Saying Goodbye to the Mustang

Wilmington, North Carolina. January, 2004

I buy the 2003 Ford Mustang with $12,500 cash and my trade, a 1995 Nissan pickup.

It pleases me that I do not have to make payments. It also pleases me that I am driving such a nice car. As a kid, I never thought I would have a car like a Mustang or a Camaro, but here it is. I can immediately tell that this vehicle drives heavier than my little pickup that I traded in. I will also have to get used to the size of the Mustang. Though it is a sports car, to me it feels like I am driving a huge Cadillac.



I bought the car in part because I hope girls will be impressed by it. I do get a number of compliments, but so far not any dates. Maybe that will change…

Carolina Beach, North Carolina. September 2004.

My Mustang really looks beautiful, sitting in its assigned parking space below. I look down on it from the balcony of my condominium, one row back from the beach. The curves of the body, the shining white paint job, the sleek decals, all give me a good feeling. I own that car, I think to myself. That is what I drive. It is a cool car, no doubt.

Mom and Dad and are vacationing at Topsail Island, to the north of the beach where I live. I go up and have a good visit with them. When it is time for me to leave and return home, I roll down the windows and turn up the theme to the TV show, “Knight Rider” on my stereo as I drive away. Dad laughs and gives me a thumbs up.

America. January 2006.

Due to upheaval in my employment, on a whim I decide to move from North Carolina Las Vegas.

It is my brother, Adam, and me taking turns driving the Mustang on Interstate 40 almost all the way across the country. Dad and my Uncle Ken follow behind in the Penske rental truck.

The trip out there is one of the most memorable of my life. We stop and eat at a Cracker Barrel restaurant in Hermitage, Tennessee, take in the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas, eat at a great Chinese Buffet in Van Buren, Arkansas, spend the night in Roland, Oklahoma, then Pizza and an overnight stay in Tucumcari, New Mexico, then the following night to Williams, Arizona and a little detour to the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, then to the division between the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones at the Hoover Dam, and finally arriving at night at the Stratosphere Hotel and Casino on the Las Vegas Strip.



Once my family has left Vegas, flying back to North Carolina, it is just me and my Mustang out here in the Mojave Desert. I have come out here with no job, and eventually wind up as a salesman at a car dealership.

One morning as I am headed to work, one of the sales managers pulls up alongside me in his truck as we head down Sahara Avenue.
“Drive that Mustang!” he shouts at me. “Drive it!”

The apartments where I live have a really high crime rate. The zip code, 89109, is #2 in the country for stolen cars, according to my insurance company.

“Yeah, you’re not a real resident here until you’ve had a car stolen from you,” my neighbor tells me. “I’ve lived here for eight years, and I’ve had two stolen from me.”

I go to an auto parts store and by “The Club” to put on my steering wheel each night.



Almost every morning when I exit my apartment to start the day, somebody’s car has been damaged- a mirror or window smashed, tires slashed. My Mustang is just about the nicest car in the complex. To my amazement, no one messes with my car for the entire time I live in the apartments.

Alexandria, Virginia. October, 2006.

My Mustang rides me to work each morning at the Post Office- a miserable, stressful drive. I come home from work exhausted.

The weather is starting to turn cold, now, and I wonder if I am going to be able to keep doing this as I climb out of the Mustang around 10pm at the end of another long day.

I click the lock button twice on my key fob, to set the car alarm. The Mustang’s horn honks twice.

I have never known it to do that before. Normally, the horn just blows once to let me know the alarm is set.

I press the key fob twice again, and the horn blows twice in quick succession again.

Huh. That is puzzling, I think to myself. But I go on inside to my apartment.

Early the next morning when I go out to the car, ready to drive to the Post Office again, I see that I left the passenger side door wide open from where got out the Styrofoam to go boxes of buffet food.

To my surprise, no one has messed with the inside of my car. Now I know why the horn was blowing twice- to signal that a door was open.

Fayetteville, North Carolina. Spring 2007.

While I wait to start a graduate program in history at Western Carolina University in the fall, I work again as a car salesman, this time Fayetteville. It is a Chevy Dealership, though we sell a lot of used Fords as well. It amuses me that in Vegas, many of the salesman were professional poker players. They sold cars during the day and played in poker tournaments at night in the casinos.

At this dealership, no one is a professional gambler, but some of the salesmen are also ordained ministers. One salesman carries two cell phones on his belt- a phone for his customers at the dealership, and the other for the members of his church.

Cullowhee, North Carolina. Fall 2008

I have always done better in school than in the work world, which is a bit frustrating. If academic success does not translate so easily to success in the real world, then what is the point of academics? But the lack of a correlation is not true for most people. I am going to see if I can mix the two worlds by making a career in academics.

Anyway, here at Western Carolina University, I am in the midst of the happiest year of my life, and I fully realize it.



I am actually getting dates, now. Girls are riding in the passenger seat of my Mustang on an almost regular basis, which was the main goal when I bought the car.

Tallahassee, Florida. 2009

“You have that nice Mustang, and you take the bus to school?” One of my friends asks me.

In my first year of law school, I use the Tallahassee transit system to get to and from the campus. During all three years in Tallahassee, my Mustang gets a bit of a break. I do not drive it that much. The main trip I make is to the grocery store with my classmate and neighbor from New Zealand, who does not have a car or a license at this point.

Kissimmee, Florida. Fall 2011.

I park my Mustang under an oak tree at my residence and walk to work. The tree dumps a lot of dirt and leaves on it in the coming weeks and months. Dirt gets into crevasses and linings in the car which are difficult if not impossible to clean. It is beginning to become an old car, I understand, now.

On a trip to visit my family in North Carolina, my brother washes the car and peels off the decals of the horses on the doors.

“It makes it look like less of a girl’s car,” he says.

Miami, Florida. Summer 2012.

I almost get into a major car accident coming out of Miami International Airport. There is a lot of construction there. It is nightfall and raining heavily, and I miss seeing a Yield sign posted amongst the orange and white barrels.

A taxi cab traveling at a high rate of speed taps the front of my car, as I pull out into his lane. But he keeps on going and I do not try to catch up to him and flag him down. At first chance, I get out of my car and survey the damage. We traded paint. Black and yellow is scuffed into my bumper, and it will not buff out.

This year in Miami, I really grind the Mustang, driving all over the city in stop and go traffic. The trunk, back seat and passenger seat are all stacked with boxes of books and other supplies for my job. It is not what the car was designed for, and I apologize to it and tell it what a great job it is doing on a daily basis.



Live Oak, Florida. 2013.

The driver side automatic window has stopped working. It costs approximately $500 to have a new window motor installed to have the problem fixed. A short time after I spend that money, the “Service Engine Soon” light comes on. I find out what the problem is. Though it is not an urgently needed repair, it will be another $500 to have this fixed. At times, now, the Mustang is also not driving as smoothly as it once did.

It is time to get a new car, I know, though I keep putting it off. I like the Mustang. It has been with me for ten years, ten turbulent years.

Lake City, Florida. April 26, 2014.

Today I must say goodbye to the Mustang.

When I bought it ten years ago, I thought that it would help me with women, help me get into adventures.

I have been on plenty of adventures with this car, though the passenger seat has remained empty for them.

I could buy another, brand new Mustang if I wanted to. But what is the point? It is sort of like buying a nice large house with lots of rooms, and then living in it by myself.

Instead, I buy a new Ford Focus. It has a moon roof and a trunk that will easily accommodate a bike rack, two things I want that the Mustang did not have. The gas mileage will also be much better. Perhaps I will have this Focus for the next ten years. I will get into adventures with this car, too, though I hope the next ten years are not as rocky as the previous ten.

Just as I am about to drive off the lot in my new car, I see my Mustang parked in a visitor space at the dealership, the license plate removed.

I get out of my car, go up to the Mustang, and put my hand on it. The emotion that springs up inside me is genuine.

“Excellent job, Mustang,” I say to it. “You are the best car I’ve ever had. You have served me well. If there is a heaven, I would like to see you there with me. I will miss you.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I see someone walking toward me. It is the salesman who did the deal. I assume he is coming to move the Mustang to the back of the dealership and out of the visitor space, but he abruptly turns around and walks back inside when he sees me.

I am a little embarrassed. It probably looks like I am praying over my old car.

I tell the Mustang that I hope its new owner will treat it well. Then I hop back in my Focus and give the Mustang one last look before I head out on the highway back to Live Oak.

The 4am Hobby

Tallahassee, Florida. April 19,2014.

Live Oak is a beautiful place to work and reside. The rural landscape here is much easier on the eyes than in Kendall, part of south Miami, where I lived last year- though Miami is beautiful in its ways, too.

Here, I can walk or ride my bike to open fields with flowers and cows. For long term living, I like that much better than amongst a maze of crowded freeways.





The people in Live Oak are great, too. They are very friendly, as one would expect in a town in the Deep South. It can get a little quiet here, though. The most popular restaurant and bar in Live Oak is actually closed on Saturdays and Sundays. Friday night is the time to get into adventures there. There are a couple of other bars that I sometimes go to on Saturdays, but it is inevitable that I see the same people over and over again, at the bar and then at the grocery store and everywhere else.

Gainesville is not too far away. But that is Gator country, and it is a town with which I am unfamiliar. I went to Florida State for law school, so I am much more comfortable in Tallahassee and walking into places where there is a lot of garnet and gold as opposed to orange and blue.

Live Oak has Tallahassee beat for cost of living, traffic, peace and quiet, and rural scenery. I am a bigger fish in a smaller pond here in Live Oak than I would be in Tallahassee.

In 20 years, if I am in Live Oak doing what I am doing right now, I will probably say that it has been a happy 20 years.

Still, if I lived in Tallahassee, I would take advantage of what that place has to offer. I would try all the restaurants, attend the plays put on by FSU’s Theater Department, go to many of the sporting events, especially football and baseball, and probably audit a random evening college class each semester or each academic year.

So I have also begun reaching out the 80 or so miles to Tallahassee, trying to renew a connection there and recapture a bit of my days as a student.

The main vehicle so far is weekend runs in Tallahassee organized by the Gulf Winds Track Club. Every Saturday morning, there is a 5k or 10k race starting at 8am. Each week, it is in a different part of the city. I see some of my colleagues from law school at these races, and that is a good feeling.

The first of these races for me was the Springtime 10k/5k in downtown Tallahassee.



It was raining all night and into the morning leading up to the race. I set my alarm clock for 5am, and struggled to get out of bed and get going. I thought I would get to Tallahassee with plenty of minutes to spare. But by the time I negotiated the traffic lights and found a parking spot, I had to run to the registration tables to avoid missing the start of the race. The sky dumped rain on me the whole race, but it was a breath of fresh air to be in Tallahassee again and see some familiar faces.

Now, for the first time in my life, I am regularly running 10k (6.2 miles) during the week to be as competitive as possible in the longer races. It amuses me, the number of people in Live Oak from work- clerks, bailiffs or other court personnel, who tell me that they see me on the road, running all the time. I really do not train that much compared to the more serious runners in these races, but even people in the bar in Live Oak have told me that they see me out running.

The past two races, I have set my alarm clock for 4am on Saturday morning. This works for getting me there on time.

What this means, though, is that I cannot go out on Friday night, the best night to be out in Live Oak.

Today was the Red Shoe Run benefiting the Ronald McDonald House in Tallahassee. The course took me through the beautiful Southwood community, over rolling hills of large, new homes and open landscapes of fields and a golf course. It was the first time in my life that I have run a 10k race.



Some runners talk about experiencing a “high” as they pile on the distance. Between miles two and four I was feeling pretty good. It had everything to do with the novel scenery around me, though. I doubt it will inspire me to train for a marathon. My runs of the same distance down familiar roads in Live Oak are just something for me to get through at this point. I would much prefer to bike them. The newness of what I was seeing today is what made the run very pleasant.

All of this is an effort- a new hobby that requires me to wake up at 4am on Saturday. It was cold, windy and misting today. I was shivering when the starting gun sounded.

Today, too, I saw no one from the law school other than a girl whom I asked out a couple of times when we were students. She was running with her new husband, and I let her be.

So there was no one I knew, and I ran alone.

But today, the overall experience was enjoyable enough for me to keep skipping Friday nights out in Live Oak, waking up at 4am, driving to Tallahassee in the dark and running these races by myself.

We will see if my resolve remains a month, two months and more from now.

David and Goliath

Wilmington, North Carolina. Approximately 1981 or 1982.

One of the rooms in the church has a door with a small, square window so that adults can look inside.

Of course, it is much too high for me to see through. The door is heavy and metal, and the window glass looks to be pretty thick. The window is crisscrossed with pinstripe black lines that look like they have been etched on.

Mom explains to me and the other kids in the class that the window on that door is the head of Goliath.

The height of us children and the height of the window is a relative comparison to the height of David and the height of Goliath as described in the Bible, Mom says.

The goal of the class today is to kill Goliath the same way David did it- with a sling shot and some rocks.



There is a sling shot on the table in front of us, but it is not like one I have seen before. The sling shot that I am familiar with is wish bone shaped, with a leather pocked tied by elastic bands to each side. I would put the rock in the pocket, pull it back until the bands are taut, and then let it fly.

This sling shot, though, is simply a strap of leather with a pocket for the rock. It is similar to the one David would have used. We are supposed to whirl it around our heads and then launch the rock at the head of Goliath.

The “rocks” are actually balls of aluminum foil, which we make ourselves from sheets that Mom gives us. Just as David carefully selected the stones he would use, we make our own balls of foil.

No one comes close to hitting the window/ head of Goliath. I cannot even get the ball of aluminum foil to go in the general direction of the door. How the sling shot is supposed to work has befuddled me. Another frustration is that I only get one try before I have to pass the sling shot to the next kid in the class and wait at the end of the line for another turn.

I am fascinated by the window, though, the etching on it, and what might be seen on the other side. I keep bugging Mom to lift me up to the same height as Goliath, so that I can see what he sees.

After everyone is finished with the sling shot, I finally get Mom to hoist me so that I can look through the window. I want to touch the etching, but Mom does not want me to get fingerprints on the glass. All that is on the other side is the barren hallway wall.

Still, I enjoy the view from up there.



***

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

Life is pretty good right now. This morning, I am recovering from a night at the Dowling House, one of my favorite places to eat and hang out in town.

Yesterday, I ran a 5k race in Tallahassee and saw several of my classmates from law school. We had breakfast at Jim and Milt’s after the race, my first time ever going to that restaurant…

Last week, I wrote a bit of a dark entry about this feeling that I have that there is not much longer for me to live.

That feeling is still there, despite how much I am enjoying myself now.

But what I dread much, much more than my own death is the death of my parents.

I hope they live for many years to come, but it is an inevitable fact that most of our time together has passed, unless they live to be over 100 years old.

This is something that I am incapable of thinking about for long, and I only note it here to balance out my last blog entry.

I worry how my mind will react when one or both pass away. I expect it to snap in some fashion, just as my cousin admits that she has to fight back insanity when she thinks about how her dad/ my uncle died unexpectedly of a heart attack when I was in law school.

My mind has snapped before- in 1997, the darkest year of my life. I was a student at Western Carolina University. I recovered on my own after dropping out of school for a year, but I never looked at the world the same way again. It was a new world with new rules.

A friend with whom I went to Western Carolina University lost her mother a few years ago, and I gather that was an event that changed her.

My grandmother on my mom’s side died in 1995 right after I graduated from high school. Mom talked about that as the single most challenging moment in her life to keep her faith, to believe in a heaven and in a god that loves us as she looked at Grandma lying on the hospital bed after her heart and her breathing had stopped.

I am not sure if there is a useful point to writing this part of my blog entry. Maybe when the dreaded event actually comes to fruition, I can go back and read this and it will help me.

But I doubt it. I imagine my mind will snap again, though in a way probably less severe than in 1997. I will recover, I hope, but it will be a new world again, with new rules for me.

In the meantime, I am doing the best I can to enjoy my life and the time with my parents. I talk to them almost every day on the phone.

Jumping a River, Sliding on Records, and an Evening Nap

Wilmington, North Carolina. Approximately 1981-1983.

In Sunday school class, Mom and the other teacher lay out a light blue blanket on the floor. It represents a river, from some story in the Bible where the people of Israel or something had to cross.



All of us children in the class line up to take turns jumping over it. Some of us make it, some of us do not and land in the “water.”

I am one of the ones that cannot quite jump over the entire “river,” try as I might. Making it over the water is a very real thing in my head. Failure is scary and disappointing.

This game is so popular that the kids want to keep doing it the following Sunday as well. In the week in between, Mom has the blanket at home. I practice in the living room, doing my best to clear it.

“Your heels still land in the water,” Mom tells me.

Some of the older and larger kids in the class can jump over the blanket pretty easily. The next Sunday, Mom and the other teacher take children’s books and line the edge of the blanket, pretending this is also water to make the river wider and more challenging for these kids.

But when it is my turn again, there is only the light blue blanket.

I line up against the wall, giving myself as much room to run as possible. Staring at a spot beyond the far edge of the water, concentrating on it as the place I need to reach, I sprint as hard as I can and then leap…

“Did I make it?” I ask mom.

“You made it,” she says. “Your feet completely cleared the water.”

I pump my fist in the air.

The other Sunday school teacher, an overweight, elderly woman, immediately bends over and begins slapping down a line of books against the blanket for my next try.

Mom must see the disheartened look on my face at this. She tells the woman, “No. He’s done well enough.”

The lady gives Mom a bit of a surprised look, but then picks up the books.

So I jumped over the sky blue river. Victory.

***

Wake Forest, North Carolina. 1983.

We are living with Grandma Carter while Dad searches for a job. Mom is working as a substitute teacher at Millbrook K-12 school.
Of course, at my young age I do not comprehend the stress and strain that is on my family right now.

One day, I am listening to children’s stories and songs on the record player in Grandma’s living room with my younger brother.



I stand on the couch, and the records are laid out on the floor. I do not like sitting or standing in place for very long while I listen, so I take a running jump off the couch and accidentally land on one of the glossy cardboard record sleeves.

To my surprise and delight, I go sliding across the floor standing on the sleeve.

“Wow! Adam, did you see that?”

I quickly line up the sleeve to the spot where I landed and hop back on the couch.

Adam watches carefully as I do another running leap off the couch and again slide some distance.

Soon, he and I are both doing this, and we also quickly learn that we do not need to jump off the couch. Getting a running start on the floor is even better. We scoot across the carpet, riding the record sleeves like surf boards.

The ones that have the record still in them slide much better than the empty sleeves.

Neither my brother nor I are big enough to reach the record player and change it when one ends. Mom comes into the room.

“Hey Mom, watch what we can do!”

Adam and I both give her a demonstration.

“Stop that!” Mom instructs us. “You’ll tear up the records.”

Sure enough, we have put some significant creases in the cardboard and stomped on some of the faces pictured on them.
Fortunately, Adam and I are both light enough that we did not actually break any of the records. Maybe the sleeves are pretty strong.

Later, I ask mom for an old record sleeve that I could use just for sliding. She begrudgingly gives me an empty one. Perhaps I wear it out, or perhaps it definitely needs the record inside it to work, but I never get the one she gave me to slide very well.

***

Live Oak, Florida. Present Day.

This afternoon I went for a six mile run. It was my third six mile run in less than a week. I am trying to get in shape to keep up with some friends from law school who enjoy doing races in Tallahassee. 18+ miles is more than I have run in one week since I was on the high school cross country team in 1994 and 1995. I can do these six mile runs on flat ground in Live Oak in comfortably less than an hour, but I need to be able to do it over hills in Tallahassee in about 45 minutes if I am to keep sight of my friends in a race. That is a tall order, and I am already starting to notice little tweaks, aches and pains.

But I am motivated. These are people I would like to be around, that it would be healthy for me to be around. So I hope it works out, that they enjoy my company and want me to keep coming back for these runs.

The uptick in the distance I run causes carry-over fatigue when I get home from work. A couple of days this week, I collapsed in my recliner after walking in from the job and went to sleep almost immediately.

If a baseball game is on television, I will set that to a low volume and then drift off to sleep. If there is no baseball game on, then I play a movie.

One of my favorite movies to go to sleep to is Blade Runner. I saw it for the first time in college, and did not think much of the film then. As I have gotten older, though, I have come to enjoy the world it creates. Two of the scenes in the movie are among my all-time favorites. And though it is uneven in parts, particularly with Harrison Ford’s narration, overall it is one of the best science fiction movies ever made, a terrific futuristic film noir.



I had a vivid dream during my evening nap this week, while Blade Runner was quietly playing.

I dreamed that I was back in law school, that I was a permanent student, having seen many three year cycles come and go. I am no longer young, but actually 37 years old. I sit alone at a table at a Student Bar Association event. It is at a nightclub of some sort. The law school students are all crowded around the bar, ordering drinks with their backs to me, except for the newly elected SBA president, who stands in profile at the end of the bar.

I watch him and marvel at how young and full of life everyone is. Then there is a pain in my chest, and I have the distinct feeling that I am about to die.

The thought that goes through my mind, that I know will be my last thought, is that I did my best to enjoy this. I did my best to enjoy being young. A stern religious upbringing , severe acne well into my 20s, and what was referred to as “autistic tendencies” were obstacles that impeded me, especially with girls, but I did the best I could once I understood myself better.

There is no feeling or fear that I am about to be judged by someone or something on the good and the bad things that I have done or on the beliefs I hold. There is only my hope that I did the best I could to appreciate the life that was given to me.

I know that I cannot rewind time, that I cannot be young again. I am not a part of this group who stands around the bar. I say out loud, “I did the best I could with the circumstances as I understood them.” But no one is paying attention.

Then there is a feeling of reluctant acceptance that my time is over. A pop in my chest. I exhale and die.

I literally die in my dream…

And then I wake up from my nap. The pain in my chest is very real, and I struggle to sit up straight in my recliner and shake the cobwebs from my head.

Over the past few weeks and months, I have had the uneasy feeling that I am going to die very soon. Of course, I hope it is all just nonsense and that many years remain to me. I am guessing that the feeling partly comes because I have settled happily into Live Oak and this job. Never in my adult life have I stayed in one place or kept the same job for very long.

I have been in Live Oak less than a year as well, but this feels like a place where I could live and a job that I could do for the rest of my life if I am lucky. It feels like a sort of last stop. I think perhaps my body and brain do not know how to react to that. And I probably never will trust this to last long, based on my other experiences.

Anyway, one of my all-time favorite scenes from any movie was coming up in Blade Runner when I awoke…

Roy, a type of superhuman clone gone rogue, has arrived at the last minutes of his pre-programmed four year life span. He has developed his own emotions and questions about the meaning of it all. Roy decides to spare the life of Deckard, the man trying to terminate him for the danger he presents to humans, and these are Roy's last words:

Roy: I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time like tears in rain. Time to die.

On the written page, it does not seem so powerful. Performed by Rutger Hauer, though, in a setting from Ridley Scott, it takes on potency. Here is the link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_saUN4j7Gw

Perhaps in the future, I should just try to sleep without a movie playing in the background.