Fine Driving Machines

Saturday, Dec. 7, 2002 -
Ap�sl�min ida corbalanyrtne 'ls�o rohl'daathi�m v� nen�a iroyss�rd.

OSCAR MAYER & CHIQUITA BANANA LYRICS HERE

Here's a damn good word for you: inchoate. Isn't that spiffy? That's gotta go on the Cavort list. Thank you, luv.

I'll be driving up the coast today, in procession with my lovers and my siblings. We're off to scatter my father's ashes on one of his favorite beaches. But I was gonna tell y'all the story about how I almost killed the mater, wasn't I? Well, then...

Part One, In Which the Mater Arrives at My House One Afternoon and is Wrong

Once upon a time...

...upon the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, to be more precise...

...the mater arrived at my house, looking for a car. The mater does have a car of her own, a '71 240Z, restored to the pinnacle of its glory by my pa. The Z looks almost exactly like this old thing, but is green. Very green. Very, very green. Just about this shade of green. So, of course, it had to be dubbed the Lean Mean Green Machine, otherwise known, acronymically, as the LMGM. The mater has another car, the PIM, the Perpetual Immotion Machine, otherwise known as "your father's Mercedes". It's a '70 280 SL she inherited from my father. You know the song, My Grandfather's Clock? Sure you do. That's one of those songs you must've been born knowing, because no one had to teach it to you. Like Happy Birthday, or My Country 'Tis of Thee, or Oh! Susanna, or Camp Town Races (aka the Doo-dah Song), or the Oscar Mayer Wiener Song, or the Oscar Mayer Balogna Song, or the Chiquita Banana Song...

You don't know these songs?

Oh.

Well, you would if you had been reared by the mater in a series of hick towns across Central and Southern California.

Anyway, My Grandfather's Clock goes something like this:

My grandfather's clock was too large for the shelf
So it stood ninety years on the floor
It was taller by half than the old man himself
But it weighed not a pennyweight more
It was bought on the morn
Of the day that he was born
And was always his pleasure and pride
But it stopped short, never to go again
When the old man died

A few days after my father died (three years ago, in the week after Thanksgiving) the mater drove the 280 SL home and parked it in her garage, where it has remained since, immovable (unless you believe the rumors of ghostly midnight runs to Calabasas for Sen-Sen and cheesecake). Like the clock in the song, the car just stopped. Spooky, eh?

Not really.

After all, it is a Mercedes, which means it is a fine driving machine in constant need of fine driving machine adjustments. My pop used to tinker with the car almost every day, seemingly. Even when he was ill for the last few months of his life, and couldn't be trusted to drive, he fussed over his cars and snuck them out for short runs. I don't share my pop's passion for classic cars, but I like old cars. I actually prefer to buy used cars rather than new, just like I prefer to buy used or remaindered books. And it's not because I'm cheap (although I am) but I honestly feel cars and books are over-priced. I love books, I think they are the bulwarks of civilization, but I think the publishing industry needs to be taken by the scruff of its neck and given a good shaking. And a slap or two up the side of its face. Also a salutary kick in its rump.

And it's not just books and cars--most things in the US are over-priced. Do you know how much a box of Cheerios costs in Mexico? 89 cents.

But I digress. As usual.

I was confessing to you how I almost killed the mater, wasn't I?

Annually, around this time of year, the mater speaks nebulously of fixing the Mercedes and selling it, and using the proceeds to finance an excursion to Venice. Or Moscow. Or London. Depending on what book she's been reading. It's becoming a holiday tradition, like her annual avowals for Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter dinners: "This year, I am not going to cook." But she always does. Prodigiously. And this Thanksgiving was no exception. Which is why she came to me last Tuesday afternoon, looking for a car. She needed to do the grocery shopping for the holiday, and the LMGM was too small for the load. You can stuff a lot of groceries through the hatchback of a Z, but the vehicle is woefully inadequate to the task of freighting the comestibles needed for the mater's concept of a proper Thanksgiving feast. Of which she will eat not one crumb. Remember? The mater? Fueled only by coffee and the occasional Necco wafer? We know she must taste the food when she's cooking it, but none of her offspring have been able to catch her doing the deed. She doesn't even lick the spatula. Maybe she uses color swatches to tell when a dish is done right.

(Two more spiffy words in that paragraph: comestibles and spatula.)

Tuesday afternoon, I was home. I had cleared my schedule for that afternoon, hoping I could get some writing done for my languishing NaNoWriMo novel, and for this diary. But instead, I was immersed in end-of-the-month paperwork because the end-of-the-month was ending a few days earlier than usual.

I had a selection of cars for the mater to choose from. Four, to be exact. Yeah, I hear you asking why does one guy need four cars? I don't know, it just happened. And really, it's not untypical for the California male to own multiple vehicles. In my defense, let me say I only own three, and I lease the F350 truck for business. The mater prefers not to use the trucks. The mater is a whippet: sinewy, speedy, but short. More than short. In a word, diminutive. Yet graceful. Clambering up into the cabs of the Apache and the F350 just doesn't suit her style. (Or maybe she just doesn't want to admit that her quadriceps ain't what they used to be.) She could have chosen to drive the '65 New Yorker*, which was given to me by my father for my 24th birthday. It's not haunted like the 280 SL, but my father restored it to a peak of shining perfection that makes it somewhat nerve-wracking to drive. I have to keep telling myself the cup is already broken. The mater won't drive it because she considers it an "old lady's car." Oh, the mater can be so cruel. And so wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Wrong.

(TBC)

*My '65 New Yorker is not dark blue; it is the most sublime shade of creamy cocoa-mocha.

~

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<~>
Ap�sl�min ida corbalan� 'lse nesgla ugar�-cham sa cru ogrulho bat�oltha al�mv�sde.

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