CLUI's Crown Victoria

(This was written in 1997)...    I was driving through Nevada a few weeks ago, returning from a wedding in Las Vegas to Wendover, Utah, where I was staying for a month-long artist in residency program.  I was driving an unregistered car that I had borrowed, which, ironically, looked like a white, unmarked police car.  Somehow, the adoption of the appearances of "officialdom" while operating outside the law, coupled with the interruption of my usual routine and change in environment had put me in a particularly interrogative mood.  I was looking at the Styrofoam coffee cup in the blue plastic drink holder that clipped into the window slot.  The cup and the holder came with the car.  They formed part of the aesthetic of the whole vehicle and the landscape and I didn't want to interrupt.  The Styrofoam cup was emblazoned with a decorative -in the loosest sense of the word- landscape that wrapped around its middle.  It was printed in dull, primary red.  The landscape was composed of several layers, each layer having a simple pattern that one might interpret as either texture or color, depending on how many layers of abstraction one infers into the cups creation.  The sky was polka dots in a diamond pattern, the clouds were left white, but outlined.  The next layer was distant mountains, small zigzag along the top, completely red.  Then the nearer mountains, larger zigzag, regularly interrupting the above layer, filled with diagonal lines, closely packed.  The next layer down is the plain, filled with plus signs, by far the most interesting pattern.  Next comes the shoulder of the road, small, dense, diagonal cross-hatching filling in the narrow space between the upper, zigzag and lower, straight line.  Next comes the road, a solid red band.  Then the nearer shoulder of the road, similar to the first but slightly larger and less dense.  Another band of waving plus signs at the bottom lets us know we're standing in the fruited plain.

                  Why on earth did anyone bother to decorate this cup, particularly with this bland, RED, monochromatic landscape that just couldn't appeal to anyone?  The cup itself was not for sale, it's the kind of cup you get a large coffee in at the only gas station for 200 miles.  Even if it was attractive which it was not, the peculiar design is not a selling point.  It doesn't advertise anything either, so that can't explain the added cost of manufacture.  I was starting to wonder whether this cup, and therefor a whole army of banal objects, was part of an insidious arsenal aimed at nothing less than the destruction of visual sensitivity.  

                  The landscape of Nevada and Utah is vast.  At 85mph the white cruiser drifted slowly across the Great Basin.  Changes happen very slowly, which generally allows you to continue mental discourses without distraction for a long time.  But suddenly, something did change, the road turned red.  I have seen other roads of various colors, usually shades of purple and brown, which are the color of the local rock.  But this red was bright for a road. For a few seconds I considered the possibility that it was an art piece.  I was in the land of earthworks -Spiral Jetty, Sun Tunnels, Rodin Crater, etc.- so maybe someone had painted the road red in this desolate and otherwise unchanging place.  No, it was red asphalt, it looked beautiful with the sun setting behind me.  I pulled over to take a picture, though pictures never quite capture strangely colored landscapes.  I pushed the door of the car open with my foot and pointed the camera out the door. Strange composition,  Above the gravel of the shoulder, the road was a perfectly horizontal red band with the  perfectly horizontal gray band of the opposite shoulder sitting on top of it.  Above that was the mottled green/yellow of the plain leading up to the mountains.  On the right hand edge of the viewfinder was the Styrofoam cup.  The red of the road and the red of the cup were identical.  The horizontal landscape was undeniable.  The metaphor of endless scenery circling the cup was unmistakable.

                  All of this is really an elaborate explanation of what I found myself experiencing which was a very specific type of doubt.  I had accepted the cup as being utterly false, an abstraction of an abstraction.  I had looked at it as a complete failure at the trivial task of decoration.  But what do you call it when you begin to doubt something's' falseness.  I had imagined that nothing on the cup could be true, a red landscape?  What's red in a landscape.  But, plainly, before my eyes, was one element of the cup that COULD BE TRUE, where I had thought it all to be clearly false.  A shadow of truth.

How to Lose a Cadillac and your mind...

74 Eldorado Convertible on the Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah.

"Hey, I've got an idea. What if I buy Peter's caddy for my brother, and then we give it a test drive up to Wendover Utah?" Igor asked, but I could see that as convoluted as it might seem, the plan would move forward with or without me.  Peter needed to get rid of his Cadillac, Igor wanted to help scout for potential artist residency sites with Matt Coolidge who was running the Center for Land Use Interpretation but he needed a more reliable vehicle than any of us had at that moment to make the drive. He didn't need, and couldn't justify, buying another vehicle but maybe his brother needed this classic car.  I had gotten to know Igor a little this year, he was somewhat infamous for his art intervention project The Barby Liberation Organization.  The "BLO" bought dozens of G.I. Joe and Barby dolls and switched their voice boxes, then "Shop-Gave" (the opposite of Shop-Lifting) them to toy stores before Christmas.  There's something about Barby yelling "Shoot 'em Up!" and G.I. Joe saying "Math's hard, let's go shopping" that removes the illusion and lets us acknowledge what they're really saying. I only knew of Matt, vaguely, but any plan that involved riding in convertibles, and looking for real-estate on some sort of post-governmental military sites seemed like a good adventure. Having just formulated this idea, Igor was hoping to leave around 3:00 pm, before the traffic got bad.  Somehow, he managed to make the transaction, transfer the title and throw some stuff together to pick me up at the appointed time, the plan was afoot. But, as we headed north out of San Diego to pick up Matt in Los Angeles, the accelerator started sticking. A bad sign so early in a road-trip, especially in a car you have never driven. But both Igor and I are handy and optimistic; we pull over and find that one or two strands of the throttle cable have frayed, and are getting snagged.  We massage the strands together, cut the bits that stick out, and off we go.  We only had to stop once or twice before picking up Matt to adjust our repair. With all three of us comfortably sitting in the front (this car is w i d e and there is no transmission hump because it is front-wheel drive!) we set off on the 11 or 12 hour drive to Wendover.  Luckily, there's not much moving the gas pedal once you're on the long road there, so we spend much of the trip talking about the Center for Land Use Interpretation (CLUI). It's too long to explain CLUI if you don't know it, so just follow this link if you're curious..  Matt was the central and founding figure at CLUI, and he could -and did- talk at length about every area we passed through on the drive.  CLUI presents the myriad ways that humans interact with the land with sublime dryness, from government/industrial projects that are "too big to see" to systems that have infiltrated our daily life so much that they ARE the forest. Presentations are deadpan, apolitical, and highly informative.  His approach was to give people access to information, a lot of it and of the widest variety, and let them formulate their own conclusions.  He had already done an exhibition in Wendover, a town that straddled two states and two states of mind.  Wendover Nevada is a casino town, serving the needs of Utah with services that are illegal in Utah.  Wendover Utah was once the largest military base in the world. Now mostly abandoned, the leftover assets served those who needed cheap storage or lots of space to do dangerous things like test bombs, have races, or shoot films that might involve bombs or races.

We found the non-descript barracks in which Matt had mounted his last exhibition.  It was documentation of all the "notable" industrial, governmental or military sites within 50 miles of Wendover, presented as large photos accompanied with text, delivered in CLUI's "just the facts" terrifying objectivity.  We stayed in a little partitioned-off room in the barracks and the next day went about exploring the otherworldly landscapes and attractions that Wendover had to offer.

Later in the afternoon, we headed over to the Bonneville Salt Flats.  The whole area is the lake bed of the ancient Lake Bonneville, but there are only certain parts where the salt is thick enough that you can drive on them.  All around the Salt Flats, apparently, are salty mud flats. You can see evidence of this from almost anywhere along Rt 80 in the entire state of Utah; perhaps because the scenery doesn't change for so long, people just go crazy and drive off the highway onto the mudflats to do donuts or stomp out a pleasing message to other motorists or a former lover.  Anyway, we got to the Salt Flats and Matt guided us through the very specific entrance you need to follow to stay on the hard surface. I had never been there or anywhere like it before; it's SALT! Yeah, I know, but until you lick it, somehow it doesn't become real.  Just btw, don't lick it! There's all kind of industry and toxic incinerators out there, not to mention that there's all kinds of salt we DON'T EAT and even the one we do eat isn't good for you. Still, it was so weird to lick the ground and have it be SALT.

So, it's the golden hour and we're on the Salt Flats all by ourselves, and we have an Eldorado convertible with the largest engine ever put in a production car -500 cubic inches! What do you think we're going to do?  We arbitrarily pick a direction and floor it, and discover that this boat of a car can do about 108 miles per hour which isn't bad, but on the salt flats, with absolutely no points of reference passing by us, it seems rather tame. You don't need to stay in a lane or go straight or avoid anything, in fact, it's a lot like being on a boat (in addition to the fact that we're driving the boatiest of all cars). The next run, we're sitting on the trunk and the hood, because "why not?", steering only needs to be done occasionally. We stopped to enjoy the deepening pink-purple-golden light, getting a few beers out of the trunk as the sun sank lower. Then we hop back in and drive straight out toward "Floating Mountain" which -in real life- looks even more like its name than in this photo.  At a distance, the flatness of the salt, combined with heat, causes a mirror effect that lowers the horizon causing this illusion. It REALLY looks like it floating!

  And it's FAR.  We drove quite a bit before swerving to go around it a bit.  It was right about then that the throttle cable snapped,.. but before we could even drop below 60 mph, Igor had pulled out his leatherman pocket tool, turned himself upside down and slid under the dashboard.  He grabbed the broken throttle cable with the pliers and pulled...  Viola! we were accelerating again.  So now, with Igor operating the throttle, I could sit on the door and steer, I think Matt was sitting on the other door or the trunk.  In fact, since there was no real reason to steer, I think Matt and I traded positions wandering around the car a bit, "Engine Room! A little more power!" "Aye aye..."  We careened around a bit and then realized it was getting dark faster than we expected.  But now there was a trick, we had driven out in a big straight line and turned left some amount and driven for some amount of time.  There was no way to know if the surface directly between us and the lights of Wendover (the city) was hard, so we tried to retrace our steps.  We're gliding along with the speedometer reading 75 or so, but we're not getting closer to the entrance point as fast as we should be and now it was fully dark. The Caddy was very quiet, so gliding over the non-descript white Salt Flats under the moon was much like driving through the snow -very serene.  It was then that I noticed that the Caddy's temperature gauge was climbing, which seemed odd given the cooler night air.  "Igor, give me a little more speed, we're only doing 60.." "aye, aye" We're making a big arc toward the lights of Wendover, but we're just not getting there despite the fact that we're cruising right along... well, the speedometer says we're cruising right along, except we're down to 60 again, "Igor, can you give me some more throttle?" "I can't pull it any further!" "Really? Now we're only going 55! And the temperature is really high!"  Matt had turned on his big cop flashlight and was shining it around the hood, we could see steam coming around the edges of the hood.  Just then, Matt's light caught an object in the otherwise perfectly white surface of the Salt Flats.  It was a stick, stuck in the ground, which made us panic for two reasons. 1) It was stuck in the ground, which means the ground could have something stuck into it which was impossible without a hammer-drill on the hard surfaces on the salt flats, 2) It went by the car at walking speed, despite the speedometer reading 55 mph. "Oh SHIT!" Igor let go of the throttle and the Caddy sank, bellying to the playdough-like terrain.  We got out, suddenly realizing that we had been churning our way through the Soft Salt Flats. Behind the Caddy were deeply squished tire-tracks reaching back into the night.  With no visual points of reference, and no feedback from the throttle, we felt as though we were sailing along, when in reality (if there is such a thing), we were probably moving at walking speed, though the speedometer was reporting the front wheel's speed of 55.  The only psychological feeling that I can equate with this is if you've ever been skiing in a whiteout. I was, once, the wind was whipping my face and I couldn't discern anything, it was all the same grey in all directions.  I couldn't tell how fast I was going until I fell down and realized -by the way I impacted the ground- that I had been standing still, probably for 10 minutes. Same weird disorientation, except in this case you think you can see.

Digging it out was hopeless, this was a 10 ton car on soft mud.  We grabbed a few beers, put the top up, and started walking trying to note the car's position in relation to Floating Mountain, the Promontory Mountain Range which surrounds the Salt Flats, and the lights of Wendover.  The walk back took a few hours, but there were no obstacles.  

In the morning, we started calling around to get a tow truck.  By and large, no one was really interested in going out on the Salt Flats, but we finally found a guy...  "I'm a junkyard dawg" he said as we climbed in the crewcab of his hybrid monster truck/tow truck.  He wanted to let us know what a favor he was doing us, "this time of year, you can lose your whole truck out there.  It just starts sinking and it keeps going."  Okay, okay, we get it.  So, we're back on the Salt Flats and it's glaringly bright.  It's "high noon" bright.  Floating Island is coming closer and we're starting to get to where we think the car is.  Like the day before, there are very few other people on the Salt Flats near the entrance and we pass by them early on, but out in the distance, just at the edge of the Promontory Mountains, I see a dark van driving along what is probably an access road carved into the mountains just above the flats.  "We veered left here," I say, and junk yard dawg veers left. No car in sight, nothing. Maybe it was further than we thought.  "You lose 'em in the heat ripple," junk yard dawg says.  He keeps driving.  I see the van along the mountain range road heading the same direction as us, and I start to worry that we've broken some law or wandered onto private property.  Or the van is heading out to scavenge from the stranded Caddy...  Matt thinks we've gone too far east, so dawg turns the truck north then a little westward -according to the compass on the windshield.  Still no caddy, but I'm surprised to see that the dark van has turned around and is driving along the mountain road in the same direction as us, again!  "What do you think that van wants?" I ask.  "Probably just sight seeing from the safer road" says dawg, "don't worry, no one messes with me."  Great.  We still don't see the Caddy, but as we turn North and then East again for a further sweep, I see the dark van reverse direction again to keep going the same direction as us.  Then it hits me, "Dawg, drive straight at that van!" he turns straight toward it and the van stops. We drive toward the van and the bottom of the mountain range recedes until the salt flats surround the van.  Now we can see that the van is really not as tall as a van, but it is a car and its reflection.  The van transforms to the Caddy. The mountains back away.

But the dawg won't stop near the car, "It's too dangerous" he says.  He lets us out with a big long rope.  He won't stop driving in big circles around us, "I don't want to stop and sink in!" he yells out the window.  We have to tunnel through salt mud to get the rope around the frame of the Caddy, then drag the rope out to firmer ground where the dawg lets us attach it to his truck.  We start up the Caddy, and put it in Drive.  The monster jumps and bucks and churns and yanks us right out, and then pulls us another half mile, just to be on firmer ground.  

But are you ever on firmer ground, or is it just that there's nothing that's not sinking as fast as you?  Over time, I would work with Matt and Igor to help establish this residency program you see below and was even the first of many artists in residence. The Center for Land Use Interpretation still operates today, with researchers and centers around the country. I believe Matt's ultimate goal is to become so institutional that CLUI is accidentally assumed into the government and funded like NOAH and other acronyms.  Igor went on to form the YesMen, a group that exploits the media primarily by impersonating spokesmen for corporations and governments, which they call Identity Correction.  They (the Yesmen) pose as the evil-doers at some event or on TV and announce that they are going to "do the right thing" which necessitates their targets announcing that they have no intention of doing the right thing, which will hopefully be so embarrassing that they will do the right thing. I owe much to these two for lessons (intentional or not) in perception, illusion, and adventure. Resident 1's log, Reflection Date 2020-04-04

When everything changes....

Someone else's 1961 Econoline

I was trying to explain to someone how situations can change in an instant; how in a split second the context can completely change. It was probably 1987 and I was finishing my time at Tyler School of Art.  There's was a cool sign at the entrance to Tyler (or, rather, where it used to be in Elkin's Park) that had the "Tyler School of Art" logo in white Roman letters on three distinct black ovals.  Some overly-trained vandal (probably from the design department) had used the exact same white roman lettering to write "The Real World" on the back of the sign, as a reminder to all of us art-orchids that we were leaving the garden when we passed thru the entrance the other way.  I will always be grateful to the amazing community there that let us try on different personas, experiment on all fronts, and explore the fringes of passable behavior, all the while -somehow- taking us and our work seriously.  Thank you, thank you...  But back to the sign, it was a good thing, too, because Philadelphia was, well, "tougher" in those days and most of us who ventured out inevitably met up with that toughness, whether through theft, physical altercations, crazy confrontations, and also, if that weren't enough, a fascist police force (sorry, "fascist police force" is a "walking story", no cars involved so it doesn't belong here...).
A few blocks south of Tyler, Cheltenham Avenue divides Philadelphia from Elkin's Park which only a few blocks to the North begins to resemble fancy mainline towns that close at 6:00 pm. But Cheltenham Avenue is still, unquestionably, Philly, and where it crosses Ogontz Avenue, there sits ("sat", I just found out) Littleton's Diner.  It was one of those stainless steel diners, a "good" diner for its time, serving a broad range of clientele 24 hours a day with a menu from bagels&lox to waffles&chicken. As on many other nights, I found myself there after midnight with my good friend Brenden.  We drove over in the van and parked right up against the east end window of the diner.  As with most classic diners, the entrance was in the middle, so we walked half the length of the diner, entered and then walked all the way back to the last booth and plopped down right next to the van but with the diner window separating us now, me with my back to it.
Now, Brenden is difficult to explain, you couldn't quite guess what he was going to do, in particular, when he was nervous.  He wasn't the fearful type; he had, in fact, just confessed to me that he accidentally skewered his foot while trying to teach himself how to juggle chef's knives...  the thing for him was that he didn't like to appear foolish, so he hadn't told me for 2 months. So when Brenden started looking around nervously and twitching after we had ordered our food, I couldn't guess what was going on.  He smiled, raised an eyebrow, looked alarmed, sat forward, sat back, tilted his head the other way, tried looking alarmed AND smiling at the same time, pressed his hands flat on the table with elbows up, thought better of it, pushed back into the bench and interlaced his fingers, then did finger pushups, gathered his composure, tried tilting his head up looking down at me, then tilted his head down looking up at me.. I didn't know whether to laugh or yell, so I combined them, "BRENDEN, what's on your mind?!"
"I think someone is breaking into your van.." he said quietly.  I spun around and, sure enough, through the big plate glass window -but not 6 feet away- there were legs sticking out the open driver-door of the Econoline. Sometimes the adrenaline hits you so fast, there's no thinking about what happens next.  That probably would have been the case, except as I whipped around to tear out of the diner, I found that Brenden had gotten up first and he was in front of me between me and the door. He was kind of hurrying toward the door, but at about a third of the speed I wanted to go.  I couldn't get around him, as the aisle was narrow and it didn't seem like the time to critique his running abilities... it was the longest, slowest 40 feet I can remember in my life -I'm literally crawling up his back, trying not to kick his heels, bouncing up and down.  Brenden was probably thinking, considering what his stakes were in this situation, how much danger might be lurking outside, what might happen, whether he would have to walk home,...  My head and body were white hot light; the brooding rage over every broken window, stolen radio, slashed tire, and pilfered battery that I had endured since moving to Philly, not to mention a few muggings and random beatings, it was erupting like a super-power I couldn't control; I was going to right this wrong, this villian would pay...
I shot past Brenden at the cash register, burst out the doors and was at the van in a blink. I think I might have already been snarling... I was rabid. I reached into the dark van, over the black sneakers, black pants, black sweatshirt and grabbed the villian by the lapels.  With one yank, I hauled him out of the van, literally holding him up by the neck and yelling up into his face, "What the F... are you doing in my van?"  As I set him down on his feet, I realize he is 4 inches taller than me, but I don't care,  I'm hoping he'll say something stupid because I'm ready to start slugging,.. "Aww, I thought this was Jimmy's van,.." he mumbles nearly incoherently, "I was zhas, y'now, if this is Jimmy's van... I mean..." He's turning his face away from me, looking down. He's tall, very dark, and very thin; no wonder I could pick him up, he's like a scarecrow, and he's trying to figure out how to get rid of the stolen hand-grenade he's taken out of the truck. "Look, F@#&er, you KNOW this isn't Jimmy's truck, and I'm F#$%ing tired of having my shit stolen by sh#$heads like you!" Dammit, I want so badly to kick the shit out of this guy, he's going to pay for all the others!  Brenden has arrived behind me. "And that hand-grenades a fake!" I growl, mostly trying to maintain the integrity of my role, and I slap it out of his hand and into the van.

"HEY, is that guy breakin' into your truck?" comes a voice from the Diner steps behind me. "That n#$%er was stealin' out of your truck, wasn't he?" comes a second voice.  My hands are still clenching the neck of the hand-grenade thief's sweatshirt.  I turn my head to see three big white guys in flannel shirts coming out of the Diner. "That skumbag is in deep sh#t!" the third one says as they walk toward us.
I look back at the suddenly-black man at the ends of my suddenly white arms and our eyes meet for the first time. "Do you see what's about to happen?" I ask. He nods. "Run." I say, opening my hands.

Forgiveness -for all of us- is mercurial.

Updated POS brown toyota image

Good place to put winter boots in that convenient liftback...   Just thought this picture had "the look".

And just BTW, this is a 1979 Toyota Corolla.

I put a bunch of pics in the previous post, but also in the Slide Show to the right.  Enjoy!

Some New year's Inspirations!

You know, there's plenty in the way of car stories I haven't seen written and -since many of us are on vacation- I thought I'd throw some "memory fodder" out there and see if anyone has anything to say.

William reminded me recently that the Suzuki T250 was more or less unaccounted for.

My memory of it is often more like these:

Dad used to take me and Bill Landis to trombone lessons on the Suzuki.  I would sit in front of him and hold my trombone on the left.  Bill would sit behind him and hold his trombone on the right.  Granted, this is not as impressive as you can find on the internet but it was pretty hysterical for suburban 70's Pennsylvania.  I am also impressed by the fact that the Landis family thought this was okay, and let Dad take us to lessons every Saturday in this mode (okay, many Saturdays, not every).  I sure remember the distinctive sound of the Suzuki's motor...

I thought I'd throw this one up, too, though I'm not sure if it's accurate.

There are some pretty funny stories (ahem) regarding broken throttle cables, but my favorite moment with this one was the day we decided to remove the (rather tall) stumps of the pine trees (the ones between the holly tree memory and the chinese cherry).  William, Jim, and I decided we could use the "come-along" (ratchet cable winch) to use one stump to pull the other out because, of course, we could just pull them together till one started to give, then lower the cable on the weaker tree to pull out the stronger tree.  Except, neither tree gave.  we tightened that winch up until the cable hit C above high C on the piano, and both stumps just sat there.  We chopped at the roots on the outside of the stumps, but no effect. Now, no one wants to stand next to cables that tight, so we decided we'd take a break.  We were about to walk away and William said, "Oh, we better put a flag on this.  You just know that Dad would pick today to drive the Goldwing through here!"  So we put a red tee shirt on the cable, which crossed between the stumps about three feet up.  I went in to make some lunch and William took the RD350 up to Roger Clark's maybe?  It wasn't 15 minutes later that I heard him accelerating coming down the drive way, then I hear "Oh SHIT!" and a weird series of thumps.  William had somehow forgotten (or decided to re-enact the mental scene of Dad hitting the taught cable) about the cable and he himself drove through remembering only a split second before hitting the cable.  He jumped up off the Yamaha as it hit the cable and landed somewhere in the middle of the lawn.  I didn't see any of this, of course, William was already getting to his feet when I ran out of the house.  I think we left those cables up for a few weeks to see if the stumps would soften up.  They never did, so we had to repair the chainsaw.  

Some other pictures for inspiration:

And, finally, a collective correction.  The Rambler Classic Wagon was a 1966.  Everyone always referred to it as a 1965, but it was a 66. So "Happy New Year" to the 66 Rambler and all of you.

 I've never been able to find a photo of one in that weird shade of purple-silver.

Oh, I just found this one!  OOOoooooooh...

From the desk of Mary Ellen's sketchy mind.

My first car that was mine was mostly mine. What I mean is, it's ownership was unclear. Was it Dad's? Was it Liz's and mine? Whose car was it? I think it was mine. More on that..

It was a 76 Toyota Corolla fastback. Brown. This is not it.


Like I said, it was brown. It was dinged up (do I even have to say that?) and I'm pretty sure I was driving it because no respectable person would. It was handed down without too much emotional suffering of attachment on the giver's part. That's my opinion, but I was an ungrateful teenager who accepted free cars as my due, so what do I know?

Anyway, the car was great. I mean, fucking great. It looked like a piece of shit, and god knows I treated it like a piece of shit, but holy god did it have a lot of pickup. It was a manual, and it would LEAP away from a dead stop. For the first five seconds of acceleration it was like a freaking Ferrari. After that, meh. But I took full advantage of this one, beautiful attribute and sailed away from every stop light like a smoky brown angel of speed and freedom.

Did I mention it stalled all the time? I used to casually bring this up with Dad, "Hey Dad, why would a car stall all the time? Like, also, not start? Like, Dad, my car won't start most of time." The answers would usually come in the form of advice about parking on hills (highly advised!) and the rewards of learning how to keep all three pedals on the floor going at once to avoid stalling. Did I, 16 year old Mary Ellen, also know that you can push-start a car using reverse gear? Cause you can! It's super easy and dangerous, so no problem.

Regarding the push-starting; it was mandatory and daily. Liz and I became experts at choosing parking spots that were down-hill, with enough clearance to easily roll out using only forward motion, and plenty of room to attempt several starts before coming to a stop sign or traffic light. I venture to say that Liz and I became the foremost World Authorities on push-starting. It's not just about popping the clutch, people! It's about manipulating your friends into pushing your stupid car. It's about always having extra boots in the trunk in your best friends' sizes so that they have no excuse for why they can't push your car. "I'm wearing heels! My shoes are expensive and it's raining! I'm slipping in all this snow!" Too bad, my friend; I have old, crusty boots in my trunk that are ice-cold, possibly full of spiders, and ready for you to slip on your stockinged feet. So get pushing and let's go to Arner's.

I realize now that the car must have been the dual twin property of me and Liz. Obviously it was, now that I think about it. But living and working and schooling with a twin at your side for your whole life is a weird thing. The person is so ubiquitous that they become almost invisible in your memory, because they are like yourself. I mean, do you specifically remember your left arm being with you at a party? No, your arm is there, just like always. Anyway, Liz, I'm sorry that I took that car from you. Cause now I remember a phone call from John about this VERY SUBJECT.

I was at rd4, probably playing with cats or maybe doing a handstand? I think I was 18 or 19, so yeah, I was almost certainly upside down or multi-directional in some capacity. The phone rang, it was John. He came right to the point. He was calling to set me straight. Didn't I understand that the car didn't belong to me? (Wait, what?) Why was I raising such a fuss about the car when I didn't even HAVE the car. Possession was 9/10's ownership, and I had essentially given up possession, so just give it up! Mary Ellen owns the car now, she drives it, she "maintains" it, so it's her car. (Confusion). "But, John, I'm Mary Ellen." Oh. Well, congratulations, Mary Ellen, you've successfully maneuvered it away from Liz. What's her phone number?

Thank you, John, for setting Liz straight about the car. It was mine for at least a couple more months or years of bliss. Then what happened? I have no idea. Something must have because I don't have it now. Oh yeah, I remember. I sold it to my boyfriend Lee who took it across the country, never changed the plates, and abandoned it when it stopped working. The city of Seattle impounded it and after 6 months tracked me down as the last owner and sent me a bill for $680.00 for towing and later, destruction fees.

All's well that ends well, I always never say.

There was a blurr of cars that I drove over a two year period that were given to me as, I assume, restitution for borrowing my beloved '69 VW Beetle and the $300 to repair it, taking an epic tour across the U.S and then selling it for a plane ticket home, all without my knowledge or consent.