Both my husband and my son are pilots. Both my husband and my son own old, junky cars, as well as the well-kept, modern vehicles they drive daily and provide for their spouses. They are both tall, talented and funny men. They love burgers and baseball and they are extremely good at things no one ever taught them to do. They are clean shaven and tidy about their personal habits, they do not inflict unkempt nastiness upon either of us, their adoring wives, they will eat almost anything you put in front of them and take you out to dinner if it’s not in the stars for you to cook tonight. They are almost perfect.
But these cars. The Captain’s is a ’41 Chevy and you have to write it and say it that way, never does one utter the full 1941, it simply isn’t done. It’s a ’41 Chevy. It used to be light blue and was the first car owned by his grandfather. It has enormous, personal, family history, taken as it was to college by two other brothers but left, in fact willed to the Captain by grandma Zimmerman. Due to a stint in the army which required the Captain or the Warrant Officer as he was then, to reside in far away exotic places such as Louisiana and Washington State, for a time the car was stored in the barn of a kindly uncle. There it was left to rest. And to rot, and to rust, home to many a rodent and hundreds of birds and a dozen or more cats, none of whom felt any compunction about soiling its every surface with the remains of their day. There were nests built and fights for life fought with equal regularity; battles won and lost over food, territory and the right to abide. Fast forward another twenty years or so and the kindly uncle retired and wished for his barn space to be recovered. Perhaps his lovely wife was asking for the removal of the now unsightly gargantuan residing front and center in their erstwhile beautiful barn.
With reluctance I agreed to its being towed to our place. Allow me to elaborate, our dream home. Ten acres purchased from the same uncle’s farm upon which we constructed a home that we designed and built to our every detailed specification. A home to accommodate our five children and various pets. A home built around ample closet space, three garages and a place for everything. Gentrified landowners now, our homestead would also require the purchase of a tractor. Every pilot’s secret ambition is to be a farmer. So where to put the car. In the garage of course says the Captain, then as soon as funds are made available (By whom? The antique car fairie or the state lottery?) I can restore it. The girls can ride in homecoming parades, I can drive them to their proms in it, they can use it in their weddings, it’ll be a thing of beauty, was his enthusiastic reply. Well what kind of wife and mother is going to nix that? Certainly not I. I’m not crushing the wistful dreams of an indulgent, loving father. So there it came to rest in 1989 and there it continues to lapse into the depths of mechanical and upholstered decay. The astronomical cost of raising said daughters and their brother left little spare cash, much less anything that would come close to the cost of a restoration of the beast. Even our son referred to it once as an eyesore, for which I am eternally grateful as it pertains to my case building for ridding ourselves of it.
But the flame of hope burns eternal, the Captain still dreams of the great restoration to come, the holy grail for which is now a television show where contestants are chosen to be the recipient of a team of experts who come to your home, retrieve the beast and return it to a pristine condition at no cost to the owner other than the invasion of your privacy to televise the entire undertaking. Bring it.
When the junior bird man was a third degree or underclassman at a certain academy he was allowed a car. He and the Captain purchased a 2001 Jeep Cherokee. The last year this particular type was made, it is a small tank by anyone’s standard. Living as he did in Colorado there was ample space and opportunity for off-roading which became his new passion. You know how it is with youthful males in a military setting, a certain overabundance of testosterone is evident and if left unchecked can grow to alarming heights. He had the thing custom jacked of course with all sorts of hydraulic accoutrements that defy description. He loved, at the time to listen to angry rap music which was afforded a national audience by the installation of four 200 lb speakers all tuned to bass high. So this chariot would boom and thunder its way up a mountain to disturb nature’s peace and charge back down again at alarming rates of speed all to the giddy amusement of unfettered male youth. Understand, unlike the smooth ride afforded the ’41 in its day this was no romance machine. He was the envy of all at the academe as we called it. Upon graduation and in the midst of flight school he and other brilliant young men thought they’d drive it on a cross country road trip as a sort of reward for all their hard work. All went surprisingly well until a sudden massive downpour in Mississippi resulted in a flash flood. The men came upon a rivulet of fast moving water that defied, to most reasonable persons, a crossing possibility. All of them looked at this body of water, they hemmed and hawed using their vast, expensive and high calibre education, agreed they could “take it”. They hopped back into the Jeep, floored it in four wheel drive and……sank like a rock. There is even a name for this, says the Captain, it's called swamping it. So having admitted defeat, calling in a professional towing service they made one last heroic attempt to restore their manhood by offering assistance to the towers. One game young feller going as far as to dive down under the Jeep to try and hook up the winch installed for four wheeling rescue. Fail.
Upon it’s arrival in Pennsylvania the smell of rotting carpet and upholstery was unbearable, the thick sludge that had permeated every soft place in the car was infused with a sort of death vapor, the likes of which would never leave the vehicle. Even after a very expensive and thorough cleansing the car still has a lingering malodorous stench to it that leaves one leaning out of the window on an early December morning just to catch one’s breath. We had to sit on trash bags for a couple of years as it dried, finally sealing in the permanent pong. Orders did indeed come taking our boy to far away places over oceans which the Jeep could not cross so of course it has taken up residence at the family abode. In the driveway where all who visit can enjoy the great hulking mass of it with that huge bumper that sort of smiles at us whenever we approach. People often comment on it, asking reasonable questions like why, ten years after graduation do we still harbor this beast. Well, I say, his wife certainly doesn’t want it in their driveway! The registration was the first thing to expire followed quickly by the tires and then the insurance. So now it has taken on a new position as the second of two sad, rotting useless “cars” that live at our house. I suppose in the great scheme of things they are no worse than my penchant for shoes or Christmas ornaments both of which are immune to counting. But if you have any pull with that TV show let me know, I have a pretty good story for them.
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