Puffy the Wonder Mule

Car auctions are a funny thing. I had never been to one before, but I always wondered if the commercials were true, the ones that promised the car of your dreams at less than the cost of a single payment on the same model from a used lot. These ads usually featured bold capital letters exclaiming that EVERYTHING MUST GO with a passive hostility that can only be witnessed in other commercials that air at three in the morning. On one of those sleepless nights, I also probably wondered if there was ever an instance in which the cars that were repossessed from drug dealers ever had a secret compartment that was filled with dope and overlooked by the crime dogs. It would be like biting into a piece of chocolate and by surprise, finding delicious nougat inside.

It was the beginning of September and the Michigan winter loomed in the air like our frozen breath. The auctioneer’s larynx vibrated like he was plugged into an AC current, spitting out a mess of letters that only once in a while resembled words. “Four-fifty-fo-tee-fo-tee-fo-tee-fo-fif-da-he-do-ah-he-four-fifty, four-twenty-five-fo-ta-fi-fo-tee-fo-tee-da-he-fo…” Meanwhile, something between a funeral procession and a parade of shitty cars passed before our eyes in single file. Next up for bids was a 1991 Plymouth Acclaim – an old man car by anybody’s standards. The bidding started at five hundred, and just like me, everybody seemed to have their hands in their pockets. The auctioneer didn’t even seem to breathe.

By the time he hit three-fifty, I figured what the hell. There were no other bidders, and I had the feeling that everyone else was waiting for a sports car or a van. The auctioneer only stopped for a few seconds before proclaiming mine the winning bid, which as it happened to be, was also the only bid. What was a mere possibility only moments before had now entered the tangible world of reality, and I was the proud owner of a maroon K car with a little over 117,000 miles. Of course, I later found out that the odometer didn’t actually work, and even though the speedometer went to 120, the only way that this car could possibly go that fast is if it was falling off a cliff.

And the new car scent wasn’t fooling anybody.  

It had only been a few months, but I already missed Chicago. Among other things, I missed the heat lamps at the el stops that made me feel like the french fries at Burger King. I also liked the fact that I didn’t need a car when I lived there. I did have one for the first couple of months, but it didn’t take long for me to realize that even though everything was relatively close together, parking usually involved about forty-five minutes of driving in circles, like some kind of vulture. When I did finally find a spot, it was usually next to a fire hydrant, and the tickets that I racked up were starting to cost more than the car was even worth. So I sold it.

After graduating from film school, I no longer had any specific reason to stay in Chicago, so I moved back to Grand Rapids, Michigan on a strictly temporary basis. Although I hadn’t lived there in years, I still knew all of the streets by name, and despite my knowledge of incidental light meters and auteur theory, I worked in a bar downtown. This might have been cool if it wasn’t filled with yuppies and bad music. Every once in a while, when it was slow, I went upstairs and opened up the piano that served as furniture and had been fastened shut with a couple of wood screws.

After work, it was a short walk home to what my friends all knew as the party house by default. The same people passed through there like ghosts on the weekends, and the entire summer carried with it an eerie feeling of deja-vu. I never even bothered to unpack most of my boxes. After the eviction party, I maintained that moving to Los Angeles would be the most logical way to justify my education, but I also knew that I would need a car to get me there. Then I saw a commercial at three in the morning.

After a couple weeks of driving the Plymouth around, I started calling it Puffy in reference to the fact that I had to add a quart of oil every six hundred miles or four and a half days, whichever came first. I was the poor man’s James Bond, and my vehicle came custom with a smokescreen and oil slick. It turned out that a three hundred and fifty dollar car is pretty much exactly what a person might expect it to be. I did buy a beaded seat cushion for it, but I opted against the license plate frame that encouraged fellow motorists to ask me about my grandchildren. My sense of humor has a price limit of fifteen dollars for any one joke, and the beaded seat cushion had already cost twelve.

I also bought one of those giant Tupperware containers for the roof of my car and packed it to about twice its recommended weight limit. My bike was attached to a rack that I had mounted to the trunk which had been filled to capacity by utilizing every bit of skill that I ever acquired while playing Tetris. Everything that didn’t fit, I gave away, and my friends made out pretty well in terms of free stuff.

Of course, so did I. A couple of days prior, we had a going away party and several of my friends made generous donations to the Joints Across America campaign, which, by the way, was a resounding success. All total, I had about twenty five joints rolled, inside a little Sleepytime Tea tin that I found at my parents’ house. It was exactly the right size and it fit perfectly between the seats. By the time I was done loading my car, Puffy was packed so full that the clearance beneath the rear bumper had been decreased by about four inches.

I left on what happened to be Friday the 13^th, but I decided that it was bad luck to believe in bad luck. At about ten in the morning, I checked Puffy’s vitals and said my goodbyes to almost all of the people that I knew and loved. I put in the CD that I had made the night before that I labeled “Trail Mix.” Track one was a Tom Petty song. Once it rolled through the intro, the first verse began:

It’s time to move on…

Time to get going…

What lies ahead,

I’ve got no way of knowing  

But under my feet, babe

Grass is growing

Yeah, it’s time to move on…

Time to get going…

I couldn’t think of a better song with which to start this particular adventure. Of course, I suppose it could have just as easily been Running Down a Dream, but it was my hope that Breakdown would have been entirely inappropriate. I figured it was about a fifty-fifty chance that Puffy would make it across the country. The worst case scenario that I chose to imagine was that I’d end up washing dishes in Iowa for a few months while I saved up enough money to buy a different car to get me the rest of the way there.

In the distance behind me, the smiling faces of my friends and family were replaced by a faint trail of smoke. It was at that exact moment that it occurred to me that I was about to drive a three hundred and fifty dollar car containing everything I owned by myself all the way to California, with no idea what I was going to do or where I was going to live when I got there. Even though I had quit smoking back in July in preparation for my move to L.A., I bought a pack of smokes before I even got out of Michigan. The weed also helped keep the anxiety at bay, and frankly, I couldn’t imagine traveling through Nebraska any other way. As for the beaded seat cushion, it soon found a place to call home in a trash can at a gas station.

It was at least three times as uncomfortable as it was funny.

On some subconscious level, I always figured that the heartland would be full of clogged arteries, in critical need of a bypass. As it turned out, though, I was surprised at the lack of billboards and how healthy everyone looked. I couldn’t resist the urge to stop somewhere for a slice of apple pie. The family restaurant that I went to apparently didn’t actually open for another half an hour, but they let me in anyway. I smiled at everyone I met and sat down at a two-seated table, where I listened to the way that people talked – first the wait staff, then the customers. I was curious who these people were and what a Nebraskan accent might sound like. I spent the rest of the day trying to imitate it, and the apple pie was even better than I expected it to be.

About three quarters of the way through the state, although the landscape was starting to change the closer I got to the mountains, I decided that I had seen enough of Nebraska, so I took Highway 76 south. For a while, I kept wondering if I was in the Rocky Mountains yet, but before long, there was absolutely no doubt. I had never seen mountains like these, so big that the dullest points seemed jagged, ready to tear open the sky. There was only one path that went all the way through, and it wasn’t carved by the Eisenhower administration. At the bottom of the cliff that was just beyond the shoulder, the Colorado River was fierce and unstoppable. The highway ran alongside it, tagging along like a little brother. On certain stretches of road, the sodium lights made the red rocks and white waters appear the phosphorescent hue of an Orange Julius.

It was beautiful, and I never thought that I would be amazed by an interstate highway. Puffy, on the other hand, had to pull over every twenty minutes or so, so that the engine would have a chance to cool down. All that strain of going forty miles an hour in a sixty-five was really taking its toll on him. He needed to rest and was thirsty for oil. For some reason, the gas pumps in Colorado have an 85 octane, but since Puffy had been working so hard, I splurged for the 91. Of course, as I filled the tank, I thought about how bad it would be to break down with a tank full of premium gas, and somehow that was significantly worse than just being stranded.

I was now three days into the trip. I had spent the first night with some friends from college who lived in the Quad Cities, I forget which one. I spent the next day and night in Nebraska, where I pitched a tent in a county park and then I left at dawn without even seeing another human being in the time that I was stopped. In Colorado, I ended up staying in a campground, where I sat at picnic table by myself and drank a six pack of Molson, then slept until morning.

The only thing I knew about Utah prior to this adventure was that the sequel to the Bible is supposed to take place somewhere around there. Some guy who encouraged settlers to “Bring ‘em young!” then married fifteen of them. The east side of the state is all mountains. For Puffy’s sake, I was hoping that each one was the last. He seemed to be struggling more and more every time that gravity was working against us, and I never knew if he would be able to make over the next one. He was starting to get pissed, yelling at me with the Check Engine light. I thought he was just starved for attention, a disposition that complemented his alcoholic thirst for oil.

Eventually, it seemed like the graded inclines were starting to get smaller and the runaway truck ramps were starting to get shorter. Before I knew it, everything around me was a rusty shade of orange. The cliffs made me think of the Road Runner and how long it must have taken Acme to deliver all the way out here. I hadn’t seen a town in hours. There were gas stations here and there, and then there was the illusion of a town, but then Muldoon turned out to be a restaurant, and they were closed anyway. At this point, I was ahead of what was really an arbitrary schedule anyway, so I decided to let myself get lost. I even took the compass off the dash that was attached with a piece of Velcro. I took a lot of pictures that day, only hoping that the maroon car wouldn’t find itself marooned.

Loose rocks were scattered on a nameless road that wound all the way up a mountain. Toward the top, there were two other vehicles pulled over on the side of the road, the first I had seen in hours. As I approached, I soon saw what they saw, which was further than I had ever seen before. I got out of the car, where I saw a plaque that referred to this place as The Valley of the Gods. After the vacationers left, in the distance, I could see a car the size of a housefly. For several minutes, it was the only sign of life in my periphery. The world around me was quiet and still, and I had never felt so alone yet so content. It was like being inside an empty church. I thanked Puffy and the universe for getting me this far, then I got back in and followed the winding road all the way to the bottom, where I, too, was reduced to a speck of utter insignificance in the Valley of the Gods.

It made me want to see the Grand Canyon, and this seemed like as good of a time as any. It wasn’t on my original itinerary, but I had lost that a couple of days ago anyway. As I headed in that direction, I had to drive through the beautiful but useless land that had been designated for the reservations. Just briefly, I was in this whole other country, where they had stopped making cars and trucks in 1974 and instead of lemonade stands, they had fireworks. It was like being in the poorest part of a medium-sized city, minus the medium-sized city. There was only one highway that led to the Grand Canyon, and the trees along side it looked like they were transplanted from a Dr. Seuss book. After about a half an hour without any turnoffs, I came to the park entrance, Checkpoint Charlie to a big hole in the ground. The guy at the gate told me it would be twenty bucks. For a minute, I thought that this was someone’s brilliant plan for becoming a self-made millionaire: put an ice fishing shanty somewhere where nobody knows what an ice fishing shanty looks like, then charge people twenty bucks to pass. Trolls, it seemed, made a very good living these days. Looking at the map, I figured that it would cost me at least twenty bucks in gas to go back and around, so I paid the guy. For some reason, I have a habit of thanking people at toll booths after they take my money, although I’m never really sure what I just thanked them for.

As soon as the ranger station was obscured by the curves in the road, I fired one up and played some music. I had only taken seven CDs with me in the front seat of the car – the rest were packed away under some board games that I wasn’t about to move. I put in a CD that I hadn’t listened to yet that my brother had copied for me just before I left:

Bones sinking like stones

All that we’ve fought for

All these places we’ve grown

All of us are done for

We live in a beautiful world…

 

Coldplay could have called themselves Radiohead Light. Nonetheless, this was the soundtrack of my drive around the southern rim of the Grand Canyon. Before long, I came to a lookout point, and every picture I took was a postcard. The distant cliffs faded in the atmospheric haze and the colors in the canyon walls were screaming at the sun. Pretty soon, I had one more shot left on the roll of film, so I asked a family from Germany if I could take their picture.

The highway that led out of the Grand Canyon was much closer to any sign of life than the highway that took me there. I stopped at a gas station just as twilight was settling over the land like a blanket of stars. I had been driving for about ten hours already that day, and I didn’t want to overwork Puffy. I could always drink coffee, but I was also getting pretty close to the desert. On the one hand, it made sense to keep driving, just to avoid the possibility of overheating in the daytime sun, but on the other hand, I was getting tired, and the past two nights of sleeping on the ground didn’t help. After thinking it over, though, I ended up getting a twenty-four ounce coffee, a stale donut and full take of gas, then I got back on the highway.

As I drew nearer to the California border, the night had swallowed up everything but the lights on the dash and the high beams ahead of me. I was beginning to think that the coffee was decaffeinated and the donut was actually a bagel. I lit up a cigarette and then I noticed a car riding along side of me, which was only unusual because it seemed like everyone else on the highway was driving a semi. I looked over at the driver of the car, and the driver must have sensed my stare. He was a guy my age, with the same hair and glasses, in some other model of an old man vehicle. He also had a guitar in his passenger seat and a backseat full of boxes. As he drifted ahead of me, I saw that he had an Illinois plate that said ZACH S. I freaked out a little as he drove on ahead into the darkness. Even when I accelerated, though, I couldn’t catch up to him. Pretty soon, I wasn’t even sure if that had been real, and if it wasn’t, I wondered what it could possibly mean.

My only conclusion was that it was time to stop driving for the day. I was coming up on the last town before the California border and the vast expanse of desert beyond, so I exited the highway and got a room at the first hotel that I saw. Within a few minutes of checking in, I fell asleep with the lights on, still fully dressed.

In the morning, I skipped the continental breakfast but grabbed a tiny box of Apple Jacks on the way out. I ended up getting gas again before I got to California and I was glad that I didn’t keep driving the night before. It was further than I thought. About an hour later, I finally came to a station at the California border, and my first thought was to make sure that the Sleepytime Tea tin was out of sight. I didn’t concern myself with the fact that I wasn’t wearing a shirt and had a tan line in the shape of my seatbelt. The woman in the booth asked me if I had any fruit or plants. I told her to go fish, and after that, I was in California. This time, my first instinct was to yell at the top of my lungs to no one in particular. Then I just laughed, overcome with a spirit of giddiness as I put in the CD that I had waiting until then to play.

It’s the edge of the world

And all of western civilization

The sun may rise in the east

But at least it settles in a final location

It’s understood that Hollywood

Sells Californication… 

By the time Puffy and I had gotten through the desert, I thanked him with an oil change and a carwash. It’s amazing how dirty a car can get in a mere three thousand miles. As I drove around wherever I was, I soon realized that everyone here had a much nicer car than I did. Granted, Puffy’s not a collector’s item by any stretch of the imagination, but with all these people, it seemed like somebody would have a crappier car than me. Then I remembered what Bob Barker had said on the Price is Right: something about California emissions… and, of course: get your pet spayed or neutered. It was actually illegal to own a car like Puffy out here, so I made it a point to not drive directly in front of any police cars, especially at a stoplight. The only up side to owning a car that smoked more than I did was the rule of thumb that I had as to whether or not I let a car merge in front of me.  It was a decision based solely on whether or not they had a nicer car than I did. In the land of hippies, surfers, wannabes and miscellaneous, I yielded for no one. When the other drivers took a good look at Puffy, they probably thought that I had nothing to lose.

After a couple of forty-nine cent tacos, I called my parents and told them that I was in Los Angeles. I figured that it must have been, because looking at the map, there was nothing but city in the hundred or so miles between me and the ocean. My dad reminded me that I should call my uncle Jack and let him know that I was almost there. When I did, a cousin that I had never met answered the phone, and my uncle laughed when I told him that I was in the outskirts of L.A. He said I still had a few hours to go, more if traffic was bad, which it always is. This is also when I found out that on the west coast, highways receive a definite article. It’s the 15 or the 405. It also seemed like the closer that I got to Los Angeles, the worse that people drove. Apparently in California, it’s the driver’s responsibility to not get hit by other cars. With traffic like this, I couldn’t understand how everyone didn’t smoke.

After four and a half hours of some of the worst congestion that I had ever seen, it didn’t seem possible that I had been awash in this urban sprawl but was still outside of the city limits. As the highway interchanges became more frequent, though, I knew that I was getting close. By the time I passed the 101, it was already getting dark. I called my uncle and told him that it would be late by the time I got there and that I was just going to get a hotel for the night instead of waking everybody up when I got there. What I didn’t tell him was that I wanted to see the ocean before I stopped driving. I also wanted to get there before the sun went down, which didn’t seem to be too far off. I stayed on the 10 all the way to the edge of Santa Monica. At a city beach, I paid eight bucks to park in an open lot, where I hoped that my stuff would be safe. Then I ran to the ocean.

The sand made my feet feel heavy and I was beginning to think that the people on Baywatch were actually running at regular speed and it was just the sand that was slowing them down. The ocean was everywhere. I could hear it, I could smell it, I could taste the salt in the air as the sun bathed in the ocean. I had boxer shorts on and figured that would suffice as I stripped off everything else and stepped into the water. It was much colder than I expected, and before I knew it, there was a lot more of it. The undertow was tugging at my feet, which were disappearing in the wet sand beneath them. Then in one last flash, the sun was gone, and the ocean and the sky became one. There were no stars when it was dark, and I wondered how the angels that supposedly watch over this city could possibly see through the muddy air.

Now that I had at least somewhat of an idea of how big L.A. really was, I figured that I’d find a motel that was at least the same direction as my uncle. I ended up at a place in Studio City called the Nite Inn. After I checked into my room and fastened all four of the locks behind me, it once again occurred to me that everything I owned was in a maroon Plymouth Acclaim that might as well have a giant flashing billboard advertising its presence. I considered for a moment that I might find a better hotel, but it was getting late and even this place cost sixty-five bucks. The TV didn’t work, and in the next room over, I heard what was either crazy hooker sex or someone was fucking a goose. I had a Swiss army knife that from my best estimate had twelve bowl scrapers, a blade and a corkscrew. I went to bed with the blade open, sitting beside me on the nightstand. A little after midnight, I heard the sound of metal and plastic breaking out in the parking lot. I drew my trusty weapon and was prepared to leather punch somebody if I had to. Once the noises stopped, I went outside. Puffy was unscathed, but someone had broken into the Coke machine that was about twenty feet away.

Down the street, I could see what appeared to be a bar, and after going back in to my room only to realize that I wasn’t about to fall back asleep, a drink sounded pretty good. This place turned out to be a little jazz club, and I could hear from where I was standing that it was the good kind of jazz, as opposed to Weather Channel jazz. It was weird to be in a place like that that wasn’t filled with smoke. I sat down at the bar and it took a few minutes for the bartender to notice me, despite the fact that she had no other customers at the time. She was reading a script. Check one more cliché off the list.

They didn’t have any Canadian beers, so I ordered an Amstel. I sat long enough for one drink, three songs and five people turning to face to the door as it opened. I couldn’t tell if they wanted to see or be seen. I opted not to bother the aspiring actress for another drink, then I walked back to the motel, checking on Puffy one more time before going to bed. The air smelled different out here.

Eventually I got used to the smell, and things worked out surprisingly well for me. I stayed with my uncle for a couple of days, during which time my bike and the rack that it was attached to were stolen, as if to say “Welcome to L.A… Thanks for the bike.” After that, I drove up the coast, just for the hell of it. When I came back to L.A. a few days later, I met up with a friend of a friend of somebody that I went to school with who happened to be looking for a roommate. After a few industry jobs at the bottom of the food chain, I was writing coverage on screenplays on a freelance basis while taking an occasional odd job through a temp agency and playing guitar in a band with two other guys. Life was good, especially for Los Angeles.

Amazingly, Puffy lived for about another year beyond that, all the while maintaining his title as the crappiest car in Los Angeles County. One day, I was on the 118 and there was suddenly a loud clunk from underneath the car. The truck behind me swerved to avoid whatever had fallen off. Mayday. I was going down. The check engine light didn’t even bother to come on. I knew that this was the end for Puffy. Something had blown out on the transmission and it was getting increasingly difficult to do anything but coast. So I got off the highway and onto the first side street that I saw, then I pulled up snug against the curb. I left the engine running as I got out of the car and looked underneath, where there was a steady stream of transmission fluid pissing out a crack in the casing. The fluid was turning the pavement a dark red, and it smelled like burnt licorice.

I sat back down in the driver’s seat, where I instinctively checked the mirrors, a moment of reflection on all that they had seen. Heavy silence filled the car, broken as I said my last goodbyes. After that, I shut off the engine, and it felt like I was pulling the life support. Puffy was like the cancer patient that was supposed to live for a few more weeks and ended up holding on for over a year. I saw it coming. I didn’t know how or when, but I can’t say that it came as a surprise. In fact, ever since the auction, I kept the title in the glove compartment, knowing perfectly well that Puffy was living on borrowed time.

I signed the title and put it on the dash, then left the key in the ignition. I took the compass off the dashboard, which oddly, had just stopped working. When I tapped it, it only spun around, never sure where north was. I took the ashtray from the console and the floor mat from of the backseat. For the rest of the time that I lived in L.A., this was my welcome mat.

The last thing that I took was the license plate, using a penny as a screwdriver. After that, I walked about eight miles back to my apartment, never looking back. I take some solace in knowing that Puffy’s in a better place now, making toast or cutting steak, in some reincarnation better suited to his disposition. Nonetheless, he was a trooper, and he took me places that I had never imagined and may never see again. Wherever I was on that long walk home, it was somewhere else, and for better or worse, I wouldn’t have been there without Puffy.

So long, old friend. May your spirit outlive your earthly form and your new car scent last forever. 

 

everything must go