Bone

Monday, October 30, 2006

It's damn hard...

...to be a walking anachronism, but with a little fortitude and just a little help from alcoholic beverages, you can get through. It's a-gonna be ugly, but you can do it.

What prompted this little rant was a late-evening jaunt through Meijer's. They built one damn near right across the street from my house, you know, and the fucker's open 24-7. That scares me. You know how it makes me feel? Ever read The Mangler by Stephen King, where the demon-possessed industrial ironer-and-folder busts out of its moorings at the local wetwash factory after chewing up a couple of hapless night watchmen and a private investigator, and the two guys are standing in the living room of the one guy's house listening to this crazed raving machine maniacally galumphing its way down the street? Yeah, it feels a little like that.

So I went there to get some sundries for school. You know, the usual--propane torch (I'm totally serious here--St. Francis is so old, the chemistry classroom in which I teach (if you can call what I do teaching) has no gas lines, but a propane torch works damn fine) because the one at the school sprung a leak as I was trying to light it and pretty much burned my eyebrows off. Thanks for your sympathy; also, some watch batteries for the poor abused stopwatches I had to resurrect after one of our more-established science teachers commandeered all the other ones; some Matchbox cars for the lab I did today (again, totally serious. Y'all wouldn't last 10 minutes in my life) and some Drano (for the house. God, get your minds out of the gutter.) I also bought some Velcro (I'll let you guess what I used that for.) and a new pair of jeans. Well, scratch that--tried to buy a new pair of jeans, but they have every size but the size I need.

Anyway, while I was shocked that I could procure all of these items at the hour of 12:30, and all at the same place, what shocked me more was just the size of the joint. Can you imagine what it must be like to come here from a third-world country and walk into a Meijer's, or a Wal-Mart, or just your average supermarket? I'm not knocking the convenience, but...

Well, here's a little anecdote for you.

I tried fixing my buddy Big Larry's car, which had decided to run on five cylinders for a while, just to be coy, it seems. I used my dad's ODB II (that stands for On Board Diagnostics, not Ol' Dirty Bastard) scan tool and it told me that it had detected a misfire on Injector 1. Fine. I figured I'd replace the spark plugs and wires, and just for a goof, the coil for cylinders 1 and 4. Oh, and to get at the three cylinders on the back side of the engine, you have to detach two engine mounts and rotate the whole block forward so you can get between the engine and the firewall. Took about three hourse and a lot of beer. Guess what? Still ran on 5 cylinders until about two weeks ago, when Larry called me up to report that all of a sudden it had decided to clean up its act. Runs great.

I don't understand that. I also don't understand why the anti-theft system in my dad's Corvette decides every once in a while that my dad is a perpetrator and, in an effort to thwart a theft, renders the whole car completely comatose for about half an hour, then starts up and runs like a fucker.

I don't get why, if I leave the old oxygen sensor in my Honda Civic, it runs like shit, but if I put a new one in, it runs great though the 'Check Engine' light comes on.

I don't understand why my computer won't recongnize my iPod until I turn it off and then on again three times.

I don't understand a lot of these things.

I understand that if you put gas in my old Ford, it will start. Every time. If it doesn't start, it means a) the battery's dead, in which case you leave the Ford in the parking lot of the gig you're playing while the opening band is just getting warmed up and you get a ride to the local Auto Zone (also open 24/7, thank God) and put a new battery in and drive home, after wedging an empty Aquafina bottle between the battery and the inner fender to prevent a hard ground that five minutes before was gaily shooting sparks out from under the hood while the carburetor hungrily sucks down gas not two feet away, or b) it's out of gas.

I understand that if you plug in my old SWR tube amp and plug in my old Fender jazz bass, you will be the loudest thing within four blocks and the neighbors will complain.

I understand that Freddie King was able to say just as much with his one guitar and one old tube amp than the guy I saw last weekend at Penny Road Pub with a 10-pedal effects array on the floor in front of him.

I get old things. I don't get Meijer's. That's not to say that I don't appreciate Meijer's, 'cause I was able to buy a dehumidifier there at 11:00 at night when I found that a lot of things in my basement were getting fuzzy due to the moisture in the air caused by a crack in the foundation that let water seep in.

But I don't get the modern stuff, and I often feel like an alien, watching TV over at my folks' house and trying to understand what passes for entertainment these days, or listening to music my students play in their cars as they leave the parking lot and yearning for the days of Thin Lizzy and AC/DC, or slipping out through the self-check at the local Jewel and sliding a little piece of plastic through a card reader so I can buy my Ramen noodles and tortilla chips without speaking a word to anyone. At the same Jewel, you can now pay with a fingerprint.

I'm not old. At least I don't think I am. But I'm starting to feel that way. And I wonder what the world will look like in another 33 years, and what I will think of it then.