All right, I confess: I’m a thief.
What brought it all back was stopping at Smith’s supermarket on Sunday afternoon and seeing an ostensibly down-and-out but apparently happy young hippie parent and his little girl exit a clapped-out 15-year-old Subaru with a piece of clotheline cord tied to each of the wiper arms. One tucked inside each front window, in other words, intended for manual operation of the windshield wipers, in the rare event one actually encountered precipitation. At first I felt sorry for him, but then I realized that it probably worked, after a fashion — I could imagine his making a game out of it with the kid — and thought of how lucky the guy was to be living where no one will ever make him get it fixed! (I’m lucky, too. The ’89 Dodge in Monday’s FotoFeed has a Taos tailight, but you can’t see it.)
When we moved here in ’99, I dreaded getting New Mexico tags because I knew my beloved ’91 Nissan 240SX SE would never pass a vehicle inspection with a dead digital speedometer, a stuck retracting headlight, and several other anomalies. Then again, maybe it would have, in West Virginia. As it turned out, however, when I got my New Mexico title, license, and tags, the “inspection” consisted of the clerk verifying the vehicle ID number. I could have had no muffler, dope and dead bodies in the trunk, and machine guns firing out the air intake. Needless to say, I was thrilled by the sane acceptance of everyday chaos on the part of the state employees in my newly adopted homeland and didn’t mind sitting in the waiting room one bit.
I was walking along yesterday, reflecting on all this, when I suddenly spied another one!
Isn’t there supposed to be a second cord?
TWO clapped-out Japanese cars with manually-operated windshield wipers in less than an hour! This was a sign that God wanted me to remember when I was young, poor, and crazy, so I did.
It was sometime during the fall semester at U.T. Austin, maybe Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and I was anxious to get away to drive to my parents’ home in Houston. My car at the time was a ’58 VW Beetle. By the time I finally got ready to leave, it was late afternoon, and the sun was sinking low. I turned on the radio and got a shock: this was not only a holiday weekend, but the first day for new inspection stickers — if I’m not mistaken, Texas hadn’t been doing this, but when they started, it was a big deal to be caught without a sticker. In fact, the radio said there were extra troopers on the road to pull you over. In the real world, however, probably not, not even in Texas, but I was an undergraduate and doubtless had other reasons for not wanting to be stopped. I had to get the car inspected for sure, or I was screwed!
I tore all over Austin looking for a service station that was a) still open, and b) doing inspections. Most of those were closed, naturally, but eventually I found one close to the freeway. The proprietor was ready to close up and go home, but he quickly inspected the car and said, “you need new wiper blades.” Of course, he didn’t sell them. In those days, VW wiper blades and arms were single units which fit into slots, held in place with little set screws. Egad! He promised to stay open for another ten minutes, and off I sped into the twilight in search of wiper blades.
I wouldn’t have been able to buy VW parts just anywhere, either. It was essentially a fool’s errand, except that I’d already decided that I would have to steal them (gulp): I only needed to find another Volkswagen of similar vintage, which I expected to find in a university town. In short order, I did. It was sitting across the street from a house with lights on inside. There were plenty of houses all around, but the block was quiet. I acted quickly, stopping behind the other VW and jumping out with screwdriver in hand. In less than 30 seconds, I unscrewed the victim’s wiper blades and got back in my car. No one yelled or seemed to care, and I sped off. A couple of blocks away, I pulled over and installed the new parts, hoping they would pass. They did, and I hit the road. Yow!
Okay, not that big a deal, you say. But maybe the owner of that other car took off the next morning in a rain shower and got run over by a semi. We just don’t know these things. I may have fathered children I don’t know about. A thoughtless word can change a life. It’s all connected.
So grab that rope and pull that wiper, dude. I salute your honesty and wish you well.
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{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Great story John! Hey- wanted to thank you again and remind other readers about the fantastic site you introduced a while back… “the astronomy pic of the day” (found in your links list). I was taken aback by todays “solar cycle” image… positively brilliant!
Appreciate hearing from you, Ty! I hope to be posting more stories (and fewer opinions) in the future!
You story reminds me of tail light lens I liberated from another MG in town. I need to pass inspection also!
“Liberated” sounds a lot less like stealing…. but it’s the same thing.
If I was going to suggest a moral to John’s (and Frank’s) story, it would be that when we’re young we’re kind of amoral. We don’t figure there’s anything much wrong with taking somebody else’s property. It’s all part of the catch-as-catch-can world that young folks live in. I don’t blame the young for feeling this way, but it’s not really a sustainable position. To this day I feel pangs of guilt over having shoplifted a pair of socks from J.C. Penney’s. St. Augustine saw the eruption of original sin in his boyhood theft of apples from a neighbor’s orchard. The young don’t have much imagination. They don’t really think much about how the loss of windshield wipers or a taillight lens might reverberate in someone else’s life. Even that pair of socks – the big bad company didn’t bear the loss, they just passed it along to all the honest purchasers. The orchard owner just had a few less apples to show for his labours. Maybe he had to work a little longer so that young Augustine could munch on his ill-gotten goods. Anyhow, the guilt of it all made Augie a saint and made you and me and Frank exemplary citizens.