The Thing

The Thing

This is another one you can file under “things I learned in my early adulthood about how material possessions don’t always bring happiness.”

About the same time that I made the fateful windsurfer purchase, (see the August 27th post), I also bought a vehicle which, looking back now, was the most impractical trade of legal tender for heartache and woe that I think I’ve ever made. I was returning to UNCG for the spring semester of 1988—seems so long ago—and it was necessary for me to have a vehicle to get back and forth from: a) my parents house in New Bern where I could do laundry and bum food and money, b) Winston-Salem where I could do laundry and bum beer and cigarettes from my sister, c) Chapel Hill where I could improve my social skills with high school friends who usually helped me along by handing me an unknown alcoholic liquid and saying, “drink this.”
One of these friends was David, who would give a sort of show and tell in his dorm room of substances that were either illegal, explosive, or both. He kept all of these things locked up in a homemade safe, as he had been doing since grade school, and, after displaying different varieties of brass knuckles, switchblades, and various calibers of firearms he would reach in the back of the safe and pull out a mason jar of clear liquid, get this kind of maniacal grin on his face, hold up the jar and hiss “moonshine.” I remember—I use the word “remember” loosely here—one night being talked into taking two shots of the stuff and spending the rest of the night rocking back and forth in a rocking chair humming “Rollin’ in my Sweet Baby’s Arms” and trying not to puke.
I mention David because he figures into the story of the Thing considerably. When he graduated from Military School, where I believe he learned many deviant but useful techniques regarding contraband (he was also an Eagle Scout), he bought a green MG. I remember riding around the housing development he lived in with the top down and being duly impressed and envious. Later, when his mother had moved from Lewisville to Greensboro, I stayed with him and his brothers while I was finding a place to live near campus, and we had episodes of playing quarters with moonshine and developing our threshold for hangovers. It was during this time that I bought the Thing.
One morning, hung-over and dazed, I started searching the classifieds for a suitable vehicle. I circled about half-a-dozen used car ads. The one that was making the top of the list was a Honda Accord with maybe 50,000 miles on it. There might have been a Toyota or an Escort or something like that on the list as well. One of the ads I circled was for a 1973 VW Thing, and whenever I looked at the ad my imagination took me to the Outer Banks where I would be cruising with the top down, the windsurfer sticking auspiciously out of the back. The image was winning out over the more practical Japanese imports with relatively low mileage.
A few notes about the VW Thing. VW only made this model for a couple of years. It was a German version—I guess—of a beach-buggy, but was practical for highway travel also, and, if you were so inclined (I wasn’t), you could paint the car tan, put an Iron Cross on it, mount a machine gun on the back, and pass it off for a German staff car circa 1943. I think VW attempted to soften the martial features of the car by issuing friendly bright paint jobs such as day glow orange and fluorescent yellow. Mine was the yellow variety. It was a strange amalgamation. Sort of Dobey Gillis meets the Hitler Youth.
David drove me to the address listed in the ad. The man who was selling the car was a stout, middle aged, Middle America guy who lived in a cul-de-sac. He took us down into the garage where he had not one, but two VW Things parked serenely in the bright and clean parking spaces. One was orange, the other, yellow. The yellow one was the one I was going to look at, and I fell into a sort of trance as soon as I saw it. When you read about something, especially a car, in an ad or a magazine you can only get a general sense of the material makeup of that object, so your mind develops a fragmented image of that object. When you first actually lay eyes on that object it is as if all the fragments have all been put together and the “realness” of the object is almost overpowering. This is the way it has been for me ever since I got my first set of army men in the mail. Of course that “realness” and actual “reality” are often two very different things. But at that moment all I could see was a fascinating, enticing, hunk of yellow metal. The owner probably knew he had me hooked at that very moment.
Then I drove it. David sat beside me checking the knobs, looking in the glove compartment, adjusting the mirror, and at one point I remember him saying “Man, this is cool!” I heard this over the high pitched whine that is a VW engine at high RPMs, and the approval of my friend clinched the deal in my mind—as if it hadn’t been clinched the moment I walked into that basement at the end of a cu-de-sac.
I can’t remember how much I paid for it exactly but I want to say $2,500. At this point it would be easy for me to say that the guy at the end of the cul-de-sac had sold me a lemon, but that would be untrue. The car was in good shape for being fifteen years old, and although it had relatively high mileage, the engine ran well and there wasn’t a scratch on the body. The paint was a little faded but other than that, the car looked good. As good as a fifteen year old fluorescent yellow German staff car is going to look. No, I think it’s safe to say, that I took a peach and turned it into a lemon.
I soon found an apartment close to the downtown area of Greensboro and enrolled in classes. I could walk to campus, and did so many days because of the parking hassle that plagues every American college campus. I would drive the Thing around in the afternoon, visiting friends and showing off, and artist friends would offer to paint it psychedelic colors and others would just want to ride around in it. After about two weeks everyone, except me, got over it.
It was winter, and one Friday after class I decided that I was going to drive to New Bern and stay with my parents. As I pulled out from Greensboro and headed east, a light snow began to fall and I thought “that’s alright, by the time I get to Raleigh, it will have turned to rain.” I was wrong. By the time I got to Raleigh it had turned into an extremely heavy snowstorm and the windshield wipers were working furiously to keep me from becoming snow blind. It eased up a little past Raleigh, but it was still coming down hard when I got stuck on the turn-off to New Bern. A VW is a rear-wheel drive car, with the engine in the back, so this combination caused the car to dig into the accumulating snow, and I found myself churning helplessly with no results until a driver behind me, probably driving a Honda Accord, got out and pushed me out of his way. I was able to proceed, with the snow still coming down hard, and I happened to glance up at the top left corner of the convertible top and notice that snow was accumulating on the inside of the roof. How, I know not—ask a scientist—but soon it was snowing inside of the car. About this time, the windshield-wiper motor started smoking. By the time I got to New Bern I was starting to have reservations about the deific elements of my new purchase.
Luckily, the weather improved by the time I returned to Greensboro. Soon though, I was faced with more difficulties. I had never owned a car of my own and was very unfamiliar with all of the fluids necessary for ensuring that you vehicle be properly lubed, cooled and insulated. One such unheard of liquid was brake fluid. I had just finished a visit to a friend’s house in Winston-Salem when I stepped on the brakes and nothing happened. This is an unforgettable feeling, and the reaction you see in the movies is pretty much accurate, you start stomping on the pedal to get any kind of stopping power you can and start to wonder of you should just aim for a tree and get it over with. I pulled up on the emergency brake and was able to come to a halt. This was the way I braked (I’m very unsure about that verb) all the way back to Greensboro, using the emergency brake and muttering to myself. My mood was maintaining a foul simmer. By the time I got to the dorms at UNCG I had had it, and my temper got the better of me. I pulled up as hard as I could on the emergency brake and the whole thing tore out of its frame. Whoops. Lesson: a temper only makes things worse. I remember being past the threshold of reasonable thinking, but at the same time I was fascinated that the brakes of the VW use the same wires as a bicycle. The whole emergency braking system had been exposed by my anger.
After a $300 brake repair job, and another month of eating Oodles of Noodles exclusively (due to the expense), the Thing was road worthy again. I got home from class one day and noticed that someone had dented the front of the car just enough so the hood wouldn’t close properly. There was no note or explanation, but the dent didn’t look that bad, and I decided to wire the hood down until I could afford to get it fixed. When that might be I had no way of knowing, but I was hopeful. I got a piece of strong wiring and I looped it from latch to hook and forgot about it.
That weekend I was off once again to Winston-Salem to stay with my sister Forsyth. It might have been March at this point and the weather was drizzly and cold. I got about halfway between Greensboro and Winston and was doing about 60mph when suddenly I heard a horrific WHAM and my field of vision was immediately turned to nothing but bright yellow metal. The hood had flown up. To avoid becoming a highway patrol statistic, I used both of my mirrors to navigate over to the shoulder and, fortunately, was able to stop the car. It’s amazing how your reflexes take over in a situation like this, and I suppose years of driving made the reaction to use my mirrors and coast over to the side of the highway automatic, but I still can’t believe I wasn’t broadsided by a Mack truck. There but for the grace of God go I.
I got out and assessed the damage. The hood had flown back so hard that it had knocked the front windshield back four or five inches. This meant that the rag-top could not latch properly to the windshield and would have to remain down. I got the hood fastened back down, very, very securely, and continued the next thirty-miles to Winston through the forty-degree drizzle with the top down and fellow travelers staring at my wet, dejected, and quite unnerved silhouette slowly making its way to safety at dusk.
Other mishaps occurred, like breaking down in nowhere town, North Carolina or having a friend think he could make the radio work by putting a beer tab in the fuse box (note: this causes fire), or being shot at in a field in Davey County (turns out it wasn’t the best place to party) and not being able to get the engine to turn over, and many more instances where the detrimental aspects of owning this car far outweighed its assets.
I ended up finally parking the Thing in front of my sister’s house when I moved in with her after being evicted from my apartment in Greensboro. I started work at a Restaurant nearby and walked there everyday, because by this time, I had all but killed the Thing. I had some friends who destroyed their cars, but did it in one fell swoop, rolling it down an embankment or totaling it by hitting a tree, but I believe that I subjected this car to a slow death. Its final indignity came when my sister called me at work to tell me that the neighborhood kids had rolled it down the hill, and it was now sitting in the middle of Washington Street. I ended up selling it to a used car dealer who said he’d give me “a buck fifty” for it. In used car jargon, this meant $150, and I could do nothing else but take the offer. The era of the Thing was over; I had owned it for less than a year.
The Thing sat in a used car lot for a couple of years and I would pass by it often. It looked a little beat up and bored sitting there with the used Honda’s and Toyota trucks, but it also looked a little relieved to be out of my hands. One day it was gone, and occasionally, when I see a VW thing driving up Reynolda Road I like to think that someone with a more responsible nature gave the car a second life and that I’m seeing it in its new incarnation, driving its happy owner to Pilot Mountain or somewhere, with a new hood latch, emergency break, and plenty of break fluid.

A Deadhead Fights Back (relatively speaking that is, dude)

Back in 2005, I emailed the goober who writes music reviews for our local paper because he had done the unthinkable and disrespected the Grateful Dead in print. I wanted to post this letter, and his response, because the same goober just recently stated that Bob Dylan should retire and I think it’s telling because right after he said this, everybody from Rolling Stone to Power Tool Weekly gave Dylan’s new album five stars and glowing reviews. Not only that, the album debuted at number 1, knocking Jessica Simpson off the top of the Billboard charts. Take that teeny-boppers. Retire indeed. Just goes to show what kind of journalism you get if you live in a medium-sized semi-progressive southern town with a Napoleon complex.


My Letter:
If we were to travel down Conrad's Congo River, or even Coppolla's Huang, and encountered Ed Bum gardener instead of Colonel Kurtz, we would find a leader of the indoctrinated brainwashed. Spouting almost nonsensical philosophy in a prolific amount, this entrenched "authority" is clogging the free will of many a young musical ideologue as to what is good music and what is not. Freewheeling singer-songwriters who write of the angst and pain of an unfinished Papst in the environs of a seedy club in Greenville, (North Carolina or South Carolina, it doesn't matter) need not worry, for Bum gardener is their champion. No, it is the people who believe that the Grateful Dead were good, the Allman Brothers were a classic band, and that "hippies" actually represented a voice that was prepared to vocalize injustices in American culture, more than someone crying about the tatooed hottie that broke your heart, that are the target of Bummy's jibes. The thirty five year period that the Grateful Dead spent trying to voice the "americana" sentiment that this culture has now, trendily, embraced is conveniently overlooked. Yea, Bum gardener may hiss "The Boredom... The Boredom", but don't forget that "boredom" is represented in one of the most well preserved musical archives that was ever created, and will be there for much longer than " the best singer songwriter you never heard of and never will again,"



His(patronizing) Response:
Dude, that is a SPLENDID missive. I love it. And thanks for writing. It shows that you have passion, and passion is what matters most in life. That you took the time to write and defend your beliefs is a great thing.

Yeah, yeah, I know it comes off sometimes that I dislike the Dead. I dislike certain periods of the band, but hardly dislike them wholesale Here's the full reality. I loved The Dead through Mars Hotel; saw them several times between 1971 and 1974 and ever show was fine. Things got problematic for me in the latter part of the band's career, particularly when Jerry was more concerned with sucking on a glass dick than making music. Reading interviews from the post-coma period, he made it clear that he, too, thought the Dead and run out of steam and was only sticking with it because he didn't want to put anyone out of work. To be commended.
And so you will know, I have talked at length with Mickey Hart, Bob Weir and Phil Lesh, all of whom were fine people and all of whom said that at the time Jerry died, they were all considering pulling the plug. They still liked playing, but the spark was missing. Jerry was erratic. And they despised the new generation of Deadheads. To quote Weir, from an interview we did two years ago: "It was more a drugs-in-the-parking-lot thing, not a musical thing, for them. They wore their identity as deadheads like a fraternity pin. Most of them didn't even know why they liked the band, and that was disheartening. It didn't matter if we played well or not. So eventually, it didn't matter to us."

And the two shows I saw in the 90s were excruciatingly dull. Wish they weren't. Made me sad. As for the Allmans - they are Gods. No band, ever, will touch the original lineup, except perhaps for the current lineup. They had some lean times while Gregg was on pharmaceutical vacation, but nothing, nothing, nothing will ever take away from that band when they were hittin' the note.
Time plods on, new talents are born. You don't have to like 'em. But don't put them down wholesale. You'll be missing a lot of great music.

To clarify: I was one of the "hippies" who railed against the unjustices of America. We helped stop an unjust war, so that counted for something. Many of the "ideals" didn't pan out. Some changed the world. Still believe in a lot of it.

I LOVE this line: "the freewheeling songwriters who write of the angst and pain of an unfinished Pabst". Great stuff.

Thanks for writing. One of the best insulting rants I've ever gotten. You can write. Peace.

Okay, before you start going over to this guys side, note that it is a very dubious statement he makes about being one of the hippies. All I know about his past is that before he began hacking away at pop culture he ran a used record store in a middle class neighborhood where he looked down at kids who bought four dollar copies of “Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy.” That crap about passion is the most important thing in life, c’mon, is he trying to be Phillip Seymour Hoffman playing Lester Bangs in “Almost Famous?” Thanks Bumgardner. Also, his “I’ve talked to these guys so I know a little bit about it” shtick bothers me. Name dropping won’t help the fact that if the Dead had quit in the eighties, or whenever, they would have missed some of their best touring years, 1990 in particular, which are represented in hundreds of hours of tapes. I do recognize that the Deadheads could be obnoxiously elitist, and I hated that part too, but these people are in every walk of life and the best thing to do is kick ‘em in the nuts and run. I also hate the idea that the band was killing Jerry Garcia, and I’m okay with the idea that they should have quit if they could have, I just don’t like the fact that out of two or three shows that Bumgardner saw in the nineties, he can expect to know for sure that the band was totally derailed.

So that’s it, my correspondence with Ed Bumgardner, local music gooberu. I stuck it to the man…yea. He said I can write. He said…I can…write!