The Interconvertible Convertible

Back before Christmas I had to let a friend go.We had known each other for 9 years and had been around this old earth about as long as each other. I was from Atlanta and she was from Detroit. We met , at a run down garage in Tucker where I dropped in one day to see if the owner(a man who twisted wrenches all day and headed up a 8 peice country band at night) had anything for sale. I had just got my business going well and found some cash burning a hole in my pocket. You see I have always had a very public and open addiction to old cars. not 84' Mercury Lynx's with two different doors,no I mean Muscle Cars, big Chrsyler sedans with 440 cubic inch 325hp engines and old pick-up trucks.Not too many years ago I had 14 cars, 8 of them insured and roadworthy.Oh yes and give me an orphan, Oldsmobile's are now what we autophiles call orphans because their parent company is now out of business ,but orphan's also includes Studebaker,Hudson, Edsel, Kaiser etc..All I have now is a 65 Dodge Pickup that my friends daddy bought just before he killed himself and 66 Oldsmobile Toranado that I've left in someone's pasture. Now I'm into new(er) stuff.But my business was built on the bed of a black 76 Fordf150 that I would occassionally touch up with the nearest can of black spray paint.Many a night I would find myself gliding up the highway to Commerce in that old black truck, the wind whistling through the worn out windowseals ,trying to listen to the radio through the speakers that would have driven your average hip-hoper insane, I sold it a year ago but I understand a kindly grandfather uses it now to help his son deliver furntiure. The years go by, but that old truck is still rolling along, grunting and swearing its way through life(if it didn't cuss before it met me,I'm sure it does now).

It always made me sad when I used to walk through old junkyards, for like that truck I always think that some machines are alive or have acquired a soul. Now they lied abandoned, broken and forgotten,cast-off friends who have outlived their usefullness to us.Used up and discarded to the fate of crushing death after being robbed of their organs and limbs...Perhaps it's a soul from the people who put them together, but I think it really comes from the people who own them.We are a race of people perpetually(or if not, you have my scorn) in motion.We live out a good portion of our lives in these machines, and no few have started theirs in one.I like to think that in time we leave some imprint, some prescene in them that gives them a bit of our divine spark.Whenever I had just bought an old car ,I would sit in it and think of the previous owners, jobs they drove to, vacations ,rushing to the hospital, tearing out of the parking lot of some long closed honky tonk on Hwy 53.And then when it came time to give the car a good clean it was like a time capsule of the owners lives.In the trunk I might find John Birch Society flyer warning of the peril's of Castro coming to power in Cuba(under the spare tire and slighty moldy).Digging under the backseat I would find a parking ticket(unpaid) for being parked illegally behind the Fox theatre from 1968.Kids toys from a carnival(little soldiers ,tiny plastic puzzles, even a squirt pistol), the invariable loose change and bobby pins, a extra Six Flags over Ga bumper sticker too.Years ago I was even somewhat superstitious to the point of placing a well hid cross up under the hood and under the rear bumper to ward off fate, but ,I never thought of putting one in each door.Now I wonder that if the cars out there are ever torn down for restoration by their owners, what they'll think."Honey, did he say this car came from Brazil or Mexico?" "I could have sworn he was a Baptist and not a Papist" "Hemmm..Now I wonder where he hid the Holy Virgin, or maybe he's eastern orthodox and under the headliner I'm gonna find a mural from St. Peters basillica."And now maybe someone's sitting in one of my "orphans" and contemplating the places I went and the things I did in that old car or truck.

But I was talking about a summer day in 1996 wasn't I.The garage owner directed me around back to some old convertilble,he couldn't even remember the details. And there she sat, Instantly I knew I had something in my eye that I had to have, a freshly Maaco painted 1969 Marina Blue 69 Olds Cutlass S type.And for the next six years one of my best friends.Power windows, air conditioning, 350 v8, a tuck and roll blue and white interior, new carpet ,almost to good to be true. The fact that the oil pressure gauge came on immediately after startup and that the left rear axle was laying next to it and it had a bizzare brake issue did not dissuade me a bit.Hiding my excitement I calmly walked back in to shop and asked"how much"..."well I need the space ,how about $1000"?.."Huhmmm",..I said in my best bargaining tone a and face,"I was thinking more about $750."..heart racing."AHH ...WELL what the hell just get it gone""No problem," I said calmly walking out the door,"I'll be back tonight with the cash"and I was. Lets see ,contact my tow truck driver, he and I where old buddies now, call my favorite junkyards for a rear end and some brake parts and hell yeah I would be on the road in a car that looked damn good from 10 feet.When the car arrived the next day on a rollback I told no one, it would be my secret until the car would be revealed in triumph to those doubters of my inimitable tastes.

It was hot that summer,but I drove the next day out to Dallas Ga from Alpharetta to pickup the necessary parts to revive my re-creation.When I got home I drug out the 6' wide 350lb rearend out of the 76 ford, dropped in down a ramp to my Cutlass and single handedly removed the old rear end while the car was precariously balanced on two jack-stands that even the poorest mexican would refuse to climb under.But I was a man on a mission, in went the new rearend,and then the necessay rewiring, and the the brake work,and then a trip back to Dallas for 403 big-block when the oil light revealed the truth of the shape of the origional motors bearings. But by 5 days later I was ready for the road.I would like to say that the car was perfect after that, that it never stopped like it did in front of Oglethorpe college on peachtree industrial blvd in 4pm traffic,some mysterious electric gremlim that went away,or that the big block wouldn't get the stater so hot in the summer time that I carried a floor jack in the trunk and a change of clothes so I could crawl under and arc the solenoid to the starter with a scewdriver to get fire to the engine, or that after a drag race with some guy in a Mustang, or a Dodge Stealth,occassionally one of the rear shocks would spit out the bolts and then drag on the pavement. No ,the car had quirks, but I always thought of it like a beautiful, demanding, eccentric woman. She's pretty, all your friends like her,but sometimes she lets you down,but the pleasure far outweighs the pain.I always felt that I could go anywhere in that car,not because it might not stop, but that I could fix anything short of a major disaster with patience and some skill.Savannah, Gatlinburg, Orlando , and many other places saw that car and me.
Things that will always stick out are the times I had just got the top up before that next downpour,or how much the right(or wrong) kind of girl always liked that car.Two of the most interesting people in my life met me because of that car,two wild, feckless , fearless strippers.Dee and Shelle, both made my life very interesting and at times very irresponible.Or the time the kid in the import wanted a stoplight race in front of Cafe Intermezzo, on a night they had all the windows open. The black cloud of smoke from our burnouts rolled into the front and I could swear I heard cursing long after I was gone up the street.Nights spent at the Star Bar on Moreland listening to Kingsized do Elvis or the Drive By Truckers(when they used to play small rooms) and then taking Shelle And Dee to the Diner, coming home maybe by 7AM. The car was a conversation peice, and I would drive it to meet customers and drop off sales materials.Invariably the conversation would get around to the car and then we talk about the kind of cars they had in high school or college.

But the years went by, I got busier and the car paid the price, neglected it began to show.Finally a guy who wanted to buy it years ago called me up and asked if it was for sale. This time I told him yes because I knew he wanted it for himself, a keeper, a collector who had the money to fix her right and he bought the rest of my Cutlass collection too.Just before Christmas he showed up with the tow truck and when it got up on the rollback I remembered the day the car came into my driveway."Goodbye beautiful,you capricious bitch" I whispered next to a fender as they were loading the other cars, and I didn't clean any of the cars out. Let them figure out where we all had been together.