Page 20 - The Myth and the Moment

Morning

junked or sold for a song a dozen cars now considered classics. Why
didn’t I keep them, rent a garage, warehouse them for my old age? I
could have invested a thousand a year between nineteen fifty-five and
sixty-five, carefully selecting Studebakers, Hudsons, even garden-
variety Fords and Chevies from the Forties. Now they’d be worth a
fortune. This is a familiar story, Nate. Given your marvelous
hindsight (don’t sit down on your glasses!), why don’t you just
extrapolate the present consumer inventory into the future and throw
all your savings into cornering the market on left-overs of the Sixties
and Seventies? If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich? Because I’m a
skimper, now I’m a saver; never a whimper, don’t ask for a favor.
Hey, wake up! It’s hot out here. No finesse, so it’s brute force. Yes,
set a thief to catch a thief: take a wrench to turn a wrench. Bang it
with the pipe wrench.
Wham! Wham!
Turning, turning, yes! Got it! One down, four to go. Used to be
six; little cars have only four now. More suspicious industrial design:
can four nuts and bolts do the job of six? Next thing you know
they’ll be plastic. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the amazing new
Courgette Mark IV; each of its three tiny pink plastic wheels attached
to their axles by three tiny pink plastic wing nuts.
“Oof!”
Two down. Do sweat and grease mix? I could wipe my face with
my hand and find out. That scientific I’m not! Somewhere in this
great land a television commercial is instructing housewives how to
launder a shirt just like mine. Whisk! Out of the dryer, a garment of
ecclesiastical purity, fit for the Pope on his day off when he changes
the oil on the Popemobile.
Wham!
What if it breaks? More likely: crumbles. What did we call cheap
castings in the old days? Pot metal. That’s it: pot metal. Pipe wrench
bangs jack handle, jack handle twists lug nut, lug nut grips bolt. But
wait: you forgot the weakest link of all. Me. I need a rest. Sit down on
the curb.
It’s just the heat, old man. You can still change a tire. Wait a
minute: I didn’t get any breakfast. Damned dog got my burrito. I
suppose Phil Kolpak and Allison are eating caviar and croissants up
there on the hill. Washing it down with imported wine. Wasn’t going

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