We Were Born to Be Wild. We Can Climb So High. I Never Want to Die...
After Jeff died, I spent a lot of time thinking about life. When you live alone in a boarding house, you have plenty of time, and in my case, too much time. The thought of dying, or someone else close to me dying, scared the crap out of me. I continued drinking heavily and might've even turned it up a notch. I guess that's what losing a good friend at such a young age can do to you.
I was working for my friend Steve (aka Pokey) doing landscape construction when the GOAT began having mechanical issues and the rag top started leaking. In my situation, it was cheaper to take the GOAT off the road and buy a shit box for short money than to try and fix it. We called 'em winter beaters. There was no need to drive a hot car in the cold New England weather and get 'em covered with road salt when you could buy a beater.
I bought a sun-faded, light blue, 1963 4-door Chevy Impala for $150 from an old man whose decision to stop driving wasn't his own. He claimed nobody ever sat in the back seat, which absolutely got my attention.
The Impala had been well-maintained, and with a six-cylinder engine, it was gonna be a lot better on gas than the GOAT. When I opened the trunk and saw how big it was, I knew it was the right car for me. In a boarding house, you can only get so comfortable living with strangers, and there are usually good reasons why someone ends up there. I certainly had mine. It's never a permanent living arrangement, and the bathroom is more public than private. Even though I could lock the door to my room, I felt uncomfortable leaving my worldly possessions in there. The Impala's trunk was the perfect solution to my dilemma.
The 14-year-old car was a locking suitcase on wheels, and I could take it everywhere I went. Once the car was mine, I swapped the wide tires and factory mag wheels from the GOAT with the basic stuff on the Impala. Then I installed my aftermarket radio and filled the trunk with my worldly possessions, which included my father's baseball glove and the Del Crandall autograph model catcher's mitt he bought me when I was eleven.
At the local watering hole on any given night, you could find familiar faces swapping stories and telling lies. In its heyday, Thackeray's was like a crowded bus full of regulars who partied into the wee hours. We ran up huge tabs, often closing the place.
Fortunately, it was only a few miles from Dick's house in East Walpole, and no matter how fucked up I got, I could crawl home without wrapping myself around a telephone pole.
It was a night like any other. My friends and I sat at the bar and ordered Thackburgers, which were oversized sirloin burgers stacked with ham and cheese on restaurant-quality bulky rolls. They were served with thick-cut steak fries and a generous mound of slaw, all of which filled an oversized oval plate. After a long day of landscape construction, we all needed nutrition, and once we finished eating, we slowly eased our way into the real reason we were there.
Pokey left early, but me and a few others continued drinking at the bar and carrying on like there was no tomorrow.
The bar closed at 1:00 am, and by 12:30, we were already being told it was last call. We stumbled out through the double doors and into the parking lot where, after some late-night trash-talking, we headed for our cars. I had trouble finding mine, and at first, I was willing to admit that I'd probably had a few too many, but then I remembered I parked between Dave's Firebird and Bambi's Challenger. Their cars were there, but mine wasn't.
Pokey knew how to unlock and start the Impala without the key, and I just knew he was pranking me. He either took the car or parked it behind the mall just to fuck with me. I pounded on the door to Thackeray's until Jimmy, one of the bartenders, opened it. I explained that my car was missing and I had to call my buddy. Jimmy let me use the phone behind the bar, and I called Pokey, knowing his phone was on the nightstand next to his bed and the ring wouldn't wake up his mother, who was sound asleep on the other side of the house. His dad worked nights at UPS, 11-7.
Right after Pokey picked up and said, "Hello," I snapped back, "Where the fuck is my car?"
Pokey was pissed. "What the fuck are you talkin' about, Vin?"
"I know you took the Impala! Where is it?"
"I didn't take your fucking car! I'm going back to sleep. Don't call me again!" Then he hung up abruptly.
I walked outside, and when Dave and Bambi, who had been waiting for me, asked me where Pokey put my car, I told them he didn't take it. It must've been stolen. I shoulda never put the tires and wheels from the GOAT on it. There was no other reason to steal it. It was just an old fuckin' car…
Forget the car. The bigger tragedy was that all my worldly possessions, which I thought were safe in the trunk, were gone. I didn't care that my empty wallet was in the glove box, my cheap aviators were hanging off the rearview, or that my favorite dungaree jacket was draped across the passenger side of the bench seat; all I cared about was my two baseball gloves, one which had been my father's and the Del Crandall catcher's mitt he had given me.
By the time Bambi gave me a ride back to the boarding house, it was after 2:00 a.m. I didn't talk the entire way home. I was trying to process what had just happened.
When I woke up in the morning and looked out the front window of my room, and my car wasn't parked on the grass where it usually was, the reality set in. All my worldly possessions were gone, and one of my best friends had just been buried. I was in a dark place and started pacing around the room and freaking the fuck out.
I called Pokey, distraught, and explained what had happened and why I called him at 1:30 am. He had become my best friend, and he drove right over, picked me up, and got me out of there.
We stopped in the center of Sharon and talked to the cop parked by the Co-Operative bank, and I told him my story. He said he'd be glad to take me to all the places stolen cars were normally found to see if mine ended up in any of those spots. I jumped in the cruiser and told Pokey I'd catch up with him later, after the search.
We drove to several spots, but my Impala wasn't there. The cop dropped me off at Pokey's house.
I didn't want to go back to the boarding house in East Walpole. It had been a place where bad things happened, and I was beginning to believe my life was cursed living there.
Pokey's mother was a realtor, and she said she'd find me a better place to live…
She found a small, affordable one-bedroom bungalow by Lake Massapoag in Sharon that was available on the first of the month, just two weeks away. I had a new place to live. I just needed to come up with some money to fix the GOAT and get it back on the road.
To be continued…
*All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental…