.jpg)
Twenty-five years ago, my column ran Tuesdays and Thursdays in a cramped spot in the features pages. This one is 590 words long, or about 2/3 of its current size. This is what I call a riff — no news, no sources, just noodling on a particular topic, thinking about something that usually gets passed over with a shrug.
Not much sunlight this past month. But as any photographer can tell you, overcast days are great for providing clear images. Which is why our car looked extra awful, in the midwinter morning gloom, parked on the street in front of the apartment, the dirt of the season weighing heavy upon it.
"I took it by the car filth and had it filthed," I said to my wife, floating a joke to try to make light of the situation. "They missed a spot."
"Where?" she said, skeptically. She was right. There wasn't a clean square inch.
What amazes me now, hours later, thinking about the scene is, at that moment, sweeping my gaze over the crusted vehicle, I felt a sort of pride.
There is a glorious tension about a dirty car. On one hand, it screams out for soap and water. Something in your gut wants to see a mob clutching big wet sponges rush in from the wings and descend upon it, feverishly scrubbing the dirt away, making the car gleam.
That's why strangers — who generally don't care if you have bad brakes or no brakes or a license plate that expired three years ago — nevertheless line up to trace the words "WASH ME" with their fingers in the brown film on the hoods and trunks and back windows of particularly offensive vehicles. Usually in big letters. They are willing to sully their fingertips for the pleasure of drawing public attention to your shame.
But I suspect they also just want to touch it. There's something weirdly wonderful about dirty cars. A really squalid automobile, like, oh, a coral reef, takes a long time to reach full maturity.
I think, at least subconsciously, those "WASH ME" scribblers just want to disturb something pristine and perfect, the way neighborhood kids will gleefully tramp through the scenic fresh snowfall in your front yard, leaving behind angels and footprints and, if you're unlucky, phrases of their own devising.
Not that I wouldn't prefer to drive a clean car. That's a great feeling. Fresh from the car wash, looking newer than I've seen it in months, little water droplets shining like diamonds on the crystal clear windshield, the car rolling out into the street which suddenly seems all warm and friendly, with happy Mr. Sun smiling down and pedestrians and kids and dogs all stopping to gaze in admiration and dreamily sweep their arms back and forth in big waving gestures.
But car washes take time. And who has time? After work it's dark (heck, this time of year, after lunch it's dark) and you want to get home. And nobody gets their cars washed before work. I've seen garages that will wash your car while you're working, but those usually cost about $27.50, and for that price I'd rather just wait until the dirt condenses into thick sheets and sheers off the car, spinning off to shatter on the road behind, the way big panels of snow will fly off the roofs of cars left unbrushed after being outside during a blizzard.
Unless the finish of my car is already so mottled and corroded from never being washed, plus the drippings of acid water in decaying parking garages, that the thick sheets of dirt adhere instead of falling off.
In that case, come spring, I can seed the car with grass and watch it grow. That would look great, for a while. I have the sneaking suspicion that, by July, it would all be scorched and dead from lack of watering and general neglect.
—Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 3, 1998
Not much sunlight this past month. But as any photographer can tell you, overcast days are great for providing clear images. Which is why our car looked extra awful, in the midwinter morning gloom, parked on the street in front of the apartment, the dirt of the season weighing heavy upon it.
"I took it by the car filth and had it filthed," I said to my wife, floating a joke to try to make light of the situation. "They missed a spot."
"Where?" she said, skeptically. She was right. There wasn't a clean square inch.
What amazes me now, hours later, thinking about the scene is, at that moment, sweeping my gaze over the crusted vehicle, I felt a sort of pride.
There is a glorious tension about a dirty car. On one hand, it screams out for soap and water. Something in your gut wants to see a mob clutching big wet sponges rush in from the wings and descend upon it, feverishly scrubbing the dirt away, making the car gleam.
That's why strangers — who generally don't care if you have bad brakes or no brakes or a license plate that expired three years ago — nevertheless line up to trace the words "WASH ME" with their fingers in the brown film on the hoods and trunks and back windows of particularly offensive vehicles. Usually in big letters. They are willing to sully their fingertips for the pleasure of drawing public attention to your shame.
But I suspect they also just want to touch it. There's something weirdly wonderful about dirty cars. A really squalid automobile, like, oh, a coral reef, takes a long time to reach full maturity.
I think, at least subconsciously, those "WASH ME" scribblers just want to disturb something pristine and perfect, the way neighborhood kids will gleefully tramp through the scenic fresh snowfall in your front yard, leaving behind angels and footprints and, if you're unlucky, phrases of their own devising.
Not that I wouldn't prefer to drive a clean car. That's a great feeling. Fresh from the car wash, looking newer than I've seen it in months, little water droplets shining like diamonds on the crystal clear windshield, the car rolling out into the street which suddenly seems all warm and friendly, with happy Mr. Sun smiling down and pedestrians and kids and dogs all stopping to gaze in admiration and dreamily sweep their arms back and forth in big waving gestures.
But car washes take time. And who has time? After work it's dark (heck, this time of year, after lunch it's dark) and you want to get home. And nobody gets their cars washed before work. I've seen garages that will wash your car while you're working, but those usually cost about $27.50, and for that price I'd rather just wait until the dirt condenses into thick sheets and sheers off the car, spinning off to shatter on the road behind, the way big panels of snow will fly off the roofs of cars left unbrushed after being outside during a blizzard.
Unless the finish of my car is already so mottled and corroded from never being washed, plus the drippings of acid water in decaying parking garages, that the thick sheets of dirt adhere instead of falling off.
In that case, come spring, I can seed the car with grass and watch it grow. That would look great, for a while. I have the sneaking suspicion that, by July, it would all be scorched and dead from lack of watering and general neglect.
—Originally published in the Sun-Times, Feb. 3, 1998
A dirty vehicle is a soap box for those with nothing new to say. The photo of the rusting coupe reminds me of a minor American tragedy. The deserts of the West were a repository for abandoned classic cars. Searching for spare parts there in the early 70's I saw car and truck bodies, stripped of parts but also void of the rust I'd seen in Chicago boneyards. Since then, every time I would see a TV story about a classic car barn find, I remembered the hulks lined up in the California sun, waiting for rebirth. But in the 90's I heard that the auto industry, to eliminate older, gas guzzling cars from the rolls, so they could sell more new SUVs and such, destroyed them all. The thousands of junked vehicles were still titled and eliminating them affected the gas mileage averages which had been mandated by the government. The cars were crushed and sold to recyclers and didn't make any positive progress toward the intended purpose of the law that caused their demise.
ReplyDeleteFor me, Midwestern winters have always been hell. I've hated the snow and the cold all my life. I would sometimes scrawl "WINTER SUCKS!" on a windshield that was covered in fresh snow, or in gray schmutz (the Yiddish word for dirt or grime). Once in a while, I just wrote "YETCH!" I think it got my message across. I still do it occasionally.
ReplyDeleteNever heard the observation that cloudy days are best for clear photographs.
ReplyDelete