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April 11, 2005
Guardian Angels and My Distilled Life
My whole life I’ve felt that someone is “up there” watching out for me. Sometimes it’s just recognizing that things seem to magically work themselves out, but other times there really seems to be divine intervention.
I’ve been driving shitty cars since, well, I’ve always driven shitty cars. It’s a matter of my economic desire not to leverage myself to buy a rapidly depreciating machine. My most recent P.O.S. was a 1991 Dodge Dynasty which came to me with 190,000 miles, bad tires and a bad power steering pump. I acquired her for a sum of $1200.00, which is the most I’ve ever spent on a car.
Several weeks ago my fuel pump died and the mechanics destroyed the gas tank trying to replace it. The “fixed” the gas tank with some chewing gum and J.B. Weld and sent the car back to me with a transmission that wouldn’t shift into fourth gear.
Annoyed with the corporate monkey wrenches, I took the car to my old faithful mechanic (Rangeview Goodyear near 80th & Sheridan, for anyone looking for a good wrench near Denver) who diagnosed the problem and translated it for me: “Time to find a new car.”
Apparently some mechanism that is responsible for shifting the car into fourth gear was fubar, but could have been fixed for “a bit under $2000.00” if I had the patience to shop around. I had neither patience nor $2000.00. Fortunately for me, the first three gears still worked, so I took to commuting to the base in gear “3” and ignoring the problem. I knew this would only buy me a bit of time.
One Tuesday after work, John, a frantic friend of mine, called to request my help in moving all of his stuff from his shitty apartment to a storage unit on Capital Hill. There he intended to make his office, and since the lease specifically precludes sleeping in the unit he’d bed down in his Honda. I couldn’t refuse, so we loaded up his shit (about a quarter-ton of books) and dumped them in a building whose style corpo-chain restaurants strive to emulate.
Somewhere along the line, John found out I was looking for a new, cheap car and informed me that his father, John Sr., was selling his old wagon for $500.00. I jumped on this and soon made arrangements to buy it before my Dynasty crapped out.
Since the wife and I had an appointment with a loan shark in Aurora anyway, we decided to visit Sr. during the same trip and pay him—we’d pick the car up the following day. Sr. signed the title and I signed the check.
On the way home from Don Mulvaney’s, the tranny in the Dynasty started making the most horrible cat-on-a-hot-tar-pit screech, which my 8 week old daughter took to be her cue to test out her new lungs. The car was moving—in first gear only—at about 13mph. I called John Jr. to see if he could pick us up—my car was following in the footsteps of Terry Shaivo and John Paul II.
Miraculously, or maybe because of thoroughly good engineering, the car made it back to the house and came to a cavernous ker-thunk in front of the house. A burning smell coming from under the hood and a gentle odor of gasoline coming from under the trunk. John Jr. arrived about fifteen seconds later.
Jr. took me to Sr.’s house, about an hour drive, and I picked up the new replacement. I called USAA’s “emergency” line to get insurance on the car so I could drive to work the following day. It all went off without a hitch—I was able to make it to work and I have a “new” car (this one has 203,000 miles, but is in remarkably good shape).
Someone must love me.
P.S. I response to one of the latest posts on www.veritography.com I’ve tried to “distill” my own life into a paragraph:
At 27 years old, I’m not in the Air Force anymore. And I’m not in the Army anymore either. I’ve jumped out of perfectly functional airplane into a pitch black, deathly silent, twenty second tour of purgatory—33 times. I have a degree in Mathematics, and black belt in Kung-Fu. I studied the Torah with a Jesuit scholar, Zen with an Orthodox Priest, and the Bhagavad Gita with an alcoholic philosopher. I have translated Babylonian cuneiform into binary code and out role-played a CIA Officer. I’ve rafted the Colorado, the Green, the Yampa, and the Rio Grande. I’ve canoed across a Louisiana bayou and raced alligators in the Okeefenokee. I’ve climbed Colorado Granite, New Mexico Sandstone, and I’ve trudged up the slippery slope into the middle class. I have loved and lost and loved and found.
Posted by james at April 11, 2005 10:58 PM
Comments
I disagree - it was less of a "ker-thunk" and more of a "click-clack-zing-churrrr-argh-pft".
Posted by: The Wife at April 14, 2005 12:28 AM