I wanted to write something different today than this. It was to be about part of the new book that has taken an odd turn. That’s the best part of writing for me. The story leads me, I don’t control the story. I lost my way in this latest book, but I found the story again. I wanted to write that, but now I’m writing this instead.
I hate the polarized world we live in. My cousin and I were on our way back from the junkyard—where this story comes from, I’ll get there—and we were talking about the coming November elections and could this be the moment when the US finally falls into another civil war.
About forty miles from me is one of the last pick and pull junkyards left in the country. I grew up haunting these places. My dad loved junk and junkyards and I inherited that from him.
I stopped by that place yesterday to pay for a rear end from an old Mustang we need for a project car. As I’m waiting for the woman to write up my receipt, I run into this guy, and we start talking about junk, and junk yards. The mystery and beauty of the sixty-year-old B-model Mack triplex transmission in the truck parked near the back of the property. And how we’d both driven them,
This guy was covered in some pretty hardcore tattoos, and a few were on his neck. I didn’t see any swastikas or 1488 symbols. He had a couple that looked like prison tattoos, made of cigarette ash and soot, but that’s not my point either. I’ve got some old tattoos too that tell a story of a totally different man living a totally different life. To me, tattoos are just that, the story of someone’s past, like mile markers set up along the way or events we decided we needed to memorialize.
I draw the line at Klan markings or Nazi symbols, then the conversation goes a whole different way, but this guy just looked like some mid-forties greaser who liked junkyards as much as I do and didn’t have anything better to do or any place to be other than right there in that moment with me.
We talked for a few good long minutes about picking with uncles and fathers and friends and some great finds of the past and how few people today appreciate these places. But the cool thing was we formed some kind of a weak bond in that moment and place. We were just two guys talking about old junk cars.
I could pretty easily guess his politics and I doubt they align at all with mine. Maybe he didn’t even have any political views, though somehow, I doubt that. In 2024, are we even allowed to not have a political view, an opinion? Are we allowed to simply not have a side?
I like to think myself a middle of the road type who sees little good in either side of politics, but I certainly know what side I’ll support in November. I’m sure if this guy and I had moved from talking about sweet memories of old cars and dads and secretly stolen junk car parts to politics it could have led to a pretty serious dust-up out there in the gravel and mud yard, but that didn’t happen.
My cousin and I share many of the same views. We have other cousins with wildly differing opinions and political positions. He tells me, and he’s right, that all of us, our generation, came from essentially that same place and time and economic class. We share grandparents and stories and inside jokes, and in his words, we share more that binds us together than pulls us apart.
In amongst the piles of old rusted Chevys and Fords and Toyotas and Dodges and old Mack trucks and little Volkswagen beetles rusting in their final resting place, I found a mysterious and elusive place; the common ground shared with that guy and me, in line there with our rusty treasure.
Take all that political crap away and we were just two dusty guys in dirty jeans and grease under our fingernails out enjoying a spring day in a junk yard.
Again, in my cousin’s words, we all have more that binds us together than pushes us apart, but we don’t allow it. Somehow, we take a dangerous comfort in only wanting to be around people who see the world through the same lens, the people who only fly our flag.
My father and his brothers would argue for hours about Fords vs. Chevys vs Dodges, but when the argument was over, they were still just brothers sitting around drinking a beer.
We’ve lost that. As me and my junkyard companion were bullshitting yesterday, I know we were both eyeing each other up and wondering whose side we were on. But if you witnessed our encounter yesterday, from a distance I wonder if anyone could tell us apart at all.
Truth is, we are all waving someone else’s flag. We’ve lost the ability to see that. Opposing political agendas now define us. I fear war is coming. It will be a war fought here in our home, not some foreign land we see on TV. It will be someone else’s war, but we will be the ones who die as it plays out. It’s never the leaders of a war who die on the battlefields… I wish we could all remember that.
We don’t ever need to line up to fight each other over some other old man’s agenda, but it looks to me that’s exactly where we are headed. I hope I’m wrong, I don’t think I am…
There is a whole lot of truth to be taken from junkyard encounters.
Great and timely words! Some words we need to take to heart. About our own selves, and who we all are!
Politics and elections come and go… we all have our own opinions… who wins or loses will make a difference in all our lives. We’ll just have to live with who gets elected.. and carry on as we can… like talking junk in a junk yard!
Excellent!