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September 24, 2007
Some days I pray for the earth's oil supplies to just run out already, so I don't have to mess around with cars anymore.
Last night we were driving back from San Cristóbal in Frank's red 1989 Toyota Corolla, and we were doing great until roughly 16 and a half kilometers outside of Santo Domingo. Frank always has his car available for the organization, which is great. And Frank is a mechanic, which on one hand is also great.
On the other hand, it means that his car, still cranking away at 225,000 miles, is a ticking time bomb. This seems to be of little concern to Frank, who regularly goes to great lengths to convince me that the old girl is ready to take on the mountain roads of San Cristóbal.
I, however, am not a mechanic, so the following things about Frank's car sometimes worry me.
- The brake light and the fluid lights are always on, the automatic gear shifter is missing its indicators of what gear you're in, and when you roll down your window, the crank comes off in your hand.
- The front two tires are both spare tires, and a third spare in the trunk is misshapen, smeared with grease and is pocked with small holes.
- The engine is held together with wires, and the bolts are all on loosely so you can take everything apart more easily.
We set off in the morning, gassing up the car with $20 of regular unleaded before getting too far. At $4.45 a gallon, this investment raised the needle to just above E.
The car ran like a dream. Highway, asphalt with potholes, mountain switchbacks, dirt roads with small lakes in them: she took them all in stride.
That is, until 16-and-a-half-kilometer mark. Let me just say, before I continue, that this car and I have spent a lot of time together by the side of roads. Usually these roads are more than 16 and a half kilometers away from the city, so last night I suppose we were lucky.
We had come through all of the rough spots in the roads and were sailing along the highway just before dark when KERBAM! an explosion rocked the passenger side of the car. I was relieved to find three of the tires still intact. The fourth, however, was more hole than tire.
We limped into the gas station up the road and pulled the spare out of the trunk. I've seen rounder objects at a square dance. Its state of disfigurement was such that we didn't even try filling it with air; we just called Frank.
He came out, no questions asked. And the first thing he did was take that dirty dilapidated old tire, which probably still had shrapnel in it from the Revolution of 1965, and fill it with air. I began to hear a chorus of quiet hissing sounds from the general direction of the tire, but that didn't seem to be a great concern to Frank.
So we jacked up the car and changed the tire, and then Frank spent the next 20 minutes or so convincing me that driving like this really was a safe thing to do. We might need to stop at gas stations every once in awhile (remember, we're 16 and a half kilometers away from home) to shoot some more air in there, but other than that, it should be no problem.
He was right. He is a mechanic, after all. Besides the fact that the car ran a little lopsided from having only one regular-sized tire on it, the old Corolla purred along and got us home safely. I still say, Peak Oil can't come soon enough.
September 6, 2007
The other day as we drove, my friend started to tell a story. He's the kind of guy who has a terrific memory when it comes to stories and a terrible time remembering which stories he's told to whom. Yet he's so captivating and fun that you don't care if you know the story by heart. You just want to listen to him tell it again.
The story was about a buddy of his who had gotten a job at a poultry factory that was known for its poor treatment of workers. Long days and hard, disgusting manual labor.
At one point the buddy -- why don't we just call him "Buddy" -- was approached by his foreman. "Hey, man, I've had my eye on you," the foreman told him quietly. "You do good work. I'm going to slip you a little extra in your check this week, all right? Just don't open your pay envelope in front of everyone. They'll see you got more and they'll be jealous. Keep up the good work, okay?"
Friday afternoon comes, and all of the workers are waiting in line for their pay envelopes. Buddy notices a strange phenomenon -- everyone is taking their envelope, stuffing it in their pocket without looking in it and shuffling quickly away.
It was finally his turn at the window. He got the envelope and right there started to open it up. There was a collective gasp from the workers behind him, and the guy at the window started making desperate gestures.
Buddy calmly counted out the cash twice, to be sure. "I'm a little short here!" he said. Not only was his "secret bonus" nowhere to be seen, he'd been paid for only four days of work instead of five.
An argument ensued, and they ended up paying Buddy for the five days he was due. In the end the boss told him he needn't bother coming in to work on Monday.
But the lesson was learned. "That weekend Buddy told us the story of how he opened the envelope," my friend said. "That became a sort of slogan for us. Open the envelope! We always open the envelope. Everywhere we go we've got to stand up for our rights, stand up against corruption and exploitation."
It was a good finish. Good in a way the other people in the car couldn't get, as they were hearing the story for the first time. Because I knew the story well, I knew one detail my friend changed up this time.
The detail was that there was no Buddy. It had been my friend himself who had worked in a poultry factory for one week and gotten fired after causing a disturbance. It was my friend himself who had opened the envelope.
Most people would have told that story with themselves as the protagonist, the hero. It was a true story, after all. It had happened. But my friend showed that what needed to be learned from the story had nothing to do with his own ego.
So that was the second lesson. I was the one who ended up with the "secret bonus." |
