Plug Me In and Light Me Up

 

 Carolyn and I are about to buy a 3-year-old Nissan Leaf. It’s a fully electric car. You just plug it into the wall to recharge it, and off you go for another hundred miles or so. (In theory.)

This will work fine, since we only need it to go the gym, choir practice, grocery shopping, and get-togethers with friends within a close proximity. Any longer excursion will involve hopping into “Big Red” the RAV 4 Carolyn bought a few years back so she could sit up high and actually see the traffic around her. Prior to that, her navigation has largely involved head swiveling, teeth clenching, and what, I must say, is impeccable intuition.

I should admit, up front, that I have never cared, one way or the other, about automobiles. I’m of the “I’m at point A, get me to point B, and then back to point A” school of car selection. I realize this confession could lose me my “real man” credentials and certainly cause me to be an outcast among the guys I grew up around. I have lifelong friends who spend a lot of time and money buying, fixing, driving, and talking about cool cars of all kinds. I, on the other hand have owned a solid string of low quality, low prestige new and used beaters that I wouldn’t dream of looking under the hood of.

They range from the purple and white four-door six cylinder 55 Chevy of my high school years (an un-American Graffiti nerd-mobile of the highest order), to its successor, a 53 Desoto so heavy the pavement creaked beneath it when it rolled. This beauty was aptly nicknamed “The Sweathog.” When car dealers started misinterpreting my low-paying disc-jockey jobs as financial stability, they loaned me the money to buy a string of ugly, ill-functioning, badly engineered new cars that rarely outlived their payment plan: a Chevy Vega, a Mazda RX 3 (with the Wanker engine), a Monte Carlo I nicknamed Yvonne De, and a comically mislabeled Plymouth Reliant.

I would say, the succession of Toyotas we’ve owned since coming to the Portland Area, have, for the most part, provided pretty darn good point A to point B transportation. I was especially fond of the Prius that got me from Vancouver to the Portland waterfront and home for a dozen years or so. Along with not breaking the bank for gasoline bills, it hummed quietly along for the hour to hour and a half of gridlock I endured as I listened to audio books and cursed. I’d still be driving it if it hadn’t fallen victim to a speeding delivery van and my ill-timed attempt at a U-turn. Oops.

Along with not caring about cars, I actively hate—No, make that loathe—the car-buying process. When I ponied up for the Ford Focus that’s about to matriculate to our godson, it was the only car I test drove and I told the sales guy “Get me off this lot in an hour and you’ve sold a car.”

Carolyn, on the other hand, revels in the process. She likes to look at, ride-in, peer under the hood of, and compare the paint jobs and built-in toys on a succession of cars before turning her talents to bringing the sales guy to his knees sobbing.

She’s trying to talk me into buying the newer Nissan Leaf model with GPS, seat and steering wheel warmers, blind spot alert sensors, protective force field, and built-in rocket launchers. I, on the other had will be happy if it has four wheels and a gearshift. Oh, and a rear-view mirror would be nice. 

The final factor is price. This car costs twice as much as the house I grew up in. I realize we live in different times, but holy crap! I can hear the voice of my long-departed mother hissing, “Michael. Buy another beater. You just need to go from point A to point B.” Closer to my ear, I hear the voice of my wife saying, “We’ve got the money, treat yourself.”

So, it comes down to which of the women in my life I listen to. My mother, who, to this day, I love and respect beyond all others. Or my wife, who I love and respect, and who could do really awful things to me as I sleep.

 

Yard Art . . . Enough is Enough--Or is it?

 Carolyn J. Rose

 

Thanks to the lockdown and hours of boredom-driven cleaning and culling, the inside of my home is approaching a state of stripped-down simplicity. The yard, however, is approaching a state of over-the-top decorating bordering on—dare I say it?—clutter.

 

I never intended things to go this far. But last year as winter loomed, plants died, leaves drifted, and rain fell, my spirits drooped. A few pieces of yard art and a little color, I decided, could brighten the view of the yard. And that might lift my view of life in general.

 I started with things I found at thrift stores. The giant lizard intended as a CD rack is one of my favorites. He has an owl and a cat for companion-ship. 

 

They’re all a basic black, but other pieces sport splashes of color. 

Sometimes it’s just a bit, like the water pouring from the dipper held by the cowgirl bathing in a washtub, or the shades of green on the leaves nailed up around the branches of a metal tree.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Thanks to cans of paint left over from various projects and a friend with imagination, a gull once white and gray is now a psychedelic sea bird. I smile when I see his wings swing in the wind.

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

Vases and bowls scavenged at yard sales and glued together offer water to birds and butterflies and LED solar lights hold the darkness at bay just a bit.

   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 As I find new pieces, I move the older ones out of the prime viewing area or “retire” them to the homes of friends or to the street corner where we place items offered up for free.

 I estimate I have 25 feet of fence still undecorated, a few cans of paint that haven’t dried out, and maybe 30 dollars in my yard art budget. So, because winter will come far sooner than I wish, I’ll be off on the hunt for a few more pieces to add to the landscape within my fence.