On junkyards...

This is another oldie that I decided to take out of the closet. I hope it will serve in good stead of a truly original post; in any event, it kinda works as a prolouge to the story of Little Mama, my 1988 GMC Safari that was by far the most cursed thing I ever had the displeasure to know. This tale was written during Little Mama's short but all-too-long tenure with me.

Junkyards

The problem was the stereo. I know old GM minivans aren’t supposed to come factory-equipped with bumpin’ systems that piss off the neighbors, but one expects at least the basics. I like to have the fader set so that most of the sound is emanating from the back speakers. It balances things nicely, and anyway, the driver sits really close to the front speakers in my car, so unless they’re turned down quite a bit, one really doesn’t hear the back speakers at all. Little Mama (for the unwashed, Little Mama is my gas-guzzlin’ oil-burnin’ 1988 GMC Safari, replete with rusty rocker panels, a wheezy 4.3 litre non-Vortec V-6, and a bastion of mid-80’s GM idiosyncrasies such as a shitty stereo, among many others) was equipped with a stock GM stereo that, whenever a sizable bump was hit, would completely shut off the back speakers, thereby routing the entire signal to the front. Sometimes, just to be endearing, it would do this of its own accord, bump or no bump, as a result scaring the shit out of the unfortunate pilot, which, 99.3% of the time, happened to be me. After a year and a half’s worth of tepid ownership, I still had not gotten used to it. Also, I was becoming more than a little irate.

I woke up one morning this past September with a newfound resolve to ameliorate the issue. I ate a quick breakfast and drove to Best Buy with no intention of leaving until a suitable replacement had been selected. However, once having gained the threshold of said establishment’s not-insubstantial “Kar Audio” section, I quickly came to the realization that there was no fucking way I was gonna walk out of there with a decent sound-generating device under my arm on a teacher’s salary.

I drove back to my house and got some tools. It was time to head to the junkyard.

“Now, wait just one fuckin’ minute,” you, O Honored Reader, are no doubt saying to yourself. “Who goes to the junkyard to get a car stereo? Are you out of your freakin’ skull?” Well, if you’re broke, like me, and you just barely know the difference between a flathead and a Phillips screwdriver, like me, you pays yer ticket and you takes yer chances.

And, if you think about it, it makes some sense for someone on a budget, especially when one owns a vehicle manufractured by the General. From 1983 to 1994, most GM cars used the exact same head unit for their stereos. Considering that there are six makes to choose from—Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, Cadillac, and GMC—that makes the chances of finding a replacement all the easier. One would think, anyway. And so off I went, optimistic of my chances.

Going to the junkyard is, for me, always a happy, enjoyable experience. I stand a good chance of fixing a problem that is annoying enough to warrant me doing something about it, and usually on the cheap. Also, since the weather must needs be decent for such a sojourn, lest the prospector find him- or herself, not to mention the countless carcasses from which he or she hopes to extract momentary salvation, mired in three feet of viscous brown mud. Thus trips to the boneyard are always sunny, lighthearted affairs, when the weather is nice. Stephen King said that summer means different things to everyone. For me, summer conjures up images of rotting metal carcasses gleaming rustily in a heartless midday Midwestern sun, with me picking my way slowly and dreamily among the ruins.

I arrived at “Hub Auto Wreckers” at about 11:00 that day. Pulling into the parking lot at this particular boneyard, one is met with a setting that is probably similar to any Midwestern auto salvage facility. There’s always three or four cars already there, regardless of the hour. I never thought of boneyards as having peak hours. Nor they do, from what I have observed, because there’s always the same number of cars—badly beaten, misshapen wrecks for the most part, upon which Bondo has been liberally spread. They’re usually old American iron, from the 70’s and 80’s, though often you see a clapped out Nissan Sentra or Toyota Tercel, its muffler shot, CV joints rattly, and body pock-marked with calderas of rust. It’s usually one of these latter that I see abandoned at the back corner of the lot, too nice to scrap, but just worthless enough to preclude the owner investing any more time or knuckle-skin on the thing.

Entering this boneyard requires one to divert through a sagging box trailer converted to an office. Raised on blocks, one must climb a flight of six rickety wooden steps, open the door and cross eight feet to the other side, and climb back down another flight. On one’s trip through the trailer’s bowels, one is unfailingly accosted by the proprietor of the establishment, a fine Southern gentleman whom I once pissed off greatly by rendering effectively worthless a theretofore perfectly serviceable rear end to a 1976 Dodge B100 Tradesman—but I digress, and anyway, that’s a story all by itself. He dealt with me in the same laconic manner he had used since that day when I was but a wee shaver of 25 waving a 7/16 offset box wrench.

I told him what it was that I sought. I did not bring in the offending unit from my own vehicle. GMs are, as I have said, nearly ubiquitous in boneyards, and their radios accordingly as populous. He knew right away what I was talking about.

“Shit, boy, findyaself any GM car and start pokin’ away at her,” he replied. He turned and gestured to an aerial photograph of the establishment tacked to the bowed and peeling Formica paneling on the wall. “Pontiac’s here (front-drive’s here and rear’s here); Olds right about here, Chevy’s here, here, here, and here; Buick’s here, GMC’s over there, and Caddy’s somewhere over in that corner.”

I deigned to take my tools with me. I thought I’d prospect for about 15 or so minutes; then, when I found a suitable donor, I’d assess the situation, then go back and obtain the necessary tools. What I thought would be a 15-minute search, however, turned out to take quite a bit longer, because it seems that the first thing to get removed from a donor as soon as it comes in on the wrecker is the stereo. It took me a good hour to find the first suitable transplant candidate.

I started, of course, in the Cadillac section. The logic was that Caddies are GM too, but their stereos surely must be better than the standard fare on lesser General issue. (I have since learned that, for the most part, this is not the case.) I made my way slowly to the Cadillac section, passing through Ford front-drive (Escorts, Tauri, Sables, etc.) and Buick on the way.

Cadillacs are a strange brew. Even in a boneyard, there’s something different about them. They don’t even seem to rust in the same way as lesser marques. I wouldn’t say they have a regal quality about them, but there’s a sophistication, a sleekness, a worldliness that is more Las Vegas than continental, but imposing all the same. Here’s a white ’82 Biarritz. White leather interior, burgundy trim. Oil-caked crater where the engine used to be. I can see this car idling out in front of the Sands Resort out in Vegas, trunklid open as the valet puts in the suitcases. Here comes the owner, now, bulling her way across the lobby like a ship with every scrap of canvas to the wind. She is a stately woman, even in her leisure suit, a shade of green that contrasts nicely with the white of her hair. She flashes a smile whose brilliance is more likely due to Polident than to Crest, and hands the valet a fin as she walks around to the driver’s side. The door, while taking some effort to get in motion, closes with a reassuring thunk. She drops the transmission into DRIVE, hits the gas and is gone, the engine, a big 350, barely breaking a sweat as the Caddy hits 65 on the outbound side of the expressway.

No radio in this one, though. It’s still in good shape, otherwise. Probably what happened is the owner upgraded to a newer model a few years after she (or he; what does my imagination know?) got this one; it got swapped to owners who cared about it less and less as it got older. Maybe the engine finally gave up, and instead of fixing it, the owner just gave up too. The license plate is still affixed to the rear bumper. The sticker shows a year of ’96. Yeah, I’ll bet that was it. It sat for awhile, the owner probably intending the whole time to throw another motor in it, until…well, you know how it is; I guess we just need that space for other things. Boneyard’ll give me fifty bucks for it and tow it for free.

Here’s a black ’76 Fleetwood. Big bash in the driver’s-side rear door. Pretty rusty, and the paint is starting to crack. Still, this car can talk, and what it says is back the fuck off. I could be plenty mean if I wanted to, you bet. It’s too old to have the radio I want, though, and anyway, the entire interior has been gutted. Brightly colored wires spill out from firewall and under the dash. No seats, and the floor is peppered with small flecks of glass, all that remains of the windshield.

There are a lot of Cadillacs here. Here’s a pale-yellow ’87 Seville that was probably used for the sole purpose of going to and from church on Sundays, was sold after the original owner passed, and then brought here after the wreck. There’s a caved-in mess made of the front end, with general contours that would probably fit well around a telephone pole. The hood is crumpled over a snarl of hoses, wiring and cast-iron bits that would be more trouble to get at than would be worth to sell. Here’s a ’91 Eldorado, a burgundy beauty from the A-pillar back. The front end is a blackened, rusty ruin. There is, in my opinion, no better, more efficient, or more effective way to destroy a car than to burn one. There’s Caddies ad nauseum, and here and there an Oldsmobile Toronado or Buick Riviera, which to the uninitiated look similar enough to Cadillacs as to be easily confused. No radios in any of them.

An hour blown, I make my way over towards the Pontiac section. Straight off the bat I find two potential donors—an ’86 Sunbird convertible (red, of course) and a white ’90 Grand Am. I head for the Sunbird first, thinking that a ragtop must needs have a respectable sound system. I am not disappointed. It’s the standard quirky-sized GM faceplate, occupying the same amount of space as a 5  7 index card, but there’s a bonus I’ve never seen in a GM car before. This one has a five-band graphic equalizer, sandwiched between the volume knob and the clock. It probably is just a gimmick, and does little to improve the sound, but it sure looks cool. I head back to Little Mama for my tools.

The route I take back to the parking lot takes me past the minivan section. Out of habit I look for anything resembling the Astro/Safari twins. What I have found to be the case with the GM S-10-based minivans is that there are damn few in the boneyards, and those that are there are mere skeletons, having been thoroughly picked-over by faster scavengers than myself. Here are two, right next to each other. They’re easy to spot from a distance once you get used to it. There’s little left of either, and one has been turned on its side. Its general state of repair says that it was involved in a rollover accident. There’s not a straight body panel on it, and its roof is caved in over the left rear corner. I know that neither carcass will have a stereo, but I look in the overturned one just for the heluvit. It’s pretty bare in there, too. All the seats are gone except the rearmost. The fine brown clay that is the pavement of this place presses up through the holes that used to be windows, and lying on the C-pillar between the rearmost and middle side windows as though it were placed there is a child’s shoe. It is pink where it is not filthy. Sure, it could have simply been tossed there; it doesn’t necessarily belong with the remains of this vehicle. My overactive imagination, however, always so eager to project backwards to what the previous owners were like, and to what happened to them, sails into action. I jump on it with both feet before it gets very far. Stephen King is right. Sometimes having a great imagination is a neat thing, because you can envision whatever you want, whenever you want, in total privacy. But sometimes it turns around and bites the shit out of you with these big sharp teeth, and the wounds bleed for a while.

I reach my own van, and for a little while my imagination pulls against the ropes as I see a running, upright version of the wreck I have just left. Was the little girl sitting at this window just before it happened? Shaddap, you, I think, but not before my brain treats me to one or two especially choice images. Dammit.

I grab my toolbox and head back. I make sure I avert my eyes as I pass the minivan section. On my left is the Ford full-size section, replete with Crown Vics, LTDs, Mercury Grand Marquis and the occasional police interceptor. The police cars are cool to look at, but they’re rarely worth anything by the time I find them because they have popular bits like big engines, big carburetors, big tires, and big alternators that would just about light up your house. The scavengers usually head for these first.

At the Sunbird I decide that I will need only two tools; a 3/8” socket wrench with a 3-inch extension, and the Torx-head driver that fits about 98% of the interior fasteners in any 80’s GM vehicle. If you own a GM vehicle and you plan to work on it yourself, you gotta have one of these. In my car, Torx-head screws of identical size hold on the dashboard, headlight surrounds, taillight bezels, plastic rub-strips on the footwells by the doors, and so on. Six of them keep the dashboard faceplate in place on this specimen. Off they come, and there is the radio, held in by two 3/8” stainless nuts. 30 seconds later and it is mine.

I head on back to the office with my prize. I bring my toolbox in with me; of course the Southern gentleman will want to inspect its innards for any contraband. First, however, must come the money. I set my find on the counter.

“Hmm,” he says, industriously gnawing on the end of a paint-pen. “D’ja get this’un out of a Pontiac?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Lookie here like ya found yaself a l’il added bonus,” he says, jabbing at the equalizer with one horny thumb.

“Yeah,” I say.

“Well, these normally go for forty, but this’ll probably knock the price up a buck or two,” he says, looking at me as if for approval. I think forty is already insane for a radio that came out of a scrapper anyway; the windows in over half those wrecks are gone and this unit has seen untold rainstorms, snow, what have you. Forty’s lunacy; an extra five dollars is a spit in the ocean.

“What if it doesn’t work?” I ask, thinking that if I’m gonna get raped, it’s at least gonna be fair.

“Waal, shit, ya jest come on back in here and we’ll findya anuther’n,” he says, nice and easy-like.

I nod and hand over the wad. He takes it with one hand and writes some arcane hieroglyphs on the unit with the other. Hey, if they mean something to him, great. I place the stereo on the floor and hold up my toolbox for him to inspect. He does so thoroughly, then gives me a nod and a wink. “Ya got too much shit in thar t’fit in anything else,”

“Yeah,” I say, and head for the door.

It’s lunacy to pay forty bucks for a scrapyard radio, let alone forty-five, but it’s even dumber to leave before verifying that it works. I am prepared, and have the dashboard of Little Mama dismantled in no time. The offending unit is removed and the new one installed in five minutes. I turn the key to “ACC” and hit the power button, once again thrilled with the anticipation of fixing something with parts I got from something someone else threw away. It’s a great feeling, but it’s tough to describe. I once fixed the sunroof in my dad’s old ’83 Toyota Supra with a part I got from the junkyard. I paid five bucks for that part, a simple switch for which the dealer wanted eighty. That felt great; I felt like I was getting something back on The Man. That feeling feeds on itself. With these tools and these hands and this brain I can fix anything, and for cheap, too, I thought. The dealers want me to shell out major coin to fix my car for me, or, if I want to fix it myself, to pay exorbitant prices for parts. If it gets too expensive to fix, why, it’s time to buy a new car. But I can keep this old heap running as long as I want, if I don’t mind getting dirty and turning a few wrenches.

Is this some fucked-up metaphor for life? I don’t think so. But it seems that whenever a trip to the junkyard turns out to be successful, I walk out of there feeling like more of a person than when I went in. I feel like I’m in charge, for once. I did it my way, I think. No one can ever screw me again. I don’t have to be submissive, I don’t have to be weak, I don’t have to pander to anyone’s philosophies but my own. But it’s more than that, somehow. I don’t know…it’s like—it’s like--fuck.

Okay. I got it. You know what it’s like? It’s like, okay, here’s this rusted out/smashed up/burned to a crisp wreck. It’s worth nothing to anyone. But here…you see this grease-obscured part? This—what is it—this PCV valve? The dealer wants a hundred and a half for it. I got a hundred and a half like a got a rubber dick. But I can get it off this old heap for fifteen, and fifteen I got. Now I can take my kids to the zoo like I promised.

You see? Almost a square mile of seeming worthlessness. But somewhere in that rough waste there is a part that I could ill afford otherwise, but that allows me to propagate something that means a lot to me. “It’s just a van, Jay; fuckin’ relax.” Well, yeah, it’s just a van, but like all my cars have been, it has been a bed, a home, a hangout, an umbrella, and transportation from Point A to Point B. Point B is usually where the people I love are, and when it isn’t, my car takes me away again, to the next Point B. If I have to get greasy to keep that privilege—fuck that; necessity--—then so be it. It’s just a piece of shit, but it’s my piece of shit. And it’s just a radio today, but tomorrow it will be something else.

Feeling ten feet tall, feeling like a man again, I hit the power button and sit back.

Of course it doesn’t work. Why would I ever have expected it to work? Maybe I don’t have the key turned all the way to ACC (I do). Maybe the power plug isn’t all the way in on the back of the stereo (it is). Everything’s hooked up correctly, but I get nothing except a buzz through the speakers that sounds like a short somewhere. The fuckin’ clock doesn’t even light up.

Thoroughly pissed off, I pull the connectors brutally out of the stereo. I slam the door and head back to the office.

“Whudya mean she don’t work?”

“I mean it doesn’t work. It doesn’t do anything,” I reply.

“D’ja plug ever-thang in right?” I am struck by his ability to completely and clearly eliminate any traces of the y in everything.

“Yeah.”

“You sure?” This comes out y’shoor.

“Yeah.”

“Walp,” says the proprietor, turning around and throwing the erstwhile solution to my sound-generation difficulties on a steadily-growing rubbish heap in the corner, “go on back out there and digyaself out anuther’n. Good thing ye checked afore ye left.” Item: It’s been a while since I’ve heard the word one reduced to a mere contraction tacked onto the back of another word. Item: I have often seen the word ye written in books and stories, as in Hear ye, hear ye! I don’t believe I’ve ever actually heard it spoken until now. I ruminate on these things as I slouch my way out the door.

I aim myself toward the Pontiac section, meaning to make a donor out of that white ’90 Grand Am I had spotted earlier. My travels take me through the Oldsmobile section, however, and I find myself forced to stop. What catches my eye is not some horribly mangled wreck that still has blood on the upholstery, but a perfectly ordinary 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera. What’s strange about this one is that it is, apparently, in fine shape. There are no dents, no busted glass, no evidence of fire. I walk over and open the hood. The engine is there, complete. Nothing is missing, save the battery, that I can spot. Sure, it could have thrown a rod, I guess, but this engine is GM’s corporate 3.8 litre pushrod V6. If there’s anything The General knows how to build, it’s transmissions and 3.8 litre V6’s. I’ve never heard of anyone having to replace one. I’m sure it happens, but to my knowledge it is rare.

I open the driver’s door. The interior is clean and intact. Like the exterior, the interior is a rich burgundy. There’s one of those green piney-smelling trees hanging from the lighter. I look at the odometer. It reads 45,873. GM’s didn’t use six-digit odometers until ’91, so this one could have rolled over once, but I doubt it. This vehicle’s in way to good a shape to be here.

I notice on the lower passenger-side corner of the windshield a parking permit for Sandalwood Apartments in Wheaton, Illinois. Sandalwood is a retirement community. I suspect, looking at the condition of the car, and the fact that the seat is pulled up really close to the steering wheel, that the last owner of this car was somebody’s grandmother.

Despite my efforts to stop it, my imagination jumps into action again, and I flash through a number of scenarios until I come up with one that seems at all likely. The short version—after a long illness, under which the grandmother’s family is placed under great strain, the old lady mercifully dies. In order to put paid to the woman and shut that door of everyone’s lives as quickly as possible, her things are given away. The car is put up for sale. After two weeks, there are no takers, so…well, just need that space for other things. Boneyard’ll give us fifty bucks for it and tow it for free. Again, I am most likely wrong, but sometimes an overactive imagination just will not be suppressed, and I get out of the car, overcome with a wave of sadness every bit as wretched as that experienced at the rolled-over minivan.

I walk away, thinking that the car’s too nice to start taking it apart. But one must know that it really is a matter of time before it gets what’s coming, and it does have a tape player that ought to fit in Little Mama. I go back and start hacking away. When I am done, I leave, but not before making sure the door is closed, a consideration few, including me, bestow upon junkyard relics.

Back in the van, having cleared the exchange with the owner, I plug in the radio. Upon hitting the power button I am blessed with a clear signal from 97.9 FM, and the song that’s on the radio is “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain. It’s just what I need to break my funk, and besides, the fucker works. My spirits brighten considerably, and I am beginning to put everything back together when I remember that I have not tried the tape player. I slide in Robert Palmer’s “Addictions: Volume I,” and hear just a snippet of “Simply Irresistible” when there emanates from the deck a muted twannngg! and the tape stops. I blink, then eject and reinsert the tape. Nothing. Eject and reinsert. Nothing. Eject and reinsert, this time with a hearty smack to get it in the right humor. Nothing.

Evidently what has happened is that the old lady who owned the car from which this stereo emanated used the tape player rarely if ever. The drive belt became dry-rotted from years of disuse until I came along and ZANG. Thoroughly frustrated, I rip the unit out and stomp off to the office. Therein, I place the offending item on the counter and just stare at the guy.

“This’n don’t work neither?” he asks.

I shake my head.

“Walp, third time’s the charm, as I’ve heard it said. Wanna try one more time?”

Well, I’m here, and I still have my tools, so I’m game for one more shot.

This time I go straight for the Pontiac section. I don’t stop or look around as I walk. I find the Grand Am and go straight for it. I rip the door open and fall into the driver’s seat.

God, what was GM thinking in the early 90’s? This thing is painfully ugly, with a dashboard whose instruments look as though they were placed by throwing darts. Half the gauges are digital, and half are analog, and all are hideous—a mishmash of angles and shapes and lines that lack any and all harmony with one another. The car on a whole is in poor shape, besides being ugly, so I attack the fascia holding the radio captive with a vengeance. I get it halfway out when I find that its egress is blocked by the console-mounted shifter. It’s an automatic, and the situation would be easily rectified by sliding it back into DRIVE, but that requires the ignition key, which of course is nowhere to be found. I’ve been in this fucking boneyard for four hours and I’m no further along than when I started. I’m tired and I’m pissed. I struggle with the shifter by hand to no avail, then finally resort to sitting on the floor and kicking it with the heel of my boot. Five minutes of this and the shifter finally relents, giving way with a crack that sounds like breaking bone. I’ve also got a killer headache, so when my imagination tries to jump on that little tidbit of mental imagery, I grab it in a hammerlock and go back to manhandling the stereo out of its womb in the dashboard. The process requires a little more breakage here and there, but I’m beyond caring now. It looks as though this car was cared for little anyway before it came here, so I feel little remorse for abusing it thus. Yet finally I have my prize, and with a sigh of relief I head back toward the office, wherein I verify the exchange with Bubba and head out towards the van.

As I am walking it hits me. Is that how it starts? Is that how people forget to care? Do you just get tired and pissed off enough that shit just doesn’t matter anymore? I guess now I can see how that happens. That Grand Am is a perfect example. It’s a rolling embodiment of apathy. A Grand Am is a fine vehicle, don’t get me wrong. But no one’s gonna buy one and take it home and spend a Saturday afternoon washing and waxing it. It’s basic transportation with a pretense of sportiness; that’s the way GM builds them and that’s what they’re used for. A car that’s bought for such reasons usually gets the short end of the stick. Think about it: how many mint-condition late-eighties GM vehicles have you seen recently that weren’t Corvettes or Cadillacs?

Cars that are built and bought that way usually live a hard life. It’s hard to get a ten-year old GM vehicle past 100,000 miles without spending a lot of money (g’wan; ask me how I know). Well, this one’s getting too expensive to have fixed all the time, so it’s time for a new one. We can probably get a grand for it though. And that’s the way it goes—I’ve bought cars on that rung of the ladder, five or six rungs down from the top, and sold them there too. And after awhile, it just stops mattering. You’re too tired and pissed off to care, so let’s have some fun while it still runs. Here, this oughta be good—watch me put my cigarette out on the steering wheel. Hey, check this out—you ever do a neutral-drop in a front-drive car? Sit back and watch the smoke. Hey, watch this…hey, you ever try…man, you won’t believe what I did with this thing…to this thing…I hate this thing…I can’t wait to get rid of this thing…I wish it would just hurry up and die so I can get rid of it.

I’m getting closer to the van now, and I’m about halfway across the parking lot when I hear a god-awful noise over my shoulder. It sounds like a bulldozer driving through a china shop. Sickening crunching noises peppered with the sound of breaking glass…like every chump that ever slowed down on the expressway to gape at an accident, I am powerless to stop myself from looking.

It’s the boneyard’s car-crusher, a device that takes cars from which simply no more use can be garnered and smashes them into little cubes about three-by-three-by-three. What happens is they use an enormous forklift, about two stories tall, to spear cars on the forks and them deposit them in the smashing chamber. They’re stacked about two or three high before they go in on the belt, and they come out in bastardized Hyundai-Ford-Isuzu-Saab-flavored boullion cubes. The crusher is powered by an enormous Caterpillar diesel, and it’s remotely controlled by the guy driving the lift.

As I watch, the driver trundles over to the crusher with an old Chevette skewered on one fork. He’s got it through the two rear doors; it dangles thence like a possum on a stick. It looks pretty intact, from where I stand; apparently Chevettes aren’t worth that much, even to boneyard scavenge rats like me. The driver places the Chevette on top of an old Mercury something or other, then goes around behind a pile of wrecks and out of sight for a moment. When he comes back into view he’s got a Mazda B2200 pickup truck upside down on the forks. He’s going pretty fast; he hits a bump and the truck goes flying. It hits the ground with a hollow popping sound that is totally unlike what I expect to hear when two or three thousand pounds of anything hits the ground from more than ten feet up. When the truck comes to rest there’s little recognizable left. The driver deftly retrieves it and pokes it in the crusher on top of the Chevette. He hits the START button and the diesel belches black smoke; the crusher starts and when it’s done there’s nothing to show that this cube ever contained a car that once gleamed on the showroom floor; was given as a graduation present to an ecstatic, tearfully thankful teenager; was ever taken to the drive-in; was used to pick up an old friend at the airport; was cursed on a heartless, crystal-blue Midwestern winter morning for failing to start; was ever cherished, hated, or acknowledged at all.

With an effort, I am finally able to wrench my eyes away, but they catch on an old transmission leaning against the fence. The torque converter is still attached; it has leaked pink transmission fluid that, against the dirt parking lot, assumes a coppery-reddish hue that looks like…

Fuckin’ imagination. I don’t want to think about that. I just want to put in this fuckin’ radio and get the fuck out of here.

This one works in both capacities. I have already decided that this is the last attempt; after this I start mugging old ladies, and Best Buy will yet have my business. But my reserve is short-lived; the signal is strong (though the track that is playing this time, “Shooting Star” by Bad Company, is just a little too poignant to be enjoyed) and the tape player works, although some remnants of a previously-eaten cassette tape must be scraped off the drive apparatus before it will play cleanly. I poke at it with a screwdriver for a little while before I realize that is going on 4:30, and it will be getting dark soon. For the first time in my life, I have spent an entire day at the junkyard. The realization leaves me feeling weird, and altogether greasier than that under my fingernails would attest.

The van’s dashboard bolts back together easily enough; it’s almost second nature by now. I throw my tools haphazardly in the toolbox and fire up the engine. The radio’s signal is crisp and clear, and before leaving the parking lot I adjust the fader and aim the van straight for a few choice potholes. The van’s body shakes alarmingly, and my tools rattle accordingly in the steel-sided toolbox, but not once does the signal come pounding up through the front speakers only. I am satisfied.

Back out on the expressway, cruising at a perfectly legal 65, Jimi Hendrix is easing through “Little Wing.” I recline the seat back a few degrees. It’s starting to get dark, so I turn on the lights. As the sun sets deeper, I come to realize that something is not right. As I pass under a viaduct and into shadow, I see what it is for the first time. The dashboard lights in my GMC glow not with the mystic green that is traditional for American automobiles, but with a milky white that began to come into vogue in the mid-eighties. The stereo I have just transplanted, however, glows not white, but red—a color chosen by Pontiac just as GMC, Chevy, Olds, Buick and Cadillac shifted to white.

I consider turning around, but just for a moment. Today has been an emotional roller coaster, and with the help of my hyperactive imagination I have seen more of the back door of the Great American Highway than I ever wanted. Sure, the radio’s red; but the sky’s blue and water’s wet and I am listening to the music as I head for home. In the light of the dying day, and in light of where I have been and what I have seen, that’s just fine with me.