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2002-12-06
Dad's car
My dad's truck was stolen two nights ago.
It was taken from the driveway in the period between when my brother went to sleep, and my dad went out to get lunch. It was 10 years old, a dusky blue pickup with a camper on the back and a plastic lizard on the dashboard.
There was a meat cleaver in the driver's side door pocket -- Dad would pick it up and look manic and laugh and talk about how it was his defense against carjackers. There was a St. Christopher's medal hanging off of the rearviewmirror.
There were random tapes, and biohazard bags he took from work (empty, of course), and all sorts of random things that Dad would pick up and leave in there.
He got that truck in '92, after my mother moved to Arizona and we were planning on having a long summer vacation through the desert. His old truck, a rather beat up and scruffy tan truck, with no air conditioning and an AM radio, wouldn't really be comfortable driving through the desert, so he picked up a new one, with plenty of air conditioning, and a tape deck.
He works nights, and he'd pick me up every morning and drive me to the bus stop. We'd sit in the car until the bus arrived, listening to the radio and talking. Sometimes we'd miss the bus and he'd drive me to school. Sometimes he'd be early, and we'd get breakfast at McDonald's or Burger King.
We'd listen to Kevin & Bean on KROQ, and we'd talk about random things. I'd complain about school, he'd complain about work, we'd plan which movies we were going to see or what we'd do that weekend or whatever.
We'd go driving on weekends to various places around L.A. I'd keep on pushing the buttons of the radio, trying to find something good, and he'd drive without shoes, claiming it felt better.
He would drive out to the desert so that my mother could see me. He packed up everything in the back of his truck, put me and my brother in the front, and drove me to New Orleans for university.
It had KROQ Oingo Boingo stickers on the back, and a They Might Be Giants sticker. I used to wash it during the summer, wearing cutoffs and a t-shirt, getting soaked in the front yard as I washed the truck.
It'll all work out, of course. He's covered on the insurance, and it's just a matter of finding out how much they wanna pay and getting a new car. He has a rental car now, a tiny little Hyundai, and he's already thinking about what kind of car he's going to get now.
But it still sucks.
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