Get In the Van
Nov 15, 2010
Jason bought a used van over the summer. To say it's used is a bit of an understatement. It's a rusty old thing that whistles, rattles, and jerks in a haze of exhaust as it careens down the highway with a blur of asphalt rushing past the rusted-out holes in the floor. The van had been heavily customized by the previous owner. And I don't mean customized in the waterbed and shag rug sort of way, but rather customized in a purely utilitarian, who-gives-a-fuck what it looks like sort of way. Apparently, it began its life as a commercial vehicle, but for a van to be used as a personal vehicle, it's legally required to have windows on all four sides. To conform to the law, the previous owner simply sawed through the sheet metal on the side of the van, riveted a piece of plexiglass over the hole, and sealed the edges with caulk that looks like old cake frosting. Various mystery wires snake through the walls and along the floor. The one leading to the bare bulb and chain socket screwed to the side of the rear wall is the only one with any apparent use. The windows and walls are plastered with stickers and decals, Harley Davidson wings on the back windows, Jets stickers on the front.
There used to be a CB radio attached to the ceiling, but it was stolen recently. "But they left the microphone. It's in there," said Jason, pointing to the glove compartment. "They also stole my EZ Pass and the rearview mirror. The EZ-Pass is useless as soon as I report it stolen. The rearview mirror is worth what? Maybe five bucks? The CB radio can't be worth much, and they only took half of it."
"Oh well, there's no accounting for the eclectic tastes of a crackhead."
A few short weeks after Jason first got the van, he stopped by a Pep Boys to buy some oil to feed the van’s voracious appetite for it. One of the employees who was working in the garage adjacent to the store stopped Jason on his way out and offered to buy the van from him on the spot. I think he may have asked Jason how well it ran, though it didn't matter since he didn't want it to drive; he wanted to live in it. It turned out that the guy lived in a smaller van behind the shop and was looking for a bigger place. Although he offered more than Jason paid for it, Jason had just bought it and wasn't quite ready to sell. I suggested that he could've compromised and offered to rent it to the guy -- "Say, 50 bucks a month -- as long as he's willing to be driven around town now and then, and that he's willing to help out when you need a hand moving furniture or something. “Yo dude, wake up, we need to pick up some motorcycle parts from Rosko.”
Hauling around motorcycles and motorcycle parts is the primary reason Jason bought the van, and Jason did recently pick up a part from our friend Rosko. When Jason pulled up outside of Rosko's garage, Rosko took one look and said, "Hey Jason, when did you get a creepy-guy van?"
"What do you mean, creepy guy van?" said Jason, "It has windows!"
I pictured Jason rolling up again, this time with his 50-dollar-a-month tenant:
"Hey Jason, when did you get a creepy guy?"
In any case, it was in this van that Jason picked up Deborah and me for an out-of-town excursion to Harriman State Park on Saturday.
I could write about the hike, about the beautiful weather, the clean air and sunshine, about how good it felt to be outside, away from the cramped oppression of the dirty ol' town we call home, but instead, I'll just post this picture, which sums it up nicely:
