it aloud to him and tell him; "We know where you live ! Keep you damned mouth shut!" As he got out, the car lurches in reverse and we tear outta there like we robbed the place. Well, ... We take a lot of erratic turns and end up by a public pool and throw the wallet away and split the cash. All I want is to get away from Neighbor and get my car started and get the hell out of here. NOPE. Neighbor wants to take his share straight the dope house. Weasel and I are stuck along for the ride. We get to the apt. complex and Neighbor goes inside and makes us wait by the car, you'll notice i didnt say "inside " the car , he locked it up. Loooong wait. ....
A genuine dyed in the wool bandanna wearing gun totin gang banger comes out and asks us to idiotic white boys what the hell we think we're doin hangin around here. We says we're waiting for a friend. "Wait somewhere else.", He says, "and take that car with you, get out!"
We told him we couldn't take the car but we'd be glad to leave, But where is our "neighbor"?
"He aint comin back." It seems we weren't the only ones gettin money for nuthin today. I almost shit my self.
We half walked, half jogged about a mile back to the blvd. where the hotel and my car were. By this time it was close to dusk and i still hadn't got my ignition working and possibly Dave and the cops would be waiting for us. Well Dave had followed instructions and we were still relatively safe. But where in the hell had Neighbor gone , and what terrible things had happened to him? Time for worrying about that later. I called a locksmith and he finished clearing what was left of my ignition out for me and we got out´ve there went to another room at a different motel. I didn't want to have my car seen near the first one or on the roads. By this time I'm shakin. I called for pizza and was so scared that when it arrived I was afraid it might be the gangsters lookin to clean up witnesses or the cops looking for any strong arm robbers in the neighborhood IE: "us", that I almost didn't answer the door. We tried several time to get a hold of Neighbor's hotel room but his wife answered and hadn't heard from him. I could barely eat my pizza. Finally the stress had gotten the best of me and i passed out. The next morning, I called Neighbor and he answered , I really don't recall what he said happened all I cared was he wasn't murdered. I wasn't a part of it and the cops weren't looking for three idiots in a Seville.
I packed my clothes into the Monza started it with a screwdriver, Took a deep breath of "freedom" and headed back for the safety of "my part of town".
Cars can mean so much more to people than they ever think about.
posted by LordBru at 7:12 PM
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