Having a home surrounded by dead cars is something of a cultural icon in these parts, like old tires on the roof (to hold the roofing panels on). Given that, it’s still hard to understand the reasoning of those who should know better.
My admittedly self-centered ire is aroused today because the only dry places in the immediate vicinity where we could reasonably park our shiny new car are occupied by junkers. (We have a driveway, but we haven’t been able to park in it since before Thanksgiving, due to snow, ice, and mud.) One of them belonged to our landlord, who died a year ago. It’s been left there all this time “so it looks like someone is here.” When the landlord was alive, he told me that there hadn’t been a break-in or vandalism of any kind for over 30 years. But all year long the dirty blue Geo with expired tags has sat there on high dry ground, surrounded by weeds, waiting quietly for the chance to scare an evildoer out of his pants. Next door, a small pickup with trash in the back has occupied the same spot for at least five years, along with a dead panel van full of bagged-up garbage with the windows busted out. Neither of these is registered, but here as well the notion is that they keep the riff-raff away.
[Whine, snivel...]
I can’t stand the paranoia. This is the automotive equivalent of chaining a poor dog outside all day ina little circle of dirt. Hell, I’m paranoid, too, worrying about the car! What really grates, though, is people not knowing what they have and not taking care of it. When the owners of the dead van come home, for example, they park in the mud. Can’t use the raised gravel pad, because the van is on it.
[Um... no, don't go there: it will only drive you mad like me.]
The ultimate irony is that leaving dead cars stacked around your home just makes it look like so many others, rather than a place occupied by vigilant tough guys waiting to rush out with shotguns and machetes. If that’s the impression you want to convey, I suggest emulating a certain fellow in Coyote, NM. Just have a look at what that diplomatic soul posted on his gate:
I think there’s a house in there somewhere
Boy, do I need a break. Maybe we can get away soon (it SNOWED again today) in the cute little car, if only I can find it in the slop.
Related posts:
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Call it “gout de la boue”, but I’ve always felt an esthetic satisfaction from the sight of derelict vehicles, rotting away on weedy yards in front of paint-challenged houses. I was born lower middle-class, and part of me just wants to go lower and lower. No lace curtains, no grass in the front yard, but lots of dirty dishes in the sink. Plenty of smokes and playing cards and a bottle of rye and cussing out the polite people who go to church and have two cars in the driveway. That once seemed to me to be the height of human bliss. Maybe some day I’ll finally get there – have a home in a trailer park and think I’ve died and gone to heaven.
In Austin, the only way you can grow really nice irises is to have a clunker or two parked in the yard. Preferably up on blocks.
So that is what the tires on the roof are for….I had figured they were part of some Taos voodoo – put up there to keep the tornados away…
Tornados?
No, I think they’re just to hold the roof on. Either that, or there’s no place else to put them. It is something of a mystery, but I’ll bet if I lived in a typical 30-year-old singlewide, I’d find out in a hurry what they’re for.