As the sequence goes, I said in October, "Fuck it, I'm not going to be cold this winter, I'm moving to California," and so purchased my ticket from Boston to Los Angeles for the 5th of January. Then I smashed my face into the rear of a car and knocked two teeth clean out of my head, and I spared no expense in repairs, in the future where I actually pay for those costs. Then I found the Longshot. I had been a part of an online community called "Freecycle," where people have things that they no longer have a use for, but in lieu of throwing them out if they might still be useful to handy or Earth friendly folks, they are put up online for grabs. Free moving boxes, reusing packing peanuts, televisions, and if you want something that somebody might throw out, you can also put the desire for an old generation of ipod out there, or a used cell phone. I've seen a PS3 go up. And I saw a car. I scoffed, "No fuckin' way." Yes, I often curse to myself. It's a longshot, but what the heck, right? Send an email! You don't catch any fish if you don't go fishing. I get a reply back that tells me it didn't work out with the first person, and I should come take a look. I guess I have to! One needs to explore these leads-if its for free, it's highly unlikely that it's worth it, but hey. My Uncle Tom is kind enough to pick my toothless ass up at the train station when I get in to Providence, and we head down to Kingston to view this car. The drivers side door has been bent backwards in an accident, and so a new one must be acquired. When we arrive, the owner has been driving the thing around already, and as it comes around the corner, I'm kind of in love. This car has some character. She said that after a year of sitting around that it started right up, which I later learned was a thick line of bullshit. Now I don't really know how to drive stick, I've only done it a couple of times, once was when I ignorantly looked for my first car, and idiotically driving his vehicle around, the owner looked at me like I just shat on his front porch and lit it on fire and stood there waiting for him to find out. This time intimidated me even more, even though I knew better. I got in this thing and whipped it around a few turns and got her going, got the hang of it all fairly quickly, I thought. The car only had 134K on it for a 26 year old car. Apparently a guy had driven it a mile and a half to work and back every day for 20 years. Glad it's not my life. It had been from Boston during Mayor Flynn's administration, to Missouri and back. I can tell by the remnants of the 20 something year old Allston-Brighton parking sticker. But the car is working, man, it's going, the engine is lookin' pretty good. Now all I have to do is find the door, another task with the odds of success being stacked against the good guys. Maggie, the owner, tells me that if I tow it away, it's mine. I tell her I'll get back to her later in the day. She's dying to unload this thing, it's clear. I call around to auto salvage places for a few hours and actually find a place that has a replacement door, and on top of that good fortune, they are the closest place, and know a towing company across the street. Of course they do. The best part is, that even if the door they have won't go on smoothly, they'll take the car as junk for $150 less the cost of the $75 tow. I can't lose. Not even on travel costs or time, because I got to visit my family in the process. They tow it over to the yard, so now its actually mine. The guy says the door is a pale yellow or brown, and I'm thinking, "Holy shit, it might actually be the same color as my car!" New news, the guy called me and tells me its the wrong door, but he's gonna make a few calls to his junkyard buddies, also I need a new axle since the car clicks when hitting the extremeties of my turning radius. OK, OK, minor setback, but he says he can put the potential door and axle in for about 60 bucks each plus labor. I wait on pins and needles starting to fabricate this trip in my head pondering the possibilities that open up by having a car. Go to Florida to work, Work South by Southwest in Texas, high-tail it to LA via Colorado and Las Vegas. Arrive with extra cash. Could it be possible to move my life from boston to LA and end up in the black? Finally he comes up with a door. He says it's "dirty green" which excites me if I get to rock Packers colors, but really it's only dirty green because of the grime that has piled on it, it's powder blue. It's done and I can get it, so I go get the bill of sale, I got proof of insurance and I went to the RMV ready to get my plates, man, I was excited. This is when they tell me my license has been suspended since 2005. It turns out that a speeding ticket I got in 2004 had never been paid, even though I thought I had covered it. That was enough to get it suspended on its own, but on top of it, it cross referenced with something else. In 2001 in New Hampshire, I was boating without a life vest, and the marine patrol came up on us and issued my friend and me tickets. We spurned them, so I hope his license is still in good standing, or has avoided driving in New Hampshire, or he has discovered the ramifications of going delinquint on the government, which is to say, you will get fucked. I had to shell out $200 in reinstatement fees plus the $250 of the actual citation costs. Damn, it was a phone call making process, transfers, hang-ups, waits from office to office, fax us this, can you fax that for me, all racing to pick this thing up the next day and actually have it registered! I finally had my name cleared, my license reinstated, and there were license plates in my hand! Time to grab this whip and bring it on home, and then move on from that home.
My Uncle Tom brought me down to Kingston again and it was getting dark. I paid the fella for his services, a modest $270 all told for a door and an axle and a tow. I got to the car, it had been running for a while when I arrived, and my uncle asked if it was OK to take off, if I'd be all right. I said sure, but I was not even close to confident about that. I turned the lights on and it died on me. I dipped my head for the good sign. I frantically ran in to see the dude again, they were closing up and had I waited another few minutes, I might have been stranded there. He brought out a jump kit and got me going again, and I braced myself to turn on my lights, thinking, "Don'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdie (clickclick) YESSSSSS!" Now all I have to do is drive it. I chunked it into first and we all went forward with great surprise and trepidation: Me, for being stranded, the car for its mechanical health, the future for what I was about to do to it. The first road I rolled on forgave me for my skills, it was fairly empty and the speed limit and two lanes gave me some room to experiment with my gear switches. I shifted quickly and without proficiency, the car lunging forward as I gritted my remaining teeth hoping I didn't suddenly end up in reverse, but relying on the sounds of the acceleration to cue me to change gears. I successfully stopped at a red light and started back up, and I felt bolstered by this accomplishment. I really should have had a better lesson before I took off in what might have been my Japanese manufactured metal tomb, but I merged onto I-95 N around six in the dark, New England evening.
Traffic heading through Providence suffocated me while I hyperventilated about the dips in speed and sudden downshifts, and the few times I ground a gear incorrectly, adrenaline shooting up my spine, my eyelids flipping backwards as third gear took. I peered nervously at my gas gauge, the old gas in the tank should have evaporated after sitting around for a year in my sci-fi logic, and I wonder if I have enough to make it to Boston. It's gas tank versus distance, and gas tank needs to win this one. I have a ballroom dance lesson to make at 7:30, and I'm on target to get there, even with traffic, and I just watch the gauge drop. Finally, the traffic subsides, and after a few turns that I lean into with my body for fear of my unfamiliar car rolling, I can cruise smoothly, at the speed limit, not aware of what the beast is capable of yet. I-95 to I-93 success, and I'm about 15 minutes away from class when I exit at E. Berkeley to gas up. It's the nearest gas station to the dance lesson, so I'm not thinking about getting stranded at a sketchy gas station next to a halfway house, under a highway, and yet soon I ended up thinking about exactly that, and about expensive Boston tow trucks.
Eighty minutes of driving couldn't juice this battery up enough to stand around for five minutes as I gassed her up. I gave her a start and it wouldn't turn over. Chickchickchickchick. And my first world problem is that I fret for my ballroom dance lesson. "I'm going to be late! I'll never catch up on the new step!" Chickchickchickchickchickchick. "Fuuuck." I guess that Maggie lady had been driving the yellow box around in an effort to mask that the battery is a blink away from being useless. That's when I started to take in my surroundings, and realize I don't have any jumpers, and I might be going to see where Shit Creek dumps out to. I ask the gas station attendant who is fluent in English at about a second grade level if he has jumper cables, but this is new vocabulary for him. After the lesson, he fed me the bad news from behind the bulletproof glass, not for lack of trying to locate a set in various areas of the station. I considered my options and all I could really do was start asking strangers. I ask a few people who look at me like I'm some sort of maniac who needs money, and a few of them reacted with more bitterness for a jump-start request than if I had asked them for $5, you know, for charity. Several declinations through ten helpless minutes later, I found a good samaritan. A girl not too far from my age gassed up and I made my humble request. She broke out from her truck a brand new roadside assistance kit, and unraveled a set of jumper cables. I drooled at the energy they would put into my car. As the battery took in some juice, we chatted a little bit about how I had just gotten the car and I told her that I knew right away that I'd name it Longshot as I drove it up to Boston. I said to myself, 'This thing is going to get me across the country? That's a longshot," and my eyes widened and the odds against this vehicle actually working out for me were pretty great, and the name became apparent. The car started up and anxious to move again and drive away from Sketchy Square, Boston, I turned on the lights. Poop. I panicked and looked around for the girl who had helped me and she was already pulling out of the gas station. I flung myself out of my car and chased her down. Tapping on her window in the December air, right before she tried to enter traffic, she looked at me, nearly horrified, sighed, and rolled her window down.
"It went out again," I said, embarrassed and nervous to ask the same person for the same thing twice. "Can you possibly give me another jump?"
"I'm sorry, I'm in a real hurry, I'm already late," she confessed, observing my expression, and caved, "but you can just take the jumpers if you bring them back."
"Oh, totally," I effused, shocked. "What's your number? I'll bring them back in the next day or two."
I took down her information and planned to make it happen in the next few days when I'd be heading off to her town to attend a friend's party. She gave me the jumpers and I thanked her profusely. I now had the proper tool.
I returned to asking around, and this guy, I think it was an Hispanic gentleman who had been in the military gave me the start and took off. I let the car idle at the gas station, you know, because it was a good idea. I thought it would be long enough to get things going. Then I turned on the lights. Poop.
Another few requests later, a kind effeminate man reluctantly gave me a jump from his white VW GTI, the new hip one. When I asked him for a jump he looked exasperated as he agreed to help. It struck a nerve for me in how so many are willing to help when directly confronted with distress, but we are so selfish and it does take a lot for a great deal of citizens to get past the threshold of one's own self-interests in the name of humanity. If you won't do it, someone else might, but if you don't, how are you helping the sum climate of the human experience? Not that everyone has this goal in mind, and if so, maybe only in the very back of their broader personal goals, or simply just in rare instances, but it is part of the human experience to need help and to be able to offer it and keep intact the thin strands of faith in the human race. While I grant that there are those who will take advantage of the average human's capacity for kindness, for example, some drifter kids in Portland, OR, or your long-story con man trying to get his sick wife on a train to a doctor in Connecticut, or a friendly grifter who always seems to have just gotten out of the hospital, there is a point when the refusal to help can feel despicable, and yet the acquiescence to give charity can be so affirming. And so he gave me that jump, subtly indignant in the brisk air, and I thanked him and even apologized, and you could tell he felt right about lending a hand. He went and I actually prayed, you know, to the Force. This time, I turned my lights on BEFORE I removed the jumpers, and let the car burn fuel for new energy. I resolved to drive directly home, too late to dance, and no longer caring to endure car trouble. I needed the heat of my house and my bed. I sputtered into first and hysterically smashed down the clutch every time I didn't know what to do, and crunched numbers in my head to figure out what gear I belonged in. Turning around from Storrow Drive towards my house provided a cheap and life threatening thrill, and then hitting the stop light on that hill certainly scared the piss out of me that I'd roll back into some unassuming Boston aggressive driver who was a little too far up my ass. Boy was he lucky that I didn't accidentally throw it into third, because I did that a few times in the next few days and stalled out with a thud, not knowing for the life of me what I had done wrong and white-knuckled about the climbing engine temperature on my gauge. I accelerated into my pulled e-brake to prevent the accident, and skidded forward and left, into a parking spot to get another jump tomorrow.
For all I trashed Rich in the last posting, he has an oddly generous side to him. He's willing to help with a lot of things if you ask him. He loves to build stuff, built the bar in our basement when we first moved into 21 Bennett, and dissembled it after we realized it was not a good idea to have erected a bar just feet away from the drunk living in the basement. He built the wheels to my bike with great proficiency, and even took me to a rad bike shop to get the particular spokes that would be best for the structure. He gave me a jump when I needed to go get a new battery. He laughed when he first saw the thing that I intended to drive across the country. So with his jumpers, and that negative way he does things that even carries over slightly into his good moods, we invigorated the car to reach the Autozone that gave me my new battery-which could not keep the car alive after a month of being idly parked in my Austin driveway with the car clock on. Something about this car doesn't let that function turn off, nor will the radio actually turn off, they are always sucking out just a little bit of energy, just like Rich.
I went to a place that did cheap tune-ups to get my car road trip ready. I found out why they were cheap. I was recommended another tune-up by a reputable company in Austin. I went to this place with a guy so clearly foreign that it disturbed me to keep calling him George. George told me about a place that does cheap inspections. After having been issued a ticket down in the Seaport District, I had to supply my window and the City of Boston with some proof that the car could meet the state minimums. My horn was going to be an issue. Sometimes it would speak if you wanted it to, but other times when you really wanted it to, you could beat the ever living shit out of it and it would go Quảng Đức on me, and not a peep for the fire of blows I would rain upon it. I had to take my medicine of bad drivers silently and without audible protest. Many of my made fists were shaken in rage. A good LA and Texas lesson, I figured, since any random driver may be carrying a weapon, and drive by shootings are the easiest to get away with, since you are escaping as the crime is being committed. Yet George did me right by sending me there, the horn did not speak, but the car did pass, and they did get a little something extra for the favor. A mechanic in San Francisco told me that in Massachusetts, my car would have to be taken off the road. Boston City Hall dismissed my ticket in March.
I left Boston for Los Angeles on January 5th, Anne's jumpers still in 21 Bennett Street's closet. All the Longshot has to do now is drive across the country and be reliable in LA traffic...
Statistics:
$650 in total to get my license reinstated and my car registered in Massachusetts
153 days between receiving the jumpers and returning them
$213 for a bogus tune up
77.3 harrowing miles from the junkyard where my car was to that gas station
6.3 anus puckering miles from the gas station to 21 Bennett St.
$125 for 6 ballroom dance lessons at Boston Center for Adult Education
5 total jump starts in 2 days
$270 total to tow the car, replace an axle, and put on my mismatched door.
5 years that my license had actually been suspended. How about that? Sure did get away with one there.
$10 claimed as the sale price of the vehicle, 0 actually paid to the previous owner for the title.
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