Monthly Archives: January 2013

It pains us to write this letter

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To the McKelveys,

You’ve been our closest, dearest friends for as long as we can remember. Some of the happiest times of our lives have been spent in your company and I think I speak for Bob as well when I say that just about every happy memory of our adult lives has been shared with you.

We love you as we love our own flesh and blood family, and if it came right down to it, you might be the only people we would pull into a life raft ahead of our own offspring.  You’ve always been there in our time of need. When I needed a kidney, you, Helen, gave me one of yours (thank you so much, it’s working perfectly!). When Bob lost all of our money in the Madoff scheme, the two of you paid our mortgage until we got back on our feet.

I think you know how we feel about you, but in case you didn’t, Bob and I wanted to make sure to put it down on paper.

As you know, each year we drop one of our couple friends – a tradition that goes back well over thirty years now. It all started with the Kruzkowiczes, that annoyingly cloying couple, and it just seemed like such a good idea at the time that we “cull the crop” every year. Out with the old and in with the new! It keeps things fresh.

Well, due to the thinning of our corps of friends through our lovely tradition and the usual kinds of attrition, this leaves us with just you as friends. And over the last year, we’ve really come to rely on you since we really have no one else, and you’re so good-natured and generous with redundant organs, we hoped to never come to this point.

But, the Jenkinses were killed in that horrific crash on the cross county, and the Dows retired to Alaska, and – of all the gall – the Dewbys dropped us. Us! Can you believe the horrible things she said at the Polar Opposites Convention? So I’m afraid that leaves just you. I wish it didn’t have to be this way, but tradition is tradition.

To get things rolling we’re rescinding our Thanksgiving invitation and, of course, we won’t be taking the cruise together. Please have Apollo return Bob’s chain saw and I think it only fair that you leave the knitting circle, Helen, since I’m the founder. That leaves just me, so I guess the circle comes to an end as well. I hope it’s OK that I keep using the kidney, but I understand if you want it back. If things were reversed, I might do the same.

All the best,

Bob and Donna

Ghia trouble in the desert, 1984, the tail end of wandering

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It was fall, 1984 and I was alone again in the Ghia, this time driving east through a desert, either the one in southeastern California or western Arizona. I don’t remember. The years and events and chemicals have chewed away that particular detail. There was a downpour in the desert and the Ghia began to have problems breathing. It wasn’t getting enough air, or a seal had broken creating a vacuum leak. It happened before.

The car wheezed along and I found my way to a town with a service station. The mechanic looked at my car and said, “You want to see Old Bill; he’s the only guy round here who fixes VWs. Just go straight out that road a few miles. Turn right first road after you see the big rock.”

I got there and the clutch cable snapped along the way- no big deal, I could fix that. The clouds were starting to break up and it was getting hot again and the blue sky turned the storm clouds a shining silvery gray. I rang the bell and banged on the door a few minutes, then I went back to the car and pulled down the roof and sat and read the workshop  manual knowing it would make the car fix itself. After a while, I heard a door creak open and looked to see the man transluscent behind the screen.

“I can’t go anywhere. There’s a vacuum problem and the clutch cable just snapped.”

The door slammed shut and a minute later the garage door opened from the inside and he said, “wheel it on in here.”

I did. He looked like I might expect, old, sunburnt, scraggly hair, no t-shirt under overalls. No baseball cap. He looked under the hood.

“You want me to start it?”

“Without a clutch cable…nah. I heard it from the road. Take a couple hours. Need two manifold boots and a clutch cable. Got to go to Newton’s for those. You can sit over by that table and wait. It’s shady.”

“Thanks. How much you think this is gonna cost.”

“Twenty, thirty bucks.” I looked down and mentally counted down my remaining money. I could do it if I slept on the ground a few nights.

“We’ll see. You might maybe be able to work it off.”

Old Bill – who didn’t look all that old – climbed into a pristine but roofless microbus and started it. VW motors don’t roar, but they do sing when they’re feeling up to it and this one was in perfect voice, the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of vavles perfectly gapped opening and closing in perfect Volkswagen time. He sat there, engine idling, his head tilted slightly and an arm suspended in front of him like a conductor’s. Then he drove off leaving a cloud of desert dust.