Lil’ Blue.

My first car was a 1970 Opel Kadett Rallye that I bought from a guy named Billy. He was one of the regulars who sat at the counter of Perkins’ Cake and Steak where I was a busboy and waiter. Billy was an nice guy and seemed on the up and up, so I scraped everything I could and paid him $500. The car was a tiny two door. It was originally orange, but Billy decided to give it a new look with a dozen cans of navy blue Krylon. A real looker, that car. 

Billy delivered it to my house and I discovered the first problem. It was a stick shift and I didn’t know how to drive one. My sister Mimi gave me a quick tutorial as we jerked, jumped and stalled through the streets of Poplar Grove. I finally got the hang of it and was tooling around the west side before you knew it. One time I turned the corner at 700 South and 900 West not realizing I should probably slow down. I turned the corner on two wheels. 

Another thing I noticed after a while was that I had been driving for weeks with my brights on. I could never find where to turn them off until I discovered a foot switch on the floor. It was next to another foot switch that squirted the windshield. The washer fluid nozzle was on the hood. I spun it around to squirt forward, much to the surprise of unsuspecting car hops and pedestrians.

Lil’ Blue was my pride and joy. I’d spend lots of time and money at Checker Auto and Gibson’s Discount buying every accessory imaginable. Eight-ball gear shift knobs, barefoot accelerator pedals. pine tree air fresheners and bottle after bottle of Armor All. The interior of my car was so slippery, I was surprised it ever passed safety inspection. I also had a booster seat cushion since bucket seats are not conducive to a 5’4” driver.

My major purchase was the 8-Track tape player. All the cool kids had one, but none of the cool kids were playing Pete Seeger or the soundtracks from “Grease” or “The Muppet Movie”.

The car was pretty gutless. One day at lunch break, my school chums and I headed to Dee’s Drive-In. There were five of us crammed in like a phone booth. Five passengers was two more than allowable, according to the car’s instruction manual. As we lurched heavily up the viaduct like the first hill of a roller coaster, the car stalled. I tried to get it going, but not being great with a clutch, we rolled into the car behind us. Its gutlessness also showed its head when I went to visit my friend Dawn. She lived on “B” Street which was a pretty steep hill. I finally discovered that the only way to get to her house was by winding my way up City Creek Canyon and driving down “B” Street instead. It added about a half hour to the trip, but at least I got there.

An Opel Kadett only weighs about twenty-five pounds. One day after pissing off a few of the football jocks, I went to the parking lot to find it moved from its previous spot into a ditch behind the school. Other abuse came from Joni and Carolyn. They came by my house late one night and spelled out “Hi Scott” on the trunk with Oreos. Oreo cream is pretty corrosive stuff and ate right through the blue Krylon leaving the message in small orange dots.

Yep, it was a pretty fun car which spent most of its life dead in the front of our house. I eventually traded it in on a yellow Volkswagen Rabbit that was smashed by a neighbor kid late one night. But that’s a story for another time.

Rust in peace, Lil’ Blue.

Can't Hurry Love.

Great.

 

I was two days from another attempt at speed dating when I got an allergic reaction to something that left my face looking something like that of the kid in “Mask.” It wouldn’t have been so bad, if it weren’t for the fact that I had made a resolution the year before to not pass up any chance to meet someone. So I had to go. I just had to.

The other part that sucked was that I had spent the last four speed dating sessions trying to convince the other guys (in five-minute increments) that I was not a troll. The coming Monday would be very tricky since my eyes were now the size of penny loafer slits and my lips were the size of the Duchess of Alba’s. But still, I had to go.

You see, speed dating was actually quite fun. For those not familiar with it, it is an evening where a dozen or so guys are paired up (clothed), for eight-minutes at a time to see if there is any spark whatsoever, if there is—you get their contact info. If not, you got free appetizers and met some nice (albeit incompatible) people. I became a self-confessed speed dating whore, but possessed the luck and sheer determination of Susan Lucci. Try as I did, I was never chosen. But I kept trying. Lord, did I try. 

Finally, after a few weeks I gave up on the whole speed-dating thing. After fifty years, I’ve pretty much given up on dating in general. The only selling of myself I do now, is trying to finagle my way into the occasional senior discount. 

She Who Shall Not Be Named

During my stint at the magazine, we were dying to get She Who Shall Not Be Named (SWSNBN) on the cover. Her show was in full swing and she was the local darling. We had been in negotiations with her manager, for quite some time and finally nabbed our chance. We booked a photo shoot with her and flew to Hollywood to do it. The crew consisted of me, Mike the editor, the photographer Brett and two assistants whom we had hired in L.A.

The morning of the shoot, we arrived at the front gate of her home. I girded my loins and rang the intercom buzzer. I was a nervous wreck. A voice from the speaker basically told us to go away. Well, that was not possible without having all of us lose our jobs. I rang the buzzer again. Her husband/security guard, Sluggo, answered. I repeated who we were and why we were there. The gate opened and I stepped onto her property. The other guys stayed in the car. 

The wall around her huge yard contained a big white house surrounded with petunia gardens. In those gardens was a flock of pink-plastic flamingoes. I thought I spied a bullet hole or two in them. By the garage was a tall stack of brand new tires. White trash with cash. She was also the owner of a rottweiler who snarled hungrily at me from behind his chain link fence.

Sluggo came out to ask again what we were doing there. I told him who we were and that we had arranged a photo shoot with “SWSNBN’s” manager to include her in our Interior Design Guide and put her on the cover. He harrumphed and said he’d be right back.

He came back a couple of minutes later and told me to follow him when he led me to a back entrance into her security monitor room. There she was—chowing down on her breakfast muffin. “What are you guys doing here?” she asked in her infamous nasal snarl. I told her what I had told Sluggo, adding that she could do anything she wanted with the story, write it, edit it, just add her name to it, whatever. We were just happy to have her be a part of it. “I just think you’re trying to take advantage of me,” she whined. “That’s not the case at all, I said, standing my ground. By now, the ground was a puddle of pee. “Go back outside,” she said, “I need to think about it. I went back out to face the rottweiler.

She finally agreed to do the shoot but we had to do it outside. We weren’t allowed in the house. I told the guys in the car that it was a go and we started to set up a backdrop by the tires in the driveway. Her assistant came out asking about wardrobe. I told her that we wanted her to wear one of her flannel shirts from the show and that her manager would have one at the house. Well she didn’t. “So you didn’t bring anything?” she asked with a look of dread in her eyes. “No,” I said, “but there a plenty of shops around here. We can buy her whatever she wants.” “No. Just a minute,” she said nervously and closed the door behind her.

“I’m not going to go through my fucking closet!!!” Her bellowing shook the walls of Los Angeles county. The guys and I shook in mortal fear. Luckily, she found something—then the makeup artist came out. “She will only let me use these,” she said showing us a little zipper bag with some blush, mascara and a lipstick. “Do your best,” I told her and she went off to face the beast.

When she was damned good and ready, “SWSNBN” came out into the driveway. She asked what we wanted to do and I showed her some kitschy hand-crafted Utah props for her to pose with.  I cracked a couple of Utah mormon jokes in hopes of lightening her up. She cracked a smile and said “Let’s do this.” She scowled for the better part of the shoot and finally managed a smile or two near the finish. We didn’t get a lot but we got something. She said “Thanks guys, I gotta get back to my baby.” Then she turned and walked away.

We headed to the airport in hopes of catching an earlier flight home. We were wound tighter than clock springs. We boarded the plane, desperately in need of cocktails but, as luck would have it, we didn’t have enough cash. Perhaps sensing our desperation, the flight attendant gave us a dollar and our G&Ts.

So that was my day in the lion’s den. Not something I would ever want to do again. The only saving grace of the shoot was that “SWSNBN” had a poppyseed in her teeth the whole time. Those sharp, nasty, gnashy teeth.

Disappearing Act 1985

First you need to understand the layout of my basement apartment. The front door had a window in it. Through that window, you could see my living room and on through to my bedroom. In the bedroom was my bed—also in full view.

Anyway, I had been dating a guy named Jon. He was a very sweet guy and handsome as the dickens, but after a while, true to form, I grew weary of him and stopped returning his calls. 

One morning,  I was in lying bed after an late (early) morning at the clubs and Denny’s. I was trying to shake the cobwebs from my head when there came a knock at my door. It was Jon. He wanted to talk to me. I sat there, frozen like a rabbit hoping that he wouldn’t see me. He knocked again. I drew the covers up to my chest. “Open the door. I want to talk to you!” I drew the covers further up to my chin. “Come here!” Still frozen. “Come here! I can see you!” I didn’t make a move or even breathe. I was invisible. Stymied, Jon threw up his hands and walked away. My ruse worked. He didn’t see me. I never saw him again, either. 

And you ask why I’m still single.

Disappearing Act 2014

It was a beautiful Sunday afternoon in Ivins. I was a bit stressed out so Mom suggested we visit the art show over in Kayenta. It would do us both good to get out of the house and Frida is always up for a walk.

Once we arrived, we headed toward the festival with Frida stopping to sniff every sagebrush and pile of rabbit poop along the way. We entered the plaza and were blessed with the aroma of handmade tamales and oven-fired pizza. Mom said that it was good we had lunch already. I thought to myself that a tamale would be a good way to get the taste of that Wendy’s chicken sandwich out of my mouth.

We stopped at our friend George’s gallery to say hello and he greeted us at the entry. He’d been a good friend to mom over the years and, as a therapist, took a stab at fixing a multitude of my crazies while I lived down there.

We chatted for a while as Frida tugged at her leash, talked a bit more and said our goodbyes.

Mom said that an artist had been looking at us the whole time we were visiting with George. She wanted to see what she was up to. We went up and said hello and took a peek at what was on her easel. Mom said, “That’s us!” and surely enough she had been painting us the whole time.

By “us” she meant Mom, Frida and George. I was conspicuously absent from the painting. I guess I really have turned invisible after all.

As we walked away to see the rest of the festival, Mom, as any good mother would say, said “It wasn’t a very good painting anyway.”

Dine and Dash.

I went to San Juan del Cabo for a few days with Michael, Christian and Josh. It was one of those time share trial deals that we couldn’t pass up since we were all acutely broke. The trip was pretty much fraught with disaster so we decided on the last night to treat ourselves to a nice dinner on the beach. We found a map of Cabo San Lucas that showed two dining locations. The map looked like it had been designed by the Tijuana Chamber of Commerce and was pretty hard to decipher but we would navigate it somehow.

The map took our crowded Nissan Sentra down a rock-studded dirt road to a place where a lot of cars were jockeying for position. According to our map we weren’t far away. The road got rockier and dustier, but the map continued to reassure us. The neighborhood got seedier and seedier. Finally, we came to a chained off street where the car in front of us was ushered in. Assuming we had arrived at our destination, we followed the car and found a parking spot. In doing so, we pissed off the local “parking attendants”. A fellow tourist told us that we would be okay if we just apologized profusely and gave them a good tip on our way out. 

I freaked all through dinner hoping our car would be safe. My traveling companions didn't seem too worried and kept ordering more coffee and wine. It was getting dark and I began to freak even more. I pictured the car perched on blocks, windows smashed and “No Parking” spray painted on the doors. I convinced the guys we should go. Michael wanted to stroll along the beach but my pleas prevailed. We walked up to the parking lot. I was relieved to find the car untouched. Untouched, yes, but Michael had left the lights on and we had a dead battery. We each set out in different directions to find some help. An English-speaking person would have been a plus, too. Finally, some good news—I found a tequila salesman who tracked down some jumper cables for us. The bad news is they belonged to the pissed off parking attendants who wanted to have a little word with us. Clearly, that was not an option. 

After pounding our battery with a giant rock, Tequila Man found a carload of locals who were friendlier and gave us a jump. We gave every last bill we had to them and Tequila Man as a thank you. We drove away forgetting we needed money to tip the pissed off parking attendants. Luckily, they were nowhere to be seen and we sped though the gate. 

The warning light of the Nissan came on signaling we were about out of gas. None of the gas stations took credit cards so we gathered all of our Mexican coinage and got enough gas to get us to the rental agency in the morning and off to the airport.

We bid Cabo adios. As the plane took off from the runway, I glanced out of the window and swear I saw an angry group of parking attendants hot on our tail.