Cars, those pieces of metal that, hopefully, take you from point A to point B like the trusty steeds of yore. Cars, those pieces of metal that, while broken down alongside a lonely highway you wish you could put the hunk of metal down like a trusty steed of yore with a broken forelock. Then look to the west and rope a new one. Cars, those piles of metal where we learned much of life and forgotten more.
Unlike the trusty steeds of yore my cars have been much more than transportation. The act of driving has taught me defense [dodge the oncoming car in my lane], offense [that car pissed me off I'm going back after him], mental telepathy [at the intersection I'm going straight and though the oncoming person has their right turn signal on I know they will turn left in front of me. ] All the self preservation things a ton of metal could be expected to teach, they've taught me.
A ton of metal running 110 mph, arrow straight during cats light, on a piece of asphalt that slashes through the Eastside of Washington holds more than one lesson to be learned.
That same pile of metal, engine ticking while cooling, offers painfully lonely lessons while parked along on some wayside as you hope for a moments dream. The coming morning, with yesterday's light once again gaining the East as you fight your way West to tomorrow, the pile of metal, at the turn of the key, changes from the pay by hour hotel to a possibility.
Fast. Windows down. So fast that as you pass one irrigated field to the next you can feel the change of temp and moisture. Mind only. Blissfully feeling , thinking nothing . Leaving every thought behind as the pile of metal roared on at unsafe speeds. A lesson to be learned.
I've owned a different car basically every five years of my driving life. Go fasts, what the hells, pickups and the car seat fits. All of them have had some lasting effect on me but at some point they quit molding me and defining my life. I know exactly when those hunks of metal quit teaching me. It was an Orange over White Ford F-150 purchased by my folks for me and mine.
It was the very first pile of metal that didn't, wouldn't and couldn't teach me anything. Sad in a way. A passing of age I suppose. New found professions and responsibilities pretty much assured the Orange over White Ford wasn't going to have to keep me warm on some back road somewhere between there and someplace else.
The Orange over White was to be utilitarian.
That's not to say memories weren't made. I distinctly recall pulled over under a giant plastic Palomino in front of a Western Supply Store and morning sickness [Chucky Cheese Sickness I think] was my wife's splatter on the asphalt. There were more memories but that really isn't the point. That pile of metal was the end of learning but not living.
So for a favorite car I have to look before the Orange over White. I have to look back where the pile of metal was the center of life, education and at times salvation. A place where I learned pain of heart. A place I learned how to love, how to be scared and how to live very very dangerously. First to mind – The Toranado.
The Toranado was unique. Electric everything. I mean everything. Seats, windows, antennas… a perfect what the hell is a high school kid doing driving that piece of metal. I drove the Toranado during the days when it was cool to take the pieces of metal, jack up the rear end and look cool. I had the best of both worlds. Electric seats! I could kick back low low low and cruise like the…well of today. Or, if I wanted that jacked up feeling…Electric seats to the rescue again and no expense of a lift kit.
That pile of metal wasn't quick but it would cruise easily at 120mph and not drift an inch all the while the thrush mufflers my best buddy and I threw on sparking at each impact on the much too close asphalt. Front wheel drive. Huge pile of iron it called a motor. It was a car.
I learned much in that car. Friendships, how easy and how ever so hard it was to keep the important friendships. I learned about love and somehow missed the lesson about being kind. There isn't a person I knew then that was important to me that didn't learn and live in the Toranado. That pile of metal tried the second hardest of them all to kill me.
In the end, not being a mechanic, I was told the Toranado was D.O.A. one day. I pushed it to Smith's Wrecking and they gave me 50 bucks for it. I should have been smart enough to see what portent that was. Especially after not many months later I found out from my girlfriend's dad for 100 bucks I could have had the electric mobile with the toilet paper speedometer back in fine fettle. Goes to show you…don't always put them down, double check that forelock.
Driving as fast as fast can up the dirt road between two canyons, hitting the intersection and sailing my piece of metal into the air. One night while in the air the engine stopped. When my piece of metal landed, there atop the hills above the basin I opened the hood. Every spark plug wire had St. Elmo's fire dancing about. I took a deep breath and looked to the east over miles and miles of what I then thought was nothing. The Elmo's quit dancing and as the truck restarted on its own, I closed the hood. A lesson to be learned.
There was the Charger, red with a white landau roof. A rocket powered by Mopar. I started a new life in that car. It hauled me and my then to be wife over endless seemingly empty miles of the west and delivered me far from home so I could get a formal education. Prior to that on a very regular basis the pile of metal safely delivered me to Yakima, my wife to be home town. There were splendid times, golden times, driving hell bent times in that pile of metal.
That pile of metal took us back to the Pacific Northwest pulling a trailer and during the dark sporting only one eye. Too poor to by a new eye we drove, well, wife to be, drove with the high beams a blazing on coming truckers be damned. I remember some of that trip through a pain killer haze as I'd broken my arm the night before sliding down the banister at Red Rocks. At that sliding time the Everclear made sure that nothing was felt.
It was the next morning, three boxes away from departure that we decided the big fat black arm accented with fingers the size of sausages warranted a visit to the emergency room. After that visit my wife to be, became captain of that pile of metal.
There is no better feeling then waking up someplace in nowhere just as the sun begins to look out from the East. The sun paints in the details of the wayside where unclear minds finally had to stop for "just a rest". Secure in the pile of metal you watch the painting unfold in a blurred pastel. Then the shadows join in and more detail filters in through the bug splattered windshield. Pretty soon you get to share with each other two things. The first, is the breath taking view that was originally disguised by the 1:00 A.M. darkness. The second, is you really have no idea where you are and it doesn't matter. At that moment, inside the pile of metal, all that matters is you are both there.
Once again, years later the Charger, the pile of metal, where I learned so much about my now wife, started showing symptoms of failure much as "The Toranado" did a decade ago. The pile of metal was sold fast and cheap. Later I found out all that pile of metal needed was a new thermostat. Goes to show you…don't always put them down, double check that forelock.
Friday, punch out grab the pay check and run. Jump in the Charger Soap Lake Liquor and an old codger were the first stop. Fifth of Old Crow and a six pack of Country Club. Back in the pile of metal and hit the back way curves to Ephrata hard as I took thirst quenching gulps from the first Country Club of the day. Destination; a quick shower to rid myself of steel grime, change of clothes thrown onto the searing hot black back seat and I'm outta' dodge.
Three Country Clubs down and here's the exit for the run down the Columbia River that will take me the back way into Yakima. The fast way. The scary way. What the hell when you are running you might as well run as fast as you can. Old Crow and Coke mixed just fine in the water bottle that used to climbed a peak or two. The bottle is nestled between my legs for easy reach.
Wanapum Dam is my let go. Hotel California blasting I punch all 440hp of the Mopar God. The basalt heated air blasting through the open windows at 120 plus. Just go. Just go. Three Country Clubs left but now they go to the back seat for later and it's just the Old Crow and Coke. Seeing the sign for Desert Aire means gas that I needed and didn't get cuz' I needed to escape.
Fueled up and on the road again Pile of Metal. Laughing at the slow as we blasted past. Chance on chance taken on every curve…
There are other piles of metal that supplied cursory moments. But looking back none of them educated me in life. None of them tried to kill me. They were almost like fog banks between what was and what would. Piles of metal that should have belonged to someone else and in most cases ultimately did.
But there was one. It was a white over maroon three quarter ton pick up. Not much to look at. I dueled out the exhaust. Slung tires and wheels on it appropriate to where I drove the most. That's about all that pile of metal got from me. Those things and another engine when I blew the original coming back from Moses Lake in a fit of fury were about it.
Everything happened to me in that pile of metal. It was a roller coaster ride of life.
There were people who decided they wanted to ride that life and once the doors closed screamed to be let out. There were people who wouldn't get out once doors closed and I learned cruelty beyond belief in an effort to get them to jump out. There were people who got in a rode with me. Taught me about love and opened the door to that piece of metal and left much too soon. I won and then I lost. I laughed then I cried. I lost again and won again.
I learned the difference when being followed by an official blue light and an official red light. I learned that bench seats were the coolest thing in the world. I learned those simple things and other things I wish to this day I hadn't in that pile of metal.
I ran and ran in that pile of metal. Montana, Idaho Wyoming, B.C. I ran. One would think that those states were enough space to run to ground in that pile of metal. Apparently not.
I guess that pick up was my favorite piece of metal because it carried me through everything. From loving, being loved, learning how to love. To adventures like a friend wanting to break into a Montana cop station because they had his dope. Trolling for change on the dashboard to buy a "Dick's Bag Full of Burgers". More times than not holding a bottle of whiskey, as I alone, watched the day old light of yesterday break on the Eastern horizon. Wondering, if I really should look West for a new day, perhaps a new life.
I'm not really sure how or why that pile of metal, that had acquired a brown over white door through one mishap or another escaped my grasp. I do know years after it left me to for someone else's life I saw it a time or two in later travels.. I do know that, unbeknown to me, my wife to be had seen me in that pile of metal but has never ridden in it.
To this very moment as my fingers touch these keys I can picture a myriad of life scenes that involved that pile of metal. Scenes, scenes lit by neon. Scenes lit by a rising sun. Scenes fading under a setting sun. Outside looking in but most often as not inside looking out. The memories aren't why I chose this pile of metal as my favorite.
This pile of metal, the unobtrusive pickup, made me, just as I made it take me where I wanted to go. Often times that pile of metal knew I didn't want to go there and I would fight it tooth and nail all the way to a lonely wayside somewhere this other side of where I didn't belong. Ultimately that piece of metal delivered me to someone that could save me.
So my favorite car? Not to begrudge the requisite sports car that comes with thirty. Not to forget the luxury car that came with success. I don't forget to smile fondly when I remember the "car seat fits" cars. They all have memories both good and bad. But only one pile of metal made me.
Goes to show you…don't always put them down, double check that forelock.
The engine went tick tick tick. Fog muffled the engine sound. I could hear surf not too far behind me. I never knew what made the engines in those piles of metal go tick tick tick…I went West.
