Chores

Some things are important. If you have two cars and two drivers, and one car has to take the kid to school while the other has to shlep back to Santa Rosa to meet with the movers, then a flat tire on one of the cars is a serious bitch. A cracked windshield isn’t quite as big a deal, unless you cross a cop on a bad day.

About the windshield: first, it got starred by a flying rock on the 101, then a trip to Medford in the middle of summer turned the star into a spider. I replaced that windshield and the very next week (again on the 101) a truck kicked up a rock which starred my windshield. This time, I said fuck it, I’m letting this thing ride for as long as I can.

Over a year later, with the heat of Santa Rosa and Bakersfield, the star had become a great crawly vine which crossed 2/3 of the windshield. Not good, but I could never find the time to do anything about it. I figured I would have to drop the car off and wait a few days to pick it up. That’s what Shyster’s Auto Body in Santa Rosa told me. They also wanted to charge about $350 to do the job.

I put on a spare this morning, thus proving I can still change a tire, although there’s precious little else I can do to a car these days. Used to be (with my mom’s Mustang) I could do a tune-up, check the spark gaps, check the brakes, pack the bearings, fiddle with the carburetor. And all the usual stuff like change the various filters and do an oil change. Today’s cars, I haven’t a clue.

The manager at Midas was a pretty cool dude so I asked for a rec on the windshield. He knew a good place at the south end of town. Some kids had run through his neighborhood bashing in car windows, and he’d gotten every last one of his destroyed. Go to the place next to the junkyard, he said. They’ll take care of you.

After my workout, I drove over. It’s a place called Adam’s, and the owner (Adam, I presume) could have been Hispanic, or Arabic, or Greek — it was impossible to say. Another customer, a fellow from Trinidad who was getting a new windshield for his Avalon, told me that Adam was fluent in five languages. Adam reminded me of John Belushi’s deli counter character: always in motion, foul-mouthed (Belushi’s character would have been foul-mouthed, had the censors allowed it), funny as hell. Looked to be in his 50s. A guy delivering more windshields, also fifty-something, was complaining that he needed a sister. Adam told him, “Bring over your mother. My father, one Viagra, he’ll fuck her good, bam! you’ll have a sister.”

I thought, This is my kind of small business.

The other customer and I shot the shit while Adam and his guys worked on our cars. We stood out there in the heat and the humidity when we could have been inside, in the air conditioned office. But it was fun watching them work — not something I’d ever seen before — and besides, we were enjoying each other’s company. When we were ready to leave, we exchanged cards, or rather, he gave me his card and I scribbled my name and phone number on the back of a receipt. I’m terrible about keeping business cards handy.

So, yay! I’ve made my first friend in Bako. He lives close to where we’ll soon be living, and even though he works for an Evil Empire Corporation, I could tell he was cool. And even if he’s an evil minion, it’s still good to associate with people outside of medicine. Too tempting to talk shop, otherwise.

Tire change, windshield change (for less than half what the Santa Rosa outfit wanted to charge), four loads of laundry, make dinner, do the dishes. Oh, and a one hour workout, too. Quite the productive day.

D.

Walnut, August 22, 2009. Category: such as it is.

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