A Tribute to the Cars I've Driven

originally published at the National Police Gazette

www.policegazette.us

You could never call me a car person. In spite of all the highway miles I’ve logged, there have been large portions of my adult life when I had no vehicular transportation of my own. I’ve had more than one day job that required me to drive, but most provided vehicles, and I always lived close enough to walk. Now that I live in New York City, I drive as little as possible, and my car can sit for days at a time if I’m not working, moving only to avoid the street cleaners.

There has only been one car I’d say I was in love with. It was a 25-year-old gold T-Bird that my Dad scored for $125. It had less than 70,000 miles when I got it, and drove like it just rolled off the factory floor. I needed it for the day job, and I put on more than 50,000 miles in the three years we were together. On my days off I’d ride around country back roads with Mötley Crüe at full volume. It’s simply not the same in the Hyundai I drive now.

Cars are a means to an end for me, quite literally a vehicle from Point A to Point B. My first three cars were the same vehicle with a different Detroit name across the back. I thought nothing of driving a bright yellow delivery van for a pizzeria whose name was misspelled in red along the sides. At another job, I had to transport photography equipment in a van that had rolled down an embankment. The front and driver side were pristine, while the back and passenger side looked like crumpled paper. I drove this van for two years before it finally died. There have been those that stood out though, either my own car, or any time I took a turn at the wheel. Whatever scrap yards they may now reside in, I would like to pay them tribute.

Let me tell you about the Bear Car. I knew these two girls, Blonde Lisa and Drummer Lisa (no relation), and they’d moved together to the Pacific Northwest. I’ve always been obsessed with the Sasquatch, and I was hopelessly infatuated with one of the Lisas, so I flew, drove, trained, and bussed out to see them on several occasions. I never saw the Sasquatch, and I never got the girl, but I did get to drive the Bear Car, and that was an experience like none I hope to have again.

When Blonde Lisa picked me up in Seattle on my second trip, the  car was just called Car. As we sped out of the city in four lanes of heavy traffic to Olympia, I asked where the rear view mirror was. She opened the glove box to show myself staring back at me. Roughly two years passed before I made it out again, and in that time Blonde Lisa joined Earth First and became a tree sitter, defending an Old Growth stand from loggers. Her residence at that time was the branch of a tree somewhere outside Eugene, OR, pooping in midair and living off supplies delivered by supporters. When she made the ten mile hike out of the woods to see us, we renamed her Dirty Blonde.

Car had been parked in a secluded place, and had been attacked by bears while it was unattended. Normally shy of humans, the bears ate very few of those. However, they wasted no opportunity to steal food. Campers in the area are encouraged to keep their food in airtight plastic buckets to avoid attracting bears. The bears have learned that white plastic buckets are probably full of food. Lisa had a white plastic bucket in the back seat. 

The Bear Car was parked in Eugene, where Drummer Lisa’s band was playing a show under a bridge. They agreed to drive the car 2½ hours back to Olympia, but only two members had a drivers license. One drove the van with the equipment and the other drove the car with the musicians. I was unaware at the time my New York license was suspended and under Washington law the car would be impounded for a year should I be stopped. That probably would have been better for all. No one else was willing to ride with me.

A witness that passed the car several times claimed to have seen progressive stages of destruction as the bears returned each night until they got inside. The driver’s window was smashed, not that I ever wanted to roll up the window. The inside of the car smelled so bad I would have left the window down for the rainy Washington winter. Thankfully, this was August and I could drive with my head out. 

The roof was caved in, and the passenger door was pried an inch from the frame. Claws raked the paint job all over the vehicle. It first chewed up the driver seat, and then ate a guitar. The back seat was heavily marred by claws, probably with rage after tearing open the buckets to find only clothes. I think the Bear Car made its way to a scrap yard not long after. 

Every punk needs a punk car, and I get excited when I see them. I ride right up on the ass to see what names I recognize. The object of the punk car is to cover as much of the trunk and bumper with band or slogan stickers well beyond the limits of good taste. 

The Misfits make most, as well as Black Flag.  Green Day remains popular with the kids, though the only Pop Punk I ever enjoyed was GG Allin, and not many fans of GG Allin can afford cars. What I rarely see is stickers from the very old punk bands, the Sex Pistols, and the Damned. Even the Ramones don’t often make the back of a car, and I know everyone still loves the Ramones.

Lately, this style has been co-opted by the septuagenarian Christian and Tea Bagger crowd whose stickers all say I’m going to hell.  Like everything associated with punk, the purpose of the punk car is to draw attention. My punk car was a legend, at least in my own mind. It’s name was  the Slayer Car.

She was a great white beast of a Buick that alternated as ‘he’ depending on my mood. Across the windshield were three Slayer logos, two white on either side of a black vinyl sticker. Assorted punk and metal stickers adorned the back for anyone unfortunate enough to follow me, but the front was reserved for Slayer.

I was barely old enough to drink and drive when I bought the Slayer Car. The maiden voyage was to the record store, where I purchased a white Slayer logo that I proudly slapped on the windshield, so other motorists would know what hell was approaching. Dr. Filth rode with me that evening for a beer run. He asked if I put the sticker on the inside so I could read it while I drove. I only realized then the sticker was backwards for anyone outside the car.

I scraped the letters off with a razor blade that night and went immediately to the record store after work the next day. This time I bought a black Slayer logo, and double-checked my placement before affixing it to the windshield. I slid off the hood and took a step back to admire my work, and saw I’d put the black sticker on the tinted portion of the window. It was virtually invisible. I made another trip to the record store the next afternoon, and bought two more white stickers to flank it.

The Slayer Car never once drove to see Slayer. It went to many Misfits shows, and was stained heavily with GWAR blood. We drove to see Def Leppard at the New York State Fair, and FEAR missed the show I drove to see them at. This was around the time everyone was just learning about the Internet, and Facebook was called Makeoutclub. Dr. Filth and I had tickets to see the band in Albany, but they never showed. They played with Blood For Blood, who seemed as surprised as us when Lee Ving never showed. They’d played with him the night before in NYC, where Lee allegedly got junk sick, or so were the rumors around Hot Topic. I should have gotten over my fear of saxophones. We drove to Syracuse, Rochester, Scranton, Philly, and once to Buffalo to see the reunion of a band called Towpath, who wore goat masks on stage while cutting themselves and masturbating. I’d appeared on their home video, so I felt obligated to attend their special reunion.

Not to brag, but I’ve been a lot of places. The true life-defining journeys have been few and far between. When I spent two weeks with Derf, he was more like a fourth traveler than a car, and probably smarter than the three dudes inside. Derf was a mid-90’s white Ford Escort with not much trunk space and a back seat that was not big enough for sleeping.

We had two weeks of travel planned from a trailer park in Buttmore, NC, to a beach in California for July 4th and back again. This was before GPS, and we had no specific destination, only a book of state maps that none of us could read. I’ll know no greater fear than waking up on a gravel road in the wilds of Texas hearing, “I’m not exactly sure where we are.”

Texas, by the way, takes seventeen hours of almost non-stop driving if you want to go from the easternmost point to the westernmost point. You need to do that if you want time to see Vegas before hitting the Pacific Ocean for fireworks. We didn't reach Vegas until 1am, and were so exhausted we only gambled for an hour. It’s probably the least exciting Vegas story ever told. The next day at the Grand Canyon we spent our winnings on silly hats. At every gas station we photographed ourselves behind Derf, Most of these were lost because the guy who became a professional photographer didn't load his camera correctly, and wasted around ten rolls of film. Still, we met our goal. I stood in the surf at Pismo Beach drinking wine with my best friends while fireworks exploded above me. 

Our bodies couldn’t hold out for another leisurely stroll across the nation. Derf got himself an oil change in California while we sat hungover at a nearby Denny’s. The urinal cake in the bathroom commanded me not to use drugs. We shot back across the entire nation in a 49-hour kamikaze trip, taking turns sleeping and driving, barely stopping to eat. How Derf survived those 6,000 miles, I’ll never know, but after 9 days we left him stinking as bad as the Bear Car. I bonded closest when Derf and I braved the empty Indiana highways at 2am the final night on the road. Orange cones closed lanes for miles on end, pausing at “end construction” signs with “begin construction” signs already illuminated by the headlights.

Derf soldiered on for several more years, and one time I visited Buttmore, a trip with Derf to Bob Evans was as much an excitement as anything else. Our last ride came a few years later, on a poorly advised overnight trip Buttmore to Binghamton. I dozed off, and we nearly went off the road when the driver did as well, but I did not take a turn driving. I’d probably been drinking at the punk rock show we’d attended before embarking. We didn’t leave there until midnight, but those are the only times you can get past DC without getting stuck in traffic. We found an Avail cassette in the trunk, turned it up all the way, and sailed the rest of the way.