And now, two days later, it’s lovely and balmy on the back porch. The young people’s wonderful little kids are playing in their backyard, their beautiful kiddy voices wafting over here from their yard. Glorious afternoon! What could be better?
Just back from the Goodyear Tire shop, a couple blocks to the north of the Funny Farm. To my astonishment, I discovered that they have actual mechanics there… Yeah: just like the beloved guys who used to work for Chuck, before he got decrepit and had to check himself into an old-folkerie.
That was an enormous loss: Chuck was a Godsend. But alas, none of us lives forever….and Chuck was a generation ahead of me.
By sheer luck, about the time we could see there was no substitute for Chuck at Chuck’s, I happened to stumble upon that Goodyear place. I’d assumed all they did was sell tires…that would be why it’s called “Goodyear Tires,” right?
Nay, verily! Turns out the place is full-service repair shop!
Wooo HOOO!
Not only that, but it’s within walking distance of my house!
No more sitting around the shop’s waiting room for three hours! Or putting up friends to drive me down to drop off the tank-mobile at Chuck’s, and then come get me and drive me back down there in the afternoon rush hour. Wa Hoooo!
Heh…. We learned an amazing factoid about Chuck’s:
When my family lived in lovely Saudi Arabia, my father got a three-month leave between each two-year contract. His idea of a “vacation,” gawd help us, was to fly home (a 24-hour flight across the Middle East, North Africa, Europe, and the Atlantic Ocean), buy a car in New York (that was his special treat to himself!), drive across the US as fast as he could go; stop in Texas for a week or two to visit his brother & family; then drive drive drive some more to reach Berkeley, California — there to visit my mother’s relatives — and then SHOOT back across the continent to New York, unload the car, jump on another plane, and fly back to Dhahran.
LOL! With vacations like this, who needs nightmares?
Turns out that during this period, Chuck’s was the only repair garage in Phoenix!
Yeah. Phoenix was a wide spot in the road at the time. And…whenever we hit Phoenix, my father would take his fancy new vehicle to a repair shop (a repair shop??? make that the repair shop) to be spiffed up so we could make it through the rest of the trip!
No kidding!
So over all those years, at one point or another we did business with Chuck.
And you couldn’t do business with a finer man. This world is much diminished without him.
You were a good man, Chuck!
And now here we are in the fuckin’ 21st century, no doubt surrounded by good men. But HOW, dear gawd, do we find them?
Well, despite my having dropped out of The Present, I think (hope) I’ve found a small tribe of them. We shall see, over time.
{ahem!}
If that much time remains to us…