“In a land there’s a town
And in that town there’s
A house
And in that house
There’s a woman
And in that woman
There’s a heart I love
I’m gonna take it
With me when I go”
–Tom Wait’s “Take It with Me” from Mule Variations
Dear Readers and Readerinos,
Your reporter on the world, life, love, rocking chairs in front of Cracker Barrel, and classic rock stations between Ohio’s I-75 and Timbuktu is writing to you for the first time in a new time zone, an old home. I find myself sitting in my parents’ living room with a movie on TMC writing to you.
To end up in my parents’ living room with a movie on TMC writing to you, it took a little more than 11 hours of driving in the direction of Tennessee. Technically only about 8ish hours of driving. About 2ish hours were spent in an Arby’s parking lot looking at my keys dangle from the ignition. I was on the outside of my locked car looking in. Even with everything perfectly still, car keys have a way of swaying a little while hanging from the ignition.
I was in Kentucky when this happened. I was driving my car, a white, used Buick with Ohio tags with an Auburn sticker on the trunk. I was one state away from my car being a target on wheels for Volunteer sports and southern pride fans alike. Kentuckians are a little more accepting of pseudo Ohioans. Afterall, Ohio is one of Kentucky’s many, many hats.
Most of the people I know still falsely believe that I live in Kentucky. There is a Bowling Green, Kentucky, which seems to be better known in Tennessee. I’ve been there once. I had lunch there at a Sonic with Mary Beth.
So, there the keys swung. My hands and forehead rested on the glass and my mouth muttered some choice words, mainly words that appear like this “$*!%” in newspaper comics but sound a lot like “fuck” and “shit” when muttered correctly.
“Fuck,” I said. “Shit.”
It was then that I realized that my cellphone was still in the driver’s seat.
“Shit,” I said. “Fuck.”
I went inside and asked the girl at the register if she knew anyone that could get my car open. “Oh, sure,” she mentioned. “It happens to me all the time out in this parking lot. Hell, it was even last week, when…”
She proceeded to tell me about last week and the events that led to and occurred after she had locked her keys inside her car. It was a greenish or maybe even a brownish colored Cougar. I wasn’t sure. It was definitely a color one expected to find in a bathroom after a party, I thought. A color only possible if emitted from a sickly human body.
I ordered lunch and took it out to my car after the police were called. I ate a sandwich and slurped my Coke. I gave smiles to people who stared as they went into the Arby’s. I was kind of half sitting, half standing on the hood of my car trying to keep the bag and wrappers from blowing away. I tried to give the impression that it was normal to half sit, half stand on one’s car eating Arby’s outside of the Arby’s.
I might as well have been standing out there with my fly down.
When the cop arrived nearly two hours later, I tried to make small talk. I wanted to convince him that I wasn’t an idiot, that locking my keys in my car has never really been anything that has frequently happened in my life. Though, it was. I couldn’t help but laugh nervously. He wasn’t convinced. “Ohio,” he said. He wasn’t asking a question. He was stating the obvious. “Just passing through?”
I told him I was. I proceeded to tell him more information than he asked for and he politely ignored me. He wedged my door open and ran a rod into my car to push the unlock button on the door. He unlocked it and asked me to sign something and left. I think I said “thank you” a couple of times too many.
The rest of the trip went without a hitch. Except for an episode with my pants and seat-belt getting tied up. But, that story is kind of boring.
Being home is being home. I always feel welcomed and missed when I arrive. I find myself spending most of my time getting caught up on the happenings of home. Friends and people I haven’t seen in ages want me to spend time with them. Family want me to spend time with them. I’ve learned this usually means lunch or some sort of food intake. I don’t mind this one bit. My pants mind a little.
I always sort of thought that going to a new place meant you were allowed to forget all of your old problems. At least for a little bit. Though, it is more like your problems allow you to have a two day head start. Then they come and creep up on you and remind you that they are there. My nephew asked why the girl I was home with last wasn’t with me now. A rain storm hit and my windshield slid down. Everything in my car was soaked in the process and I could feel my bank account hurting.
I set out and went to search for a cheap and easy fix for my car. It seemed to me that I might as well have been searching for the Easter Bunny or Britney Spear’s career. Everyone informed me of the dangers of removing a windshield. They tend to break. The windshield was three weeks old and I nor my bank account felt like buying a new one. I called the man up in Toledo, who had installed it for me in the first place. He seemed rather put out by me calling and informed me that older cars sometimes leak when they get new glass. I tried to explain that my windshield was leaking since it had fallen down. He asked me what I had done to it. I thought about telling him that the only thing I did wrong was take it to him to get it fixed, but instead it just came out as “nothing”.
It became apparent that the man in Toledo, the man who owns a business called Honest Abe’s Glass, wasn’t interested at all in helping me. I called a few places, made a list with names and prices, and marked off the names and prices when I found a cheaper place. Of course none of them could fix them that night nor promise not to break my windshield. So each name except one had two prices next to it. One price told me how much it would cost if they didn’t break my windshield. One price told me how much it would cost to replace my windshield. The one place that didn’t have two prices next to it flat out assured me that they were going to break my windshield when removing it.
I’m not sure if I would call that brutal honesty or just capitalism.
When I got fed up with looking up names in the phone book, I told one mechanic that I’d be by first thing in the morning. I cleaned up my car a bit and tossed everything that had gotten ruined, including my mom’s birthday gift of David Sedaris tickets. Though, that was an accident. The throwing away of the tickets, not buying my mother David Sedaris tickets.
I arrived a little before 9 in the morning and was greeted by a southern Mr Clean who looked at my windshield and said, “Sheeyit.” He looked it with his hands on his hips and just stared for a moment. He took his finger and poked around the windshield. He jabbed it in places with his finger and said, “Yup, I’ll fix your car if you remove that Auburn sticker off the back.”
Love as always,
Kurt
Kurt "Paparazzo Martin" Doonesbury
