The Night My Colt Vista Got Totaled

A long time ago, when I was living in a much bigger city and I had a car I didn't really need any more, I had these dreams. Sometimes I had them when I was asleep, but sometimes I was awake and it wasn't exactly a dream, but I'd hear that horrid sound in my head of crumpling metal. If you've ever heard it, you know what I mean. And I'd feel like I was in the car and being hit, not quite head on. Over and over, for months. It was clear, in the way that dreams are clear, that the metal being crumpled was that of my Colt Vista wagon.

God, I loved that sweet car. But it got so I was afraid of driving it. I had no fear of driving my lovely ex-wife's Ford Escort. I never heard those noises in my head when I drove her car, and it was never the Escort getting smashed up in my dreams.

So there I was, sound asleep on a January night, when my lovely ex-wife woke me up and said, "my car -- it's been hit -- did you hear that? -- go look," and I woke up just enough to say "oh it's the cats, never mind," and she said "please just look," & so I did. She couldn't see anything without her glasses, so it didn't seem unreasonable to me that she'd ask me to do it instead of getting up and looking herself. I went into the freezing cold front bedroom and looked out the window and saw her car in the crisp street light. Nothing wrong. And as I turned to go back to my warm bed, I noticed that my little car was up on the sidewalk, at a funny angle. And the front corner on the driver's side was all crumpled.

We went outside to take a look and the neighbors were already outside. It was like three in the morning, and a bunch of guys from next door had been playing poker and heard the crash -- all of them a) not white; b) under age; and c) totally shit-faced drunk. They'd gotten the license number and description of the car that'd hit me, and called the police, bless their hearts. In a neighborhood where it seemed sometimes like the police went out of their way to harass young men who were not white. Especially if they were drunk & from the reservation.

They did not, on this occasion, get harassed.

There was a hubcap on the street next to my car, and a few black paint flecks on it. A dented-up black car missing a hubcap was not exactly apprehended but rather found smashed into a telephone pole a couple of blocks away. It had the same license plate number my neighbors had called in. The driver, who was unhurt, was jailed. It was not her first, or even her third, DWI arrest.

Anyway, the car was totaled. It was well over ten years old at the time, with at least 200,000 miles on it.

The picture up there is a fridge magnet I made of a photo I took of it, smashed on the street, for the drunk lady's insurance company. The insurance check was about the same amount I had spent over the years fixing it (most of which had just gone for a new tie-rod end & half axle on the side that was smashed; I was just about to do the other side) -- way more than I'd expected, that's for certain. And it was a relief, to be honest, not to have to move it every time it snowed, or figure out where to keep it when I wasn't using it, which was almost all the time. But still. Did I mention I loved that car?

So why am I telling you this? you might be wondering.

See, before my current car was pronounced terminal, I'd been getting bad vibes about it for months. Not specific recurring dreams, like with the Vista, and no imaginary crunching metal sounds when I drove -- and maybe I was imagining it all, or even it's possible I guess that I was just wishing for it to happen. But, I mean, there was the smashed window, and the battery, and -- it's just been one damn thing after another for almost a year with that poor car. And any time I went somewhere I was afraid something would happen to it. So maybe the bad vibe thing wasn't premonitory so much as it was bowing to the inevitable.

But what does it mean that now my bike is fucked up also? I had no premonitions or anything even remotely bad-vibe-like about the bike at all. And the bike-fixing guy made it sound like it would cost more to fix it than it would cost to buy a similar bike. But then again, he sells bikes. Nice bikes. Too bad I'm not going to buy one right this minute.

Why is everything so fucking complicated? And expensive? Is the universe trying to tell me I am supposed to stay in the house & never go anywhere? Make more money? Leave this town for one that's more bike- and pedestrian-friendly, with a safe and convenient public transit system? Do I just have to learn to fix my own damn bike?

I think I'll learn to fix my own bike. I like it here, and I like my job. And I make plenty of money. If I made any more money I'd have to give a larger quantity of it to the government, and I'm not sure I approve of what they're doing with it nowadays.