It picked an afternoon summer thunderstorm to finally die on the side of the highway. Sorry, that was a little morbid. I’m not talking about a person but my unfaithful Honda. Good grief, that would be grisly.
I was driving back from covering a Charlotte amateur soccer league game for the paper I wrote at the time. There was a lot of traffic on Interstate 85 when the bottom fell out. It was raining the most giant cats and dogs in the world—more accurately, it was raining mastiffs and tigers. Of course, my windshield wipers decided to quit working during the storm, so I pulled over onto the shoulder since I couldn’t see through the rampant sheet of stormwater running across my windshield.
I remember how big and heavy the raindrops sounded when they hit the top of my car roof with the engine off. Thunder was cracking all around me, and I saw lightning flashes in my rearview mirror. I was on the side of the road for 15 to 20 minutes when the rain finally stopped. The rain had passed me, and it was time to crank my car and head home.
There was nothing out of the ordinary after I turned the key. The car always sounded like it wouldn’t crank but eventually would turn over and start. I put the car into drive, waited for a gap in the heavy interstate traffic, hit the gas, moved two feet, and then that’s when my unfaithful Honda croaked. The stop was very sudden as if I had slammed on the brakes. All the dashboard lights lit up like the National Lampoon Christmas Vacation house. You better believe I said something much worse than “damn”.
I’m not much of a car person, but even I knew this wasn’t good. I got out of the car and popped open the hood. I started screwing off lids to different engine parts. All looked full and good until I pulled the orange-handled oil dipstick from the engine. The dipstick was bone dry. I said something much worse than “damn” again. An oil leak over time caused the engine to seize up. R-I-P unfaithful Honda!
Before this demise, two things were mobile: my car and myself. Since my vehicle became immobile, I had to move my body toward a phone. The next interstate exit heading north was closer, so I started walking in that direction away from my about-to-be-abandoned car.
Before doing this, I tied my white undershirt to the car’s driver-side mirror. This was something I learned in the South. It is supposed to tell the police to please not ticket this abandoned car and the tow truck drivers to please not tow my abandoned car away because I’m coming back for it. I learned later that it actually means that you need help, so I don’t know if tying a piece of white cloth to your broken-down car really works.
The walk toward the next exit conjured memories. The Honda hadn’t been dependable for a very long time, but it wasn’t always this way. I remember when I first got it. I was so excited you would’ve thought it was a Porsche or an Audi. That vehicle’s four wheels took me to many beautiful destinations, including all over North Carolina. They weren’t all bad memories.
But the walk to the next interstate exit felt more like a trek. In fact, the damn thing seemed to stay in the background for ages. Like I was walking the distance between the sun and the earth. I wasn’t getting any closer. Speaking of the sun. The summer afternoon didn’t take any pity on me for my broken-down car situation. Walking on the asphalt shoulder intensified the hotness. My feet wouldn’t become hotspots if I didn’t have shoes on. I’m sure there’s some joke in there about me living in the South.
There was no point in wiping the sweat off my face. What got dried would have just been replaced by one of the million sweat beads dripping from my forehead, armpits, hands, and feet. Also, there was no need because I didn’t believe I had anything dry to do the job.
Finally, the exit was in the forefront. I walked from the sun to the earth, the sun being my broken-down Honda and the earth being the on-ramp leading up to the phone at the convenience store. The last hours had been horrible. I needed something good to happen to me, and I got it on the exit ramp.
My laugh started as a chuckle and into a guffaw. Now “Gaffaw” is a funny word! Ha ha! I was in stitches and rolling in the aisles. The passing cars probably thought I was a lunatic. I wasn’t laughing because of the external circumstances but because of my unfaithful Honda.
In its current state, my Honda looked like it should be an abandoned car on the side of an interstate. The thought of this had me busting out of the seams like a lunatic.
The Honda’s windshield had alligator cracks. Two of its tires were as bald as a baby’s head. The inside headliner was stapled. A medium-sized dent was in the trunk because someone backed into a fence, and another dent was in the back passenger-side door because a bat hit it. If you were wondering, it was a baseball bat and not a vampire bat. Probably not. But the takeaway is that it looked just like the type of car that, if you drove by, you would think that it looked like a car that should be broken down. That funny thought came to me unexpectedly, and I’m thankful for its timing. I reached for the phone and called Isabel, my girlfriend, to please come pick me up.
I hope it isn’t too overly dramatic to say since I didn’t experience a natural disaster, act of violence, or tragic accident, but this Saturday was filled with several traumatic events. So, I ended up at The Elf drinking Busch Light beer at the bar to numb my senses because of these events. Okay, it was Saturday; I probably would’ve ended up at my watering hole anyway. I put the plan into motion, but my crappy plan didn’t work out. The beer had the opposite effect.
It didn’t matter how much draft beer I drank; two recurring thoughts kept me sober. The first one circling my brain was, “The Honda is no more,” and the second was, “How am I going to replace the Honda.” I wasn’t a wealthy man back then, so buying a new car wouldn’t be easy. Let me strike through the end of the last sentence and rewrite it as “buying an extremely used car was going to be a nearly impossible task”. I needed more than two nickels to rub together to afford another car, truck, or Huffy mountain bike, which seemed most feasible that night. Picture me riding a bike down the Interstate for my work.
I was relatively sober because I was hyper-focused on the car situation. I didn’t expect the bartender to shout, “Last call”. Where did the last few hours go? The night really got away from me like some sort of blurred rocket. I looked to my left, and Vincent Ortega (the vampire) was sitting on a barstool beside me. I had yet to learn when he arrived or how long he’d been sitting there. I reckon after sunset and after I got to The Elf. Shrug!
The entire Elf bar knows it’s late at night because the bartender just called last call. Still, they also see the time because local commercials are on television all around us. There were games on those screens the last time I looked up, but I can’t remember what sports. It didn’t take Vincent’s heightened vampire senses to realize something was wrong with me. I told him about my Honda dying on the side of the Interstate. He told a joke about biting the car and bringing it back to life as a vampire, which made me laugh. Then, that dreadful commercial appeared on television, setting up the second half of this story.
The commercial began with a man standing in the office of a used car lot. The man is older, has grey slicked-back white hair, a thin mustache like that of movie director John Waters, and is wearing a black Hawaiian shirt with thin red palm trees. He says the business’s name and then turns into a cartoon. What made him turn into a cartoon wasn’t clear in the commercial. We are still determining how or what caused this change. He then marches (phases) through the office wall like some 2D ghost from a video game. In the next scene, the cartoon man slides across the hood of a crappy drawn midsize orange sedan like a character from The Dukes of Hazzard show from the seventies. After the slide, he gets down on one knee and starts singing, “We have five-hundred-dollar cars, we have five-hundred-dollar cars, we have five-hundred-dollar cars,” like he’s in a Broadway musical. The hand theatrics were amazingly extra bad. He says the name of the car lot again, and then the business address flashes in white font on the screen.
I have a theory that the old used car dealer wanted to do the car hood slide and sing the five-hundred-dollar song but was too feeble to do the stunt and couldn’t carry a note in a bucket to do it for real. Because of his lack of agility, ability, and singing range, they made him a cartoon instead. Anyway, he sold cheap cars nearby, and I now needed ten thousand nickels to rub together to get one of his five hundred-dollar cars.
It took a few weeks to raise enough money. During this time, I got familiar with the Charlotte transit system, bummed rides, borrowed Isabel’s car for work assignments, and canceled on people because I couldn’t get out to meet them. I felt awful and like I was taking advantage of people’s kindness. It felt like infinity. To reach my five-hundred-dollar goal, I used up my little bit of savings, went through couch cushions, redeemed glass bottles and aluminum, checked the arcade video machines for quarters, mowed lawns, borrowed what I needed, and sold my TV. I didn’t do all that, but I’ll let you pick.
I needed a night ride from Isabel to the used car lot, located in a tiny town about thirty minutes from Charlotte. We had no idea where we were and felt lost even though we followed the route directions down to the last left turn. Then it finally appeared on that two-lane state highway, which I forgot the number. The used car lot’s rectangular business sign had the business’s name written in red tacky letters on a black background, like the older man’s Hawaiian shirt in the commercial. Maybe the owner really loved this theme. Shrug! Isabel made the final left turn into the establishment.
We circled the parking lot of about 30 used sedans, trucks, and SUVs, looking for the five-hundred-dollar cars, but none had price tags. I heard what sounded like malicious chuckles coming from a red Corvette. Isabel didn’t hear them, so I must’ve imagined them. Nope. A pickup truck pulled into the lot, parked in front of the office building, and a figure hopped out of the driver’s side. I recognized the man walking toward us because he was wearing the same Hawaiian shirt from the commercial,
“How can I help you?” he said.
“I’m looking to buy one of your five hundred-dollar cars,” I said back.
The used car salesman introduced himself. Even though he told me his name, I will refer to him as Brad. He looked like a Brad I knew once, who was also kind of greasy and had slicked-back white hair and a thin mustache. He informed us that he only had one automobile left on the lot at that price. Then he told me that he did have several of them at the beginning of the week but sold them because of the great commercial (his words) where he slid across the car hood so flawlessly. Yes, I saw that commercial, sir, the one where cartoon Brad performed the flawless hood slide.
Isabel and I followed Brad, the used car salesman, to the car that I was there to purchase. He tried to sell me the red Corvette, a white Ford Ranger, and a Jeep Wrangler with no wheels along the way. He was very proud of his little red Corvette. I repeatedly reminded the guy that I was only there to purchase a five hundred car. Brad became a little unfriendly after realizing he wouldn’t get more money from me than that. The car he led us to was an older, rough-looking green Pontiac Grand Am with a red trunk. This blew my mind. The five-hundred-dollar Grand Am was parked beside another Grand Am that was painted red with a green trunk. The two Grand Am’s exteriors were the complete opposite.
What the hell is this? I couldn’t believe this oddity. I nudged Isabel to look, and she immediately walked away, her hand covering her mouth. She was on the cusp of spontaneously laughing and didn’t want to do it in front of Brad. We both need to keep our composure. I had a five-hundred-dollar two-toned Pontiac Grand Am to buy, damnit! I’m actually laughing now writing this, but I suppressed any of my chuckles that day, which hurt. It was like needing to burp, but you stop it from happening. It felt like it was burning in my chest.
The car was in relatively decent shape and rode fine during the test drive, so I told Brad I would take it. Before we left his dealership, I asked him if he could switch out the Grand Am trunks to have two non-contrasting automobiles. He said that he could do it, but the labor would cost me the price of the car. I wasn’t surprised with this answer. He told some jerky things and seemed like a guy who didn’t do good deeds. But it was his business and right to say that, but I can’t afford that, so let me just buy this vehicle, and I’ll be on my way.
For the next week, I was the proud owner of a mostly green Pontiac Grand Am. Every day that week, it cranked and got me to where I needed to go for work and appointments. It felt good to be mobile again. I didn’t have to scrounge for rides from my girlfriend or friends. My life felt calm and normal again. Well, that was short-lived when the Grand Am broke down like my Honda did on the side of Interstate 85. I brought something with me when I left the used car lot a week earlier. It was a damn gremlin, and I don’t mean the car made by American Motors in the seventies, but more like the gremlin on the airplane wing in that The Twilight Zone episode.
Remember when I heard malicious chuckles from that red Corvette at the used car dealership? Well, I heard the same evil sounds coming from the Grand Am engine before it malfunctioned. Luckily, I could see through the smoke well enough to safely cruise onto the shoulder. I opened the hood and immediately got hit with the smoke. It was choking and made me cough. I’ve never seen so much smoke come from a car.
The gremlin appeared from the smoke. It couldn’t have been a foot tall with gray, scaly skin, yellow eyes, and a hideous, rotten smile. Then, the creature catapulted itself at me. I dodged just enough that it barely grazed my neck with its chipped fingernails. Luckily, it wasn’t too much of a bloody cut. The lousy gremlin hissed at me and chuckled away into the forest. Sometimes, I still think I hear the gremlin’s wicked laugh in my dreams. Needless to say, I was livid. That was now two broken-down cars in less than a month.
Later, at The Elf, I told Vincent the Vampire all about what had happened to me earlier in the day. I told him about Brad and his used car dealership, the expired Grand Am on the side of Interstate 85 that cost me five hundred dollars, and the nasty little gremlin that ruined my car and tried to attack me. The vampire sat there for a little while contemplating. He asked me exactly where the Grand Am was, and I told him where it broke down on the Interstate. He nodded and told me to meet him back at The Elf the next night and that he’d sort everything.
I did meet Vincent the next night. He handed me a white letter envelope that was filled with five hundred dollars of twenties, tens, and fives. I know he didn’t hurt Brad and returned the Grand Am to the Broken Horse (what I’m calling it now) used car dealership. Other than these details, I still don’t know how he sorted the gremlin situation. It took me a while, but I saved enough money to buy another Honda Accord.
I would like to take this moment to thank Isabel, Vincent, the Charlotte bus system, and anyone else who gave me rides or assistance during this part of my life. Thank you all!
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