Ok, so my mother is a bad driver. Just ask my father as soon as he’s done crying because their car insurance went up.
So my father, who likes to pinch pennies anyway, comes up with a ‘good idea’. His revelation? Let’s go to the junkyard to find a new mirror for his van…to replace the one that my mother smacked off on a tree or something.
First things first. Let’s remove the old mirror. sounds simple enough i think. Yeah right. It’s like performing brain surgery. He has an electric mirror so we are wired. I just know this means that one or both of us will wind up in the ER blowing smoke out our nostrils. Disconnecting the battery is for ‘little wussy boys’ so we press onward.
Step 1: Break the door panel.
Before we can break the door panel we must look like we know what we are doing. He looks and finds 2 screws. Before we know it, BAM, those screws are out of the panel and on the dashboard for safe keeping. I pause to revel in our moment. Next up, removing that panel. Yup. Problem. It only budges a fraction of an inch. My father starts shaking. He needs a cigarette. He goes inside and I look at the panel. Ha. I see what needs to be done. I pull. I pull harder. I look for screws to unscrew. I pull one last time and there we have it. My father comes back outside. ‘I broke your door panel dude.’ ‘You broke it?’ ‘I broke it. Sorry.’
Step 2: Look really stupid trying to figure out how to get the mirror off the van.
This one was easier than it looks. My father took a Phillips head screwdriver out of his tool pouch. He used this screwdriver to pull back the panel…a task made much easier thanks to me. He looks at the mirror from this angle and asks me, ‘how in the hell does this come apart?’ Dunno. Let’s try everything stupid first. He lifts the screwdriver to a screw which seems to hold the mirror in place. Lefty Loosey. The screw joins it’s brothers on the dashboard. Nothing happens. I look at my father and he looks at me. He goes after another screw. Now a Brotherhood of Screws is forming on the dashboard. Still, nothing happens. ‘Bear’ (the nickname that he gave me when i was just a little squirt) ‘hold on to the mirror’. I reach out and almost get to touch the mirror when -plop- the mirror cover pops off and is dangling off the rock solid guts of the mirror. We look at each other again. He uses profanity and goes for another cigarette. I grin at the tool pouch and go in for the kill.
Hey! What’s this!? It’s a little piece of plastic that pops right off with a flathead screwdriver! Duhn duhn duhn Duuuhn! I place the piece where else but on the dashboard. Guess what was behind it? Three massive looking screws that will require the use of a ratchet. NICE.
My father returns to see me in his van again. ‘What’s going on?’ I know that he was thinking that we were making a mistake but I was confident that our mistake would come later in the day…..in a way, we are both right. Onward. ‘Dude, I found screws.’ He inspects the area and shakes my hand. We both grin with the hope that we don’t have to look too stupid today. Yeah. It took another 40 minutes and a huge chunk of skin off my hand and forearm but dammit, we got that mirror off.
Step 3: Junkyard – the Prelude.
Oh yeah. It’s still early in the day. We get into my car which has 2 mirrors and take off aimed directly for the junkyard. And what would be the point of going to the junkyard if we couldn’t get lost? Now let’s face it, you never find a junkyard next to a movie theater, right? They are always in a questionable section of town. So, lost as we were, we headed to the questionable side of the suburban town that we were in. After only ten minutes we took a wrong turn that placed us directly in front of that junkyard. A very popular junkyard, I might add. A junkyard with on street parking and it is a very busy street that shouldn’t have on street parking as the man driving the huge truck that nearly killed me pointed out on his way past.
So, after my father wishes that he could smoke, he walks along the side of the road with me. We make it. Were in the hell do we go? I twist up my face and tilt my head to the right. ‘That’s a pink building’ my father states firmly. ‘yes it is. Let’s just shut our pie holes and get the mirror.’ As we are walkin I notice that this junkyard seems to only have vehicles. ‘What the hell?’ He then looks at me and says, ‘didn’t I tell you it was a pick your own?’ Well that he did but I thought that he was confusing the junkyard with the farmer’s market. At least I hoped he had. I was in no mood to pick his own. So we walk up to the pink building and he holds his ratchet set closer.
Step 4: Junkyard – It begins
We enter the pink building. It is chock full of men standing in front of the counter and 2 guys behind that counter, ‘Mash’ and ‘Jimmy’. Mash is a skinny man with beady eyes and 4 teeth on the bottom. He scared the hell outta me but he was obviously in charge because he had the laptop. My father starts, ‘How ya doing today, Pal?’ Mash looks rather tired but insists he’s ok and wants to know what we are looking for. Mash confirms that he has a van of the same make and model but ‘cain’t gaaruntee thar’s a mirrah on it’. I _knew_ that we would make our mistake later in the day. I look out the window as ‘Jimmy’ grabs the greasy sign in sheets to place new greasy sign in sheets on the clipboard. Holy Mother of God. There has got to be a mile of cars and none of them are identifiable by looking at them.
We get the location…on top of the hill to the left…and go out into this horrifying sight. We walk by a few rows of cars and I smile. ‘I like this place’ I say. I get no response. I turn around and my father is 2 rows back walking like it’s snowing out and his shoes are tied together…neither of which was happening. ‘What’s wrong?’ ‘Nuthin.’ He’s 63 and there is always something wrong but I believed him and we pressed on.
After the 5th time of asking him what was wrong and it being nuthin, I decided to go on ahead of him. Once i had to point out that there was a patch of mud and motor oil on the ground that looked like quicksand, but he avoided it easily so my survival skills would have to wait. I slipped into one of the rows. This was like being in a war zone. cars and vans were gutted. Glass was everywhere. Metal parts littered the ground. It was awesome.
Step 5: Junkyard – Staying Alive
I pop my head up from the wreckage and see my father looking at the ground and hunched over. The ratchets are almost dangling from his hand and he clearly needs to sit down.
“YO!” I call to him. “Pick a car and sit your ass down!”
He’s had open heart surgery. He has COPD (and of course he still smokes). He’s been in vehicles that have hit telephone poles and he’s been thrown out of the windshield. He’s been hit head on, was trapped under the dashboard crushing his foot and causing a twisting compound fracture of his femur. He’s been blown up – literally. He’s had a heart attack and TIA at least once. All around tough guy.
Yeah, so he sits down on the shell of an old Chrysler. With him nicely tucked away, sort of, I climb the hill, making my way to the Holy Grail. The mirror.
I get myself all excited. I see a van. I run up to it and, aaahhhh….disappointment. It’s a Chevy. Not the make I’m looking for. And next to it was a red Ford whose insides were gutted by every sort of tool imaginable. Next to the red Ford van was a Camaro that looked to be from 1988. There was still good pickens in that one, but not the mirror I needed so I moved on to the next row.
I got all excited because I thought that I saw the make of van I was looking for. A Mercury. Yes, a Mercury. But as tripped my way across the row to get to it, I realized that it wasn’t what I was looking for. This is when my father decided to rejoin the hunt. A full 40 minutes later we stumbled upon the Mercury.
My father shook my hand. I have to admit, it was a pretty satisfying moment. Especially since it had a mirrah. I walked around to the passenger side. “I got this” I told my father. I took a deep sigh of relief and raised my screwdriver. I imagine that I stood there for only 15 seconds or so, but it felt like at least an hour as our whole day played out in my mind. I looked over at my father and noticed how old he seemed to get during the course of the day.
“What’s wrong?”
“Dude, it’s a manual mirror.”
“You’re shitting me!”
No, Sir, I am not.
We made our way out of the junkyard. Our shoulders hung low as we walked. My father threw his tools into the back seat of my car. We were both disgusted. I turned on the car and just sat there. My father’s wheezing was as loud as I’ve ever heard it.
“Well,” he said gasping for breath, “We tried.”
Yeah we did.
Step 6 – The Final Insult.
We drove back to the van that started our journey. I dropped of the Old Man and went home.
Next day I stopped by to see how he was. I found a new, shinny mirrah sitting on the passenger side door. My father, who likes to pinch pennies, came out of the house and pointed at the van. “Did you see?”
“Yeah I saw. Did you go back to the junk yard?”
“Nope. Went to the auto supply place. $129. It was easy.”
Yes, indeed.
