3.24.2025

("Handbook to Field" will continue next Sunday)

*

Ann Arbor. Snowstorm. I leave the car, an old sedan like my grandma’s from the ‘80s, in a parking lot. At the house of one of my mom's friends, a songwriter who nailed it with a hit they use at sporting events. He wants to hear this song I wrote. I play it for him, screwing up the order of the verses and a few of the lines. I sense his impatience or disinterest and speed it up. Then I’m sitting at an awkward angle to him and remember the car. ‘You’ve seen those streets,' I say, meaning the streets near campus with the cars jammed in along the curb with no daylight between them. ‘Can you imagine parking there?’

*

I want to say a few words about my last car. Maybe my last car ever, who knows. She was a blue 2009 Subaru Forester and I named her Bloob. I don’t know if she had other names before she was mine.

I’m using the third person feminine pronoun here to recall the way old guys talked about cars and boats and rototillers when I was a kid. ‘She don’t wanna make it up the hill.’ Imagine it comes from naval culture; kinda funny they used it in the landlocked part of Michigan where I grew up. Found some other explanations online but they're mostly as sexist as they are useless.

I picked this particular make and model and color because I'd driven a similar car when I lived in Oregon and had a comfortable feeling about it. Also because, in Traverse City, the number of other drivers around having that exact car increased my odds of getting away with crimes.

Bloob had a good run. Her previous owner kept her clean and unrusted and she had 240,000 miles on 'er when I picked 'er up as-is from the local dealership. If it helps, that's roughly the distance to the moon from wherever you are now, dependent upon orbital cycles and such. She needed a lot of work to keep 'er running and she ran, for a good three years, until I was on my way back upstate from Detroit between Christmas and New Year's and the dashboard lit up like a holiday tree.

Got her towed to the dealership back in Ann Arbor and after poking around her insides they determined she couldn't be saved, at least for less than twice what I'd paid for her in the first place. I signed her over for scrap and when I finally got home revised my Jexit plans and booked a plane ticket to Toronto.

I am not one who believes that everything happens for a Reason but I will say when that second blizzard hit just after I got to Montreal and I saw what these folks go through with their cars in these parts I was grateful to have only my boots to worry about.

Bon voyage, Bloob. May the road beneath your treads be not as rough.

*new guest artist: Bee Kay aka Dr. Brian Kemp PhD aka my old pal Brian. I have plenty to say about this guy and his work but will save it for Friday. He calls this series 'Tetris Decoded'.