Honesty

"Mom, today we were talking about cursing in my class."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, and Mrs. Wilson asked us to raise our hands if our moms used curse words when they drive in the car."

"You didn't raise your hand did you?"

"Mom! Of course I did!"

Logic

"So mama are you going to drive me the six blocks to pre-school then go on the walking machine at the YMCA across the street from my school and do lots of walking and then drive the six blocks home and then drive the car six blocks back to pick me up after my school is done and then we’ll drive the six blocks back to our house?"

"What’s your point, Bob?"

The Backseat

It was 101° on the cooler, Hollywood side of the hill. I was headed deep into the always 10° warmer San Fernando Valley for an attempt to interview The Rock Star Legend who had canceled on me three times already that week. The Rock Legend’s people were in the habit of waiting until a few hours after I had been sitting around with a camera crew before they would cancel.

I was driving my old Volvo sedan. The air conditioning in the car hadn’t worked in years. I drove with the windows open, hoping the white hot breeze would dry out my sweat-damp business casual get up.

My first stop in the big valley was at the veterinarian. My elderly dog Stella had been at the vet getting a tune up and was being released that afternoon. The way the scheduling worked out, if I wanted to have her back home for the evening, I would have to pick her up on the way to the interview and bring her with me to the recording studio. She was a big, friendly gal. I knew she'd be welcome.

With Stella planted in the backseat, we merged onto the 405 freeway. I immediately smelled something bad coming from behind me and chalked it up to canine farts and kept driving. Soon the sulfury-burning-hair-dead-stuff odor was overwhelming my little oven on wheels. I glanced into the backseat and saw that poor Stella had liquid-pooped up the back of the car. She then had apparently walked around in it and then sat down in it. I tried desperately to get off of the freeway but was trapped in my lane.

I could see her in the rear view mirror getting hit with another round of poops and rolling around the seat in her attempt to clean herself off. Stella panted up at me with her dog smile. My backseat and its passenger were now blanketed in excrement. I was already running late to my meeting with The Rock Legend. Gagging and laughing uncontrollably (something I tend to do at inopportune moments), I called my dear friend Karen who lived close by. Through my gasps I explained the situation. She told me to meet her in her driveway.

I pulled up and Karen met us, armed with towels and a hose. She quickly opened the rear door, took Stella by the collar and lead her out. She wiped out the backseat as best she could. Then my poop pit-crew of one, closed the car door and with a knock on the trunk yelled for me to keep going. I raced to Sun Valley and made it to the studio only a few minutes behind schedule. I sat with the camera and sound guys and waited for the interview as the crap baked into the interior of my car.

Forty minutes later the call came from The Rock Legend’s management. He would have to re-schedule. Again.

I released the crew and got directions to a nearby car wash. It was closing time but I managed to talk the guys into detailing my backseat by cleaning out my wallet and handing them the contents. I drove back to Karen’s where she met me in the driveway and presented my freshly washed dog.

This reaffirmed three things that I already knew: Karen is an amazing friend, my career in television was fun but not glamorous, and I loved that crazy dog with all my heart.

The Van, Man


In 2004, I bought a minivan for a dollar from the man who would become my husband. If you have not yet read the details of that transaction, you can catch up here.

As promised, following is Jeff’s account of his experience with The Mystic Mechanic:

In 2002, I was living in Los Angeles. The band I was in at that time, Young People, had a green Plymouth Voyager minivan as our touring machine. As the only person in the band with a credit history, I was the one who bought the used van. We had put many miles on it over a period of two years and six U.S. tours. Money was nonexistent as was our maintenance record for the van. Except for gasoline and the white bobble head horse doll that we super-glued to the dashboard, we put no money into The Voyager.


It was the middle of summer and we were leaving in two days for another North American tour. The engine began overheating every time we drove it more than a few blocks. The band was extremely screwed and extremely broke.
 
Our neighbor Becky, suggested we call a guy she referred to as "The Mystic Mechanic.” She insisted that the mystic mechanic was "the real thing,” although according to her the guy was homeless and she didn't really know if he had ever really fixed anyone's car "for real". She had met him at a donut shop in Silver Lake and he had given her his card. On the card was printed, “John – Mystic Mechanic.” His phone number was scribbled along the bottom in pencil.

Desperation won out over good judgment and I called The Mystic. He told me he would meet me in 20 minutes in the parking lot by the Astro Diner because as he put it, he spent hours every day "holding court" at the place next door.

When I arrived, a man who looked like a hobo-y Crocodile Dundee made of chicken leather, appeared like an apparition from behind the Winchell's Donuts. He veered toward me and asked for my keys and told me not to worry. He had "picked up a vibe" that I was “really stressed out” about the minivan. I tried not to get irritated that this guy was trying to mellow me out. As I explained the car's problems, he opened the hood and gunned the gas and turned knobs and played with switches. He told me not to worry because he had a "few tricks up his sleeve" even though he was wearing a ripped tank top. He would need a little time to brainstorm and he would call me when it was time to come back.

My phone rang just two hours later. When I returned, he showed me that he had rigged a separate wire to the fuse system with one of those booster clamps that you see connected to the end of jumper cables.

“When the car starts overheating," he said, "just do this," and with the car running he grabbed the cable and connected it to the live battery. The fans turned on and the temperature gauge went down, however the duct tape and fuse box rig that he had set up appeared, shall we say, non-standard. He charged me $30.00 total for “expenses and lunch.”

 Despite the bizarre and dangerous nature of this fix, we drove the van just like this for thousands of miles. I used the van to move cross-country to New York, and then back again a few years later to California. Even once I could afford it, I still did not consider actually taking the van to a real mechanic for a more permanent solution, until it broke down again and I had to recount this story to my future wife. She was not surprised and not impressed.




The lore of the van is in the air. Go to Extreme Craft to enjoy a story about our friend Garth's band van.

Dollar Days

After the heroic, yet violent death of my brown Volvo, I rented a car for a few days to get to and from my new job at the outpatient program. I tried to figure out my next automotive move but lacking funds, my choices were limited. Jeff and I had been seeing each other less than two months at this point when he made me an offer I was in no position to refuse. Jeff offered to sell me his mini-van for $1.00. I accepted.

The 1997 Plymouth Grand Voyager had been Jeff’s tour van for his last band. They had driven it back and forth across the country a number of times and it had seen better, cleaner days. It was missing three of its hubcaps and the interior smelled like The Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. Jeff had been eyeing a new hybrid and decided to buy it a little sooner than he had planned in order to give me some wheels. He’s swell like that.

One of my job duties at the outpatient program would involve driving some of the teenage patients to and from appointments. The van would be perfect. I spent $18.00 at the car wash, ordered some cheap replacement hubcaps off the internet, gassed her up and we were ready to roll.

On my third day behind the wheel of The Voyager, I had made a deal with my two 16 year-old passengers, Tommy and Adam. I would let them pick the radio station and in exchange, they would stop begging me to let them pick the radio station. It was a sweltering afternoon and we had the air conditioner blasting as we crawled along in the Santa Monica Boulevard traffic enjoying the dulcet tones of Three 6 Mafia. Suddenly, the air shut off and the temperature gauge started moving up. We were overheating.

Having driven old, crappy cars almost exclusively in my driving career, I knew that with an overheating car, I needed to first turn the heater on high to try and pull some of the hot air away from the engine. With the 103 degree temp outside and the heater set to 10, the interior of the van felt as if we were driving onto the face of the sun. We rolled down all the car windows and inched along back to the office, treating the nearby motorists to “Pussy Got Ya Hooked” blasting from the van’s crappy speakers. I silently prayed that my boss would not drive by.

When I got back to my desk, I immediately called Jeff and told him what had happened. He explained that he was aware of the van’s compressor problem. Then he said, “I guess I need to take it to a real mechanic.”

“What do you mean? You’ve been taking it to a pretend mechanic?”

“Not exactly, he’s more of a psychic.”

“I want my dollar back.”


Tomorrow… in Jeff’s own words: The story of The Mystic Mechanic.

Day Tripper

(But black)

Over the last 14 years that my girlfriends and I have been making the trek out to the outlet mall for our annual holiday shopping trip, I have always done the drive with another friend. Due to timing and logistics, Sunday was the first time I drove up alone to meet the others.

There was a little light traffic in the San Fernando Valley. I drove in the number three lane of the four lanes of the 101 freeway, listening to the Breakfast With the Beatles radio show. I had the Honda Civic hybrid’s cruise control set to 67mph, two miles per hour over the speed limit because I’m a rebel like that.

I was belting out Day Tripper when a black sports car suddenly appeared in my rear view mirror. The car was following me so closely, I couldn’t see its headlights. The black car stayed behind me for half a minute or so and then passed me on the right. The shiny Lamborghini Gallardo then slowed to keep a pace that was just ahead of me by half a car length. I didn’t believe the driver of the $200,000.00 car was inviting me of the $20,000.00 (but excellent gas mileage) dusty sedan to a street race, nor did I harbor any illusions that the driver was flirting with my messy ponytail and me. Something odd was going on. I felt like I was playing Grand Theft Auto, if Grand Theft Auto included a sleepy-suburban-mom-with-coffee-breath avatar.

After a full minute of this, the Lamborghini abruptly took off so fast it seemed to double its speed in just a few feet. It crossed a lane and headed down the off ramp at Woodlake Avenue and vanished. A few seconds later, a highway patrol car sped past on my left, and it continued north on the freeway. It then occurred to me that the fancy car had been using my Honda as a shield to hide from the CHP, and when he got close enough to an exit, he had made a successful escape.

My heart was still beating a little faster than usual as I sipped from my coffee travel mug and contemplated my L.A. driving moment. Gradually, my attention returned to my outlet mall destination and my friends and the deals that awaited us. Oh, the deals.

Sunday driver, yeah.