On the Road Again
Posted: Mon Apr 12, 2021 5:58 pm
So I went for the second of the two vaccine shots about a month ago and from what I've been told, that's supposed to do it. Hard to believe that after twelve months of hiding at home, grocery shopping at dawn to avoid humanity and the quest for toilet paper, it could be over so suddenly and so easily. Well, maybe it's time to start doing normal things again...
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I head down to the garage where waits my long-slumbering horseless carriage, a 1915 Model T Ford. This is its second pandemic. I flip on the light and notice the car is completely covered with a fine membrane of dust. The coating is so even, unbroken and perfect, it almost seems wrong to disturb it, but the long period of hibernating in suspended animation is over and in a few minutes, we'll be testing the legend of the Tin Lizzie's faithful start-up reliability. I pour a few gallons of anti-freeze into the radiator and hook the battery up to a charger, the dangling cables of which brush up against a fender, ruining the perfection of the sifted-dust cocoon.
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While the electrons are getting packed in, I check the Flivver's logbook. Yes, yes; I keep a log of all the trips, the mileage, fuel consumption, the interval between oil-changes and all that jazz. It's a throwback to the days when my favorite plaything had aluminum wings instead of wood-spoked wheels. Geeze, it must be almost twenty years since I've flown an airplane. That feels like three lifetimes ago (the one in between being that era when things were normal and a man entering a bank with a mask over his face was seen as cause for grievous concern. Lately, I've felt more threatened when someone enters without a mask). Over the course of the past year, our world, for a number of reasons, had become a strange and unfamiliar place and now anything approaching what we used to think of as normal feels somehow wrong. Hmm... the log says the old gal is due for an oil-change and chassis-lube. I'll have to remember to pick up a case of 5W-30. The unchanging, routine maintenance requirements of this old car serve as a dependable point of reference, its sameness a reassuring comfort like the immutability of gravity—the way it is, is the way it has always been.
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Now, as I putter around the garage, little mundane things once so unnoticeably insignificant jump into the center of my awareness. A fumbled wrench hits the concrete floor with that familiar ping and as I bend to pick it up, notice the prettiness of a dripped necklace of anti-freeze droplets glowing in the dim light of a naked bulb like neon-green pearls. There's that faint, old-car-in-a-garage atmosphere; the mixed scent of motor-oil, axle-grease and coolant. Oh, it's good to be back in this grimy little world! I swing the garage door open like a giant roll-top desk and the shocking glare of sunlight floods the place, chases shadows behind cardboard boxes, splashes saturated color all over and gives me a half-minute case of the squints. The warm breath of a springtime breeze and the tingle of sunlight feel good on my skin. It's a good day for a ride.
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The old car's fuel-tank valve feels stiff from disuse so I make a mental note to spray it with penetrating oil after we return. The spring-loaded master switch brings the retrofitted electrical system on line with a resounding clack. I flip the hand-crank over a couple of times with the choke pulled out, then climb aboard, twist the ignition key to the "battery" position and, unexpectedly, the engine bursts into life with a spontaneous "free start." Kisskisskisskisskisskisskiss. Well, how 'bout that? Guess the ol' gal is also eager to get on the road again. As we slowly back out of the garage, the harsh sunlight changes the color of her paint from dead-black to blue-black and the diaphanous coat of dust makes her look sort of fuzzy. After a quick wipe-down, she's once again all nice and shiny and pretty. I do a brief walk-around inspection and finding nothing in need of attention, away we go.
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There's a sort of paradox to feeling giddily excited about driving a car that only clunks along at a sedate 30 mph, but I'm smiling like a farting baby as we make our languid way through town. The neighbors wave and the cars honk and I give 'em a few squawks from the Klaxon and wave back even though I know I'm not the star of this show; it's all about the ridiculously incongruous rolling anachronism with the ornamental brass and the raucous ahooga-horn. Yeah, everybody loves that horn.
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The weekly neighborhood cruise-ins start up a few weeks after the onset of Daylight-Savings time and I'm looking forward to hanging out with the bunch of car-friends I haven't seen in well over a year. I pull into the shopping-center parking lot amidst all manner of classic cars sporting two-tone paint jobs and great big tailfins, whitewall tires and acres of chrome. And there's Jimmy with his colossal '59 Caddy. He and our buddy, Jackie, are waving me over to their circle of beach-chairs around a folding table upon which sits a stack of paper plates and the first pizza of the car-show season. I shut down the engine and step off the running-board and I feel like I should give everybody a great big hug, but the uneasiness of Covid is still felt and we settle for awkward smiles and fist bumps. How I've missed these guys! So we sit around as the sun slowly descends, and we shoot the breeze, catching up on who almost perished from the virus and who had what medical procedure and how our arthritis hurts and how the new paint-job looks real good on Jimmy's car. His portable boom-box is playing oldies and cold pizza never tasted so good. Oh yeah, we're back!