Dak To

Memorial Day...

As a kid, it meant visiting the grandparents in the graveyard and attending a military parade that snaked it's way through the now extinct business district of downtown Pawtucket. The area was a mixed used area you'd see in many towns in 50's America. Dentist offices, insurance, banks, men's clothiers and drug stores that once sold cheeseburgers as well. The parade lasted perhaps 45 minutes with the usual military ooompah bands, various Veterans of Foreign Wars outfits and some politicians who practically knew everyone's name in the crowd. The most striking memory I have of one, were the M-14 salutes the soldiers would fire on occasion. Those were just blanks and were loud enough to startle you even though you knew it was coming. Add to that the strange clattering of spent brass cartridges that spun upon the pavement.

All that was of downtown is gone. It's been replaced by seemingly Soviet-styled block buildings that house God Knows What. If not that, it's Section 8 housing for the elderly, mental cases sedated to a safe and sound level or recently released ACI prisoners on their way to freedom via the halfway house, which rises 15 stories above the cityscape.

Downtown Pawtucket no longer looks like Eisenhower's America.

I never knew my grandfathers as they were both dead before I was born. I heard stories about them and the closest I came to them was standing on the dirt that covered them. My parents would always purchase geraniums, those god awful red flowers that stink to high heaven to adorn the graves. I used to protest their decision and ask why wouldn't they buy something that didn't turn the back seat of the car into a stinking mildew factory. I had to sit in the back seat with them as we drove to the cemetery so my complaint was valid! We spent all of 20 minutes at the grave and I'd look around at the other headstones and read the dates. It seemed near impossible to believe that people were born in 1890. As a young man in my 20's stumbling across overgrown graves in Foster, it seemed odd as hell to read a gravestone that purported that the occupant was born in 1698.

It holds true; if you didn't witness it, it's just ephemeral. Anything that occurs before the year you were born, are strange rumors only.

My grandfathers were just rumors to me and looking upon the graves were weak evidence of lives, lived.

Memorial? What memory? Remember what?

The only Memorial Day remembrance that holds true to me was a person that wasn't related to me in the least way. He was Michael D., a neighbor a block away who I saw as a child and I saw him in his dress uniform a few times. I had never seen a military man before I met Mike. Even though it was for less than a few minutes, those first time experiences as a child tend to burn memories deep.

The next time I head that name was from a couple of neighbors quietly discussing the condition of his body when it was returned from Vietnam. The adults were speaking quietly enough to keep us kids from becoming aware, but my hearing was like that of an owl then. What I heard didn't seem real.

“Jesus! Closed coffin?” Mr. J said.

“Yeah, no head, upper torso...just the abdomen and on down came back.” said another neighbor.

**

“Basket case!” my brother chuckled, when I told him of what I had heard. “They scooped up what was left, put it in a bamboo basket and put that in the coffin!”

I then believed it as my brother dug out an old Mad Magazine to show me. Mad Magazine, at one time, to protest the war in Vietnam, published pictures of dead, burnt, shot up and blown apart American servicemen. It had a shock value to wake people up, to show just exactly what an American soldier looks like when hit by an AK 47 or other weapon. They demystified the glamour and legends surrounding freedom loving American GI and reduced him to everyday reality. You could take Captain America, a superhero, and completely de-power-fy him by showing him spilling his guts after a machete slit across his belly. That's what Mad Magazine was up too.

“Look at THIS one” my brother tells me. Yeah, a pile of goo lying on some hillside somewhere in the forests of a place called Dak To, which to my seven year old brain, sounded like an alien and exotic entree on a Chinese take out menu. At seven, you can't quite process what you're looking at, but still, I knew what I was looking at was real.

**

Memorial Day for me, if I ever really think of it at all, is for one person, Micheal D. Of all the military personnel I might have known, barely known or heard about, he's the one I can think of on Memorial Day. 1971...he's been that long since dead. Shit...45 years. Well Mike, I do remember you.

How's that for a long term memory that's not a rumor?

Conversations...

I was absent-mindedly looking at an older woman, about forty-ish, when she says, “Can you see me?”

That comment “brought me to” and I apologized in that I was was just sort of spacing out. She understood. The look on my face said was looking at her but primarily focusing on some distant horizon 14 miles off. You get old enough and you learn the 1,000 Yard Stare and the uses it has.

She goes on. “I thought I was becoming invisible here...not because of you but..” and she waves towards the younger men in the bar. Then I understood what her original comment meant. My looking at her at all meant I knew she existed. The younger men in the place, looked right past her to the other 20-30 something younger women there. To the guys, she was invisible.

After talking a bit I come to learn she wasn't on the cougar stalk, looking for younger flesh to devour. She was just trying to meet someone. I then tell her that I too have been the target of that invisibility, though I learned it much younger. I point to my hair and tell her I used to dye it on and off and realized early on, if left gray, I found that many times during the day when you just go schlepping around doing life's daily tasks, people ignore you. Once I dyed it again, I then reappeared and was relevant again. Hell, at 30 years of age I was learning that, keep it gray and all of a sudden, poof...I phased into another dimension and no longer existed.

She didn't look “bad” due to her age at all. But...she had what anyone over 40 has, that worn look, the look of experience. I know it's more difficult for women since the culture demands that they look pretty at all times and anything that detracts from that is a MORTAL SIN punishable with scorn, derision and being roasted on spit in Hell forever. Think I'm being shallow and sexist? Look at all the botox, “age defying” skin creams and host of other things women (and more men) are trying out to look younger.

Trying to stay “marketable.”

She tells me. “I have a great solid career, my kid is grown, in college and I have no real baggage. Debt? I have none.! I own my house outright. I'm the one to “catch.”

Yes, those attributes are great I tell her, they speak of a life that isn't smashing into walls constantly. I say that as I point to the kids there, who haven't yet learned that 90% of their misery is self generated due to fucking up constantly. They mindlessly run towards what they think they want w/o ever looking to avoid the land mines, barbed wire and gopher holes that life puts in their way.

“But...even with that, living life with common sense and seeking that in others.” I tell her, “we all are still attracted to beauty.” “You look at a calendar of young, half naked fireman posing , with six pack abs and dark mysterious eyes and your ovaries start to rattle, don't they!”

She giggles to that, because it's true.

“Me? I see a pretty URI girl in a bikini in Matunuck and I see a work of art. In my head I hear, “My...God...just look at THAT!” You women will never understand the reaction we men have to beauty, how completely struck we are by it...just as we men will never understand just what you women experience. Either of us may be able to approach the reality of the other, but never really know it, feel it or live it. East is east and west is west kinda thing.”

“Yeah...that never gets solved.” she says.

“So you only go after 'younger than yourself', like all men?” she asks.

“No, but I still look..like you look at the younger guys you think are 'hunks.' Riiiight?” I tease her.

“Yeah, I admit it.” she confesses.

“There ya go.” I say.

“Two things will make you feel young again, a bag of cocaine or a young mate, if you have both, you're in high school again, but neither lasts long, it's all transient.” I say. “Transient or a heart attack...you choose! If you're doing that past 45, you're going to crack up, health-wise or mental health-wise.”

“What do you see in younger guys?” I ask her.

“Health, vigor, a real 'catch'. Sort of like landing that big fish.”

“You see what in younger women? She asked me in turn.

“Health, vigor, a real 'catch'. Sort of like landing that big fish.” I ape right back at her.

“Honestly, they're a pain in the ass eventually. They're looking for a 'Dad' to correct all the messes they've created or are sunk in. I can point out exactly how to extricate themselves but they never 'get it.' I can't stuff decades of living or experience into them because the only way they can learn it is to go through it..and all the time that takes to do it. But being the Dad that was never there in the first place...it's a hell of a price to pay for smooth skinned smiles and perky tits!”

“Ah Ha HA HA HA” she guffaws.

**

We actually had a great time talking to one another, a couple of mensches schmoozing it along. We both agreed we're approaching that point in time where we are out of the dating game, or more precisely, out of that “field" that the young ones play on.

“We'll end up like some old football legends, sportscasting a game of young bucks. Our place in in the ESPN box...commenting...but if we happen to like one another then...”

“and then..” she replies.

“...and then...” I reply.

“...and THENNN!” she says.

Lucky I got the reference to the Chinese restaurant from “Dude, Where's My Car!” Hell, I had to be made aware of that scene about a year ago. Jesus, now I have to be told about what the youth are into.

Miserable Fat Portuguese Bastards!

What stories can I tell now? I'm drawing a blank...

Ok, here's one.

Back in the 70's, there were three predominant nationalities in our section of town, Irish, Polish, English and a smaller fourth...ugh...Portuguese. The Italians didn't bother with Pawtucket and preferred North Providence. We didn't despise them as they were not the latest immigrant group to arrive. The Portuguese however, were.

In reality, they had been here for years but in New Bedford, Fall River or say Fox Point down by Providence way. What was an insult to us kids, as we learned it from our older parents and adults, were that the Portuguese were moving slowly into our neighborhood. How dare they!

In school, there were a few Portuguese kids who we quietly were racist towards. The old Polish jokes we used to guffaw at were now replaced with the Portuguese ones. The joke wasn't different at all, just swap out “Polark” for “Portugie” and there you go.

“How do you get 20 Portugies into a Volkswagon?” Throw a penny into it.

“How you do you get them out?” Toss in a bar of soap.

Yeah, infantile and silly, but we could make the adults in our neighborhood laugh at that.

There was on strange Portuguese kid I knew, short with Nordic blond hair called Richard Faguendez. He had a hot temper which I swear came from him being so short. “Little Man Syndrome” I guess it's called and not without for good reason, there are cases of it.

Anyway, Richard knew very well where his lineage stood and fought us bitterly over our silly jokes or quiet whispering. We'd also knock his sister around due to her unfortunate Mediterranean genetics of having visibly hairy arms at the age of 12. Hey Celia! Go buy a Schick!

When I hear people today speak of children as so innocent, being our future...I think of the true fact that I knew kids to be complete assholes as I was once a kid. Don't tell me otherwise...I was there!

One day I was riding on the back of Jimmy's bike when we pass the Faguendez house and I see Richard outside tooling around the front yard. Look, there are times when I can't help it but to blurt out what everyone's thinking and then bust out laughing. It's a delicious temptation to break polite convention with stark reality. The situation is dying for it.

So I shout out to Richard, in a jovial, joking manner...

“Hey Richard! You dirty, little Portugie!”

Richard flew across the street and tackled me, and hence Jimmy and the bike onto the pavement. The little bantam starting knocking me about pretty quickly and I had to fight back as fast as I could. One of the older neighbor's there pulled us apart before much damage was done.

Yeah, I deserved it.

I don't know who that older man was but he was acting in loco parentis as he admonished all three of us for fighting. Richard, to his defense blurts out to the old guy, “But he called me a dirty Portugie!!”

I'm sitting in the street and when I heard Richard say that, I bust out laughing again. I couldn't help it, he's repeating it again and I can't help but to react.

Round Two. Ding!

Richard flies at me again but this time I don't fight back because my laughter is paralyzing me. The old man again separates us and then orders Jim and I to “Get the hell out of here!”

We leave...giggling.

I have no idea where the dirty, little..I mean Richard, ended up.

The Portuguese, to their benefit, moved up the social ladder and acquired better jobs, homes and even political office in Pawtucket. Ok, now you're acceptable.

What's funny? When the Colombians moved into Central Falls and somewhat Pawtucket back in the 80's, guess which group despised them the most? It wasn't us Irish, English or Polish..it was the Portuguese.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat. 

 

Click and See Silly Prejudice in Action

Tolman Tigers

I came across an old high school yearbook of a school I never attended and it threw me for a loop when I read it. Up until 9^th grade, I attended public schools and made friends with kids I had known from kindergarten. When it came time for high school, I followed my brother's path and went to St. Raphael's Academy vs. Tolman High School. I'd say 98% of the kids I knew from my childhood went to Tolman. To tell the truth, I lost contact with most of them when I went to a different school. Everyone moves on or run in different circles and newer friends and paths are formed. That's life. This still happens to me, and you, today.

As I was looking at the pictures of the class of '82 from Tolman, I kept going, “God! That's X or that's Y!” They looked liked as I remember them when I knew them last when they were all around 14. What I didn't see happen to them was how adolescence reshaped them when they hit 18 and graduated.

Some barely changed, others definitely got that adult look, which was more chiseled, more defined. Some looked uglier, others prettier. Me? I got butt ugly at 18! I had enough pimples to fill a bucket full of pus. Yet then, I was at my perfect BMI weight, skinny as a rat and a head full of brown/copper hair. I've put on a few pounds since then. The hair I kept though it's blindingly white now. My acne has long since subsided.

I very rarely run into any of the Class of '82 now and if I did, I probably would have to be told just who they are as we've changed so much over the decades. I'll say this though, personalities don't change too much. All they do is get quieter as they age. The volume is turned down bit by bit.

Why did I go to St Ray's? Well, at 14, you kinda do what your parent's tell you to do and it seemed like the natural thing to do, follow my brother. Was it worth it? Yes and no.

The education at Saints was rigorous. I never met a bunch of taskmasters like the DeLasallian Brothers who weren't kidding, they vowed to take a religious vocation of “educating the youth.” They had the zealotry of a Jesuit missionary in 1650's Canada who still tried to convert Hurons as they slit them head to toe with dull deer antler. Up until then, I didn't know in truth just what a “teaching order” of the Catholic church meant. I found out. My last year, 9^th grade in the public school of Goff Jr High was a damn joke. I went from spinning my wheels and doing great to having to pump mental iron when I went to Saints. It took a good six months to get mentally toned enough to gain back those A's I wasn't getting when I first started. I had come to Saint's with the breezy mentality of my last year in public school, which was vacation.

I did notice this though about a private high school, there is an exclusionary attitude to them. Public schools cast a very wide net and if you've been in them, you learn to be very tolerant of those around you as they come from all sorts of socio-economic strata. You have to do this in order to get along. It also is very egalitarian as well, due to the same reason. There was far less judgment of one another.

Private schools, St Ray's in particular, pulls a tiny, not-very-laden net onto it's ship. Very few fish. In fact, the fish are vetted. Any fish that cannot meet the educational requirements are tossed back. Also, the attitude of many of the kids there was cliquish, aristocratic and the hint of privilege was apparent.

Typically, I could get along with anyone, since I came from that mindset. But I was amazed at the rebuff I could get at times from some people. I took a while before I realized what hurdles that were placed before some of us and that jumping them was no guarantee of acceptance. Fine, be that way. Eventually I found a circle there at the school...and a completely different life/circle among my neighborhood buddies. “East is east and West is west and never shall the two meet.” Damn right, if the St Ray's crowd knew of the crew I ran with, and you've had plenty of examples via the stories I've told here, they'd think me Drug Lord worshiping Dionysus. Well, a bit of that did seep through, I didn't always keep the BS side of me completely secure. Show one face to this group of people, then have the real one for my old time friends. I might tell of the story where I completely passed out in gym one day...and got away with it scot-free...and still manage to keep secure the geek/studious/college bound front I had.

Ok, I'll tell it.

I tried everything once. Luckily for me, I never was one for addictions. So trying things once was just that, once.

My Mom had a cornucopia of Rx on her bed stand and for years and I had never touched it. But there were a few pills that gave a good kick. So, one time in the spring year of my senior year, I noticed she had 5mg Valium. Hell, I thought, why not go through school today completely relaxed?

Before I walked into the school building, I popped one 5mg tablet and waited. It did the trick in about 45 minutes. But, thinking wrongly, “if 5mg is good, another 5mg would be better? Right?” So I popped the next one in Miss Michalzych's english class. Oh dear, big dam mistake!

My next class was Rhode Island History with Mr Woodside. I can remember slouching and oozing in my chair to the point I was going to drip off of it onto the floor. I sat there, taking down notes a mile a minute and not really drawing any attention. I probably looked just more bored amongst all the other bored kids there. Here's the funny thing though, the notes I took were indecipherable afterwards. I wrote outside the lines, angled up, angled down, my usually shitty penmanship was even worse. The notes looked like a 3 year old's attempt at cursive. I still have that notebook as a reminder.

The next class was gym with Mr. Saar Sorentine. The 10 mg was really kicking in and I went to my locker to get my gym clothes and felt soo damned tired that I just lay my head on a cafeteria table to sleep. I might have gotten away with it for a few minutes when Saar came in, shook me awake and told me to get my ass in the gym. I went.

We were playing stickball with too many kids. So the batting lineup was about 50 feet long. I stood there, barely trying to keep my eyes open when it was my time to bat. I knocked one out far enough to get to first base. When I got there, I sat down.

Some kid shouts out, “Hey Saar..look at Ron!”

He turns around ,seeing me sitting there and thinking I'm just acting goofy to bust his balls, tells me to stand up, I do.

I last about 60 seconds and sit down again.

Again I'm told to stand up. I do for even less time. I sit back down, the next thing I see is that I'm looking up at a bunch of astonished kids and one coach looking down at me. I had fallen over backwards and passed out. They said my head hit the wood floor with a “THUNK!”

I then remember being carried to Saar's office. They lay me on the couch and get the nurse. Funny thing about valium, or booze for that matter, it's a truth serum to me. I started yapping my mouth off about what I thought of the school. I held nothing back apparently.

Saar, who was sitting with me, kept telling me to “Shut up” as I kept spouting my criticisms deeper. I finally shot at him, 'Jesus Saar...you DO know what half the teachers and administration thinks of YOU, don't you? C'mon...I know you know this! They think you're a buffoon!”

“SHUT UP!” he yells. I submit. I keep my mouth shut.

The school nurse finally comes and she looks me over and tells Saar maybe an ambulance should be called. I then sit straight up and freak. SHIT! If they do this, any blood test will betray me!

I have to come up with a real good excuse to explain why I passed out. I manage this magnificent lie, I told them I hadn't eaten in three days. The nurse then runs to get me a soda, some cookies and such and I drink/eat it all down. Weirdly enough, it did the trick as the sugar probably boosted me up somewhat...or...I was past the peak of the high of the valium. Either way, I was looking healthier.

“You're probably hypoglycemic..why didn't you eat for three days?”

I tell some off hand lie about why I haven't. As I become more lucid everyone's happy and a friend, drives me home as they didn't trust me to walk it home.

The next morning, I made the mistake of telling this same friend just what knocked me out. Of course, it shot through the school in less than an hour. But being gossip, it was deniable even with my admission to my friend.

So that little episode betrayed me somewhat...oh well....

**

To tell the truth, had I gone to Tolman, I would've gotten as much education as I could soak up. You can send a stupid kid to the best school on Earth, guess what? They'll be stupid upon graduation. So no matter where I went, I would've gotten as much as I could from it. But...it was a school with far less stricture like St Ray's had. Saint's is where “putting on a front” was necessary and afforded some great practice. I can imagine what other crew's I might have hung with had I gone to Tolman? The Broadway one run by Ozzy M.? The one at Crook Manor? The Attleboro ones? Who knows. Probably best I was in the Slater Park one...a nice, middle class, somewhat upwardly mobile style of punk-ery. Our territory had nice houses, picket fences and ice cream trucks up and down the streets in summer.

No, there were never any “gangs” in our town, just associations.

Seeing those faces in the yearbook reminded me of how we all ended up. Most of us survived to profitable middle age. A few of us died, went insane or just schlepped though life as they did in their teens. I saw one of us made it all the way to Merrill Lynch's Bond desk in Manhattan. 

Hoagy Wamps

My brother was good for nicknaming the neighbors. Stinky Midget, The Slutz's, Mr Dumpsey, The Necrophiliac's, Herr & Frau Knight. Each name had to do something with the family's personality usually. To be fair, or just ornery, he didn't spare our own parents either. “Goddammit Edith” was my Mom. Dad was “Cough! Cough! COUGH! COUGH! AHROOOGAH! AROOOGAH!” Our Dad, for years, would waken the neighborhood with a cough that sounded like the last stages of pneumonia.

Hoagy Wamps, a neighbor, probably won that nickname only because he bore a resemblance to a long dead Big Band leader, Hoagy Carmichael.

Hoagy's passion was to perfect his yard. The front of his house looked like an English garden. All the shrubs, trees were perfectly trimmed. The lawn was clipped twice a week and watered three. I have to admit it did look nice but that kind of maintenance can only be done if you had the time. Hoagy did as he was on disability due to a health issue that was real. But to us young teens who despised anything smacking of middle class virtue, my brother and I spent a lot of time goofing on him. Then again, our yard looked like unkempt hair. I'm sure Hoagy looked with disgust on our dandelions that we let grow and might infect his healthy lawn. He may have uttered “pigs” under his breath while surveying our plot.

1981 was a summer with a bastard of a heat wave. Week after week it was nothing but steaming heat, humidity and no rain. It was also the first year, to my memory, that Pawtucket instituted water restrictions. All lawn, garden watering, car washing (including commercial car washers) were banned. It didn't bother our family in the least as we never watered the lawn, it did worry Hoagy though.

Ken, once showed me a cartoon he drew of Hoagy, in absolute despair of his lawn. He drew him laying upon it, crying out, “My babies!” as the desert sun he drew in the sky roasted them alive.

A piece of luck occurred that gave my brother a great practical joke to perform on Hoagy. We were in the living room, with the windows open but pretty quiet when we see another neighbor, Herr Knight, walk across the street to laughingly admonish Hoagy for watering his lawn during the ban. My brother and I overheard this but weren't seen listening in.

In about twenty seconds, my brother drags me upstairs to his Smith Corona typewriter, giggling to himself as I kept pestering him to tell me what was so funny. He finally let it out.

“Let's send a threatening 'cease and desist' letter to Hoagy, with a letter head from the Pawtucket Water Supply Board! He'll think it was Knight who ratted him out!”

He started guffawing after getting that out of his mouth. I too thought it was funny too, at 15, anything sophomoric and stupid is funny.

What was great about 1981? Most stationary that came from any gov't agency usually was typewritten and had no real inked letterheads. You could make up your own as long as it looked “official” enough.

Here's the letter from my memory. As for the US Postal Service prosecuting Ken? Good luck! It's a bit too late now!

Pawtucket Water Supply Board

85 Branch St

Pawtucket, RI

Dear Sir;

It has come to our attention, from an informed source, that you have been violating Section 8, subset 12a of the Emergency Water Act (enacted July 12, 1981).

During this emergency, we demand you CEASE and DESIST from watering your lawn.

If you continue to persist, we will send to your home, at no charge, a large burly man (the kind you see working the garbage trucks) to rip your sprinkler, hose and spigot from the side of your house. Our precious water cannot be wasted upon that dirt patch you call a “lawn.”

We thank you for your anticipated cooperation.

Two days later, my brother witnessed Hoagy get into his car, fire it up, drive it three houses down and skid in front of it. He then got out and started banging on the door. “MICHAEL!!! I WANT TO TALK TO YOU!!!!”

My brother tells me he can't believe Hoagy fell for it. What gov't agency sends letter like this? But the fact he went straight to Herr Knight's house was proof enough that he thought Knight had ratted him out. My brother was rolling on his bed, laughing till tears came out of his eyes.

After a bit, we assumed Knight manage to calm Hoagy and make him realized no agency would send sarcastic letters. Even though he may have realized someone was f'ing with him, he stopped watering his lawn.

This is what a bored teen boy with an imagination does during heat waves.

So long ago, both Hoagy and my brother now sing in the Choir Invisible. I wonder if he admitted it to him up there?

Car Counseling...

A girl I have known used to drive a 1972 Chevelle convertible. One night, after partying it up in Matunuck, she let me drive it home. I fell in love with convertibles right there. I had no idea of the freedom, relaxation and complete mind set change that comes over you when you drive one.

Not too long after I have bought my own car, with my own money, a 1983 Dodge 400 convertible. It was used, had some problems but to me it was mint and mine. I now owned a convertible. I drove that thing incessantly all over. Some of the nicer rides were always at night, coming home from the beach or say taking the loop ride around the Scituate reservoir. The freedom, gratification I got from it cannot be underestimated. I loved it. I managed to turn into a beach bum with it and found out being a beach bum was a great career, while the summer lasted of course. 

 My Love Affair

Have high blood pressure? Drive a convertible. You won't care if you are stuck in traffic, really, you won't.

Being a young man with my new toy, I also loved to work on it, take care of it, use old fashioned carnauba wax on the body. I ripped out the old radio and had a decent one installed. I put on a leather steering wheel cover. I had no problem jacking it up to change out the oil, shocks, springs...you name it. I got pretty talented at being a mechanic on this particular model. I even vacuumed it out.

Funny things happen as you age though. I was about 32 when the car needed a new exhaust system. No biggie, I've done that before so I was experienced with it. The problem arose where I had to change it out in the middle of January. There was a good foot of compacted snow still all around and I had to lay down an old dirty blanket to provide me with some barrier to it. As I cut away the old exhaust with a cutting wheel, the vibration shook off snow, ice and goo that fell down into my neck where the grungy army field jacket was open. Ugh. That an slipping a few hundred times was fun too. A few years earlier, I had been out there swapping out a catalytic converter during a blasting cold front that was coming through. My fingers moved slowly as they were being frost bitten but I didn't care. I enjoyed it.

This time around at 32 I was grumbling. As time went by my desire to do my own work on the car faded. I began to do what a lot of others do, ignore parts that were failing, oil changes, brake pad checks...the more time I could spend inside during winter was much more enjoyable than lying on my back in the driveway bitching about the cold.

There was a time when I needed shocks all around for the car. I studied the problem, realized I could do it myself but another part of me says, “Ahh...you hate working on cars..hire someone to do it.” So I did.

I haven't worked on a car in years unless I was cornered to do so. Sure, I bitch about the price mechanics charge but so far, no estimate mentioned to me has yet changed my mine. I'd rather sleep a bit later and have them call up and say, “It's magically fixed! Come and get it!”

Even this though, has a limit, being the tight fisted Yankee I am. There comes a point in a car's life when I say, “Sorry...time to put you down!” Hell, I'm too cheap to do even do that, put a car out of it's misery. I drive the thing, loaded with cancer and other terminal problems right into it's grave, screaming in pain the whole time. If there's a car abuse law, I'm the biggest violator of that.

To me, it's simple economics. Machines don't last forever, they break down more frequently and with greater, more expensive problems as they age. So I drive the needy, desperate thing till it coughs it's last cough. Squeeze it like a sponge.

Something clicks in me as cars age, as they start to break here and there, little things...just slightly annoying things. I ignore those tiny problems as they don't effect the overall performance. Well, ratchet that mentality up the scale and I can ignore even larger problems to the point where I diagnose the car as “Oh, I see no hope for recovery..better pull the plug!”

I have been told by more than a few, lectured at and have had my balls busted that if I just took care of the car, it would last longer. True. There's an argument for that. What I do take care of, I have to love first. My stereo system acts up and I act like a Mother hearing her infant sneeze. I tender dear care upon it till I diagnose the problem and fix it properly. This computer I built acting funny? I can spend an afternoon hunting down a problem and clear it. I'll tweak a stock chart till it's singing the right note.

I have to be in love with something before I throw myself on any grenades for it.

Cars for some reason no longer do that for me.

Here's a list of cars and my romance factor with them.

Very first, but it was a gift. 1976 Chevy Nova that was too a piece 'o' shit. But it was a college car that got me back and forth. Cars of that era you could ignore. Try and kill a Chevy Nova with neglect, you can't. You need to fire a shotgun into the block to do that. I'd put my love for the car at a C-.

The second one was a Renault Alliance, my first standard shift car. It too became a junk heap but I think more to the design and cheap steel the froggies had put into it. I will say one thing though, you cannot get stuck in any snow or snow banks with a standard. If you balance the clutch just right, you can get out of anything. I'd place my love for that car at a C- too.

The third one, my baby, the Dodge 400 Convertible. A+ love affair! That died due to being a Lee Iacocca K car variant. But it died in it's sleep surrounded by loved ones..me!

I do miss it...I miss old loves at times, who doesn't?

The fourth, I became more practical and got a Mazda Protege. I kept that “up” till the switch in my brain occurred, then I started hating on it as it kept wanting new parts, oil, this and that. Screw you!

One time, I had pulled into the driveway of friend in Plymouth and when he hopped into it, he says; “Christ...this car is a dish rag!” True, I had let it go that far. My love for it? C-

That last car that I currently own was a throwback to my youth, a Chrysler Sebring convertible. At first, I enjoyed it as any 44 year old guy scared shitless of aging and trying to hang onto what youth he has left. I did manage to have some fun with it for a while but it wasn't like the fun I had when I was 25. I wasn't 25 anymore, that was the difference. I had become too grown up. This car I've let slide into dish rag-ness. I will do what I've done to my other unloved cars, treat it with neglect that would get DCYF here in a hurry (if it were a real, live child). Love for it? At first, I'd say a B+ but as it wanted, parts, upkeep...I turned against it. Now i'm at C-

The next one? Hell, I'll settle for a skanky, underpowered 4 cyl tramp, hussy, trollop, whore one. I'll probably treat it as such too. I'll take from it everything I want and give little in return.

Shit...and once I was called misogynistic? I am with cars!