August 30, 2017

In Memory of a Bug

My recent drawing, “In Memory of a Bug,” was inspired by a car I owned many years ago. I still wonder what happened to it …

I can’t remember what year I actually bought it, maybe 1970? I’ve never had a good memory for dates, but you’d think I would remember details about the most impressive looking car I’ve ever owned.

Nope – not a sports car or BMW or vintage Chevy – it was a plain ol’ gently used Volkswagen Super Beetle. What made it impressive was the paint job bestowed upon this lowly Bug by a very talented friend.

It was tangerine metal-flake paint accented with white pinstripes and drew a lot of attention on the road.

But while the car was beautiful, I had not yet learned that to love art sometimes means to suffer. I think being über visible was the first clue that this car would bring me pain – I learned quickly to watch my speed.

Then there was the actual pain from the glare of those metal flakes suspended in the paint. On a bright afternoon at a certain angle “it like to blinded me” as we say in the local vernacular.

However, the worst pain was yet to come. I drove the car around town for about 5 months before it slid on a patch of ice one night into the rear end of a Buick. This was before the days of cell phone cameras, and sadly, I hadn’t even taken a picture of it yet.

While I was sorry I had the accident because temporarily the car was not drivable, it was just a car. No one was hurt. I had insurance.

I know should have been upset about the paint job, but at least I understood why my friend was. All he had expected of me was to drive the car without ever putting a scratch or a ding on it.

Looking back, maybe things would have been different if my friend had noticed before painting the car that I wasn’t as psyched as he was by the Tom Wolfe connection, which was the whole reason for the paint job. It’s not like I hadn’t given him clues to my literary shallowness.

But, while my thoughts were concerned with how I was going to pay bills since I now owned a car, my friend was a Deep Thinker. He liked both classic and counter culture authors, and I guess he thought it would be cool if my car’s paint job paid homage to Wolfe’s book, “Kandy-Kolored Tangerine-Flake Streamlined Baby.”

Even though I under-appreciated his paint job, my friend still thought I had Deep Thinker potential and recommended that I take a class from his very favorite college Lit instructor. I agreed, still not comprehending that one person’s homage is another’s nightmare.

The first book we tackled in class was Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea.” Plodding, but at least it was short. No offense to people who like fish stories.

During the test over the book, we were asked to interpret its symbolism by answering such questions as: “Explain the meaning of the albatross.”

It’s a bird. It flew over the old man’s boat. Probably looking for food.

I wasn’t stupid – I knew the meaning of the albatross, but the test caught me on a bad day. My answer symbolized my annoyance: “It means what it says.” Then I dropped the class before it could drop me.

My friend was Very Disappointed that I had not understood the symbolism of the albatross. I tried to explain that I understood it. I was just annoyed that I had paid good money that semester to read about fish and explain the meaning of a bird.

Needless to say, the friendship bit the dust. Which brings me back to the original question: what happened to my tangerine metal-flake-painted Volkswagen Bug?

No idea.

I’ve decided that perhaps my Bug has found its way to an overgrown barn lot, stored there by a Deserving Owner who remembers the days when boys painted cars outrageous colors as a statement.

Perhaps a honeybee swarm has moved into the car, attaching open-air combs to the roof where the headliner has rotted away. Small patches of sparkling tangerine paint cling to the hood, blinding both people and critters that approach in search of honey.

And, perhaps, on soft summer nights, the new Deserving Owner comes out to visit the Bug, leaning against a nearby fence. He activates the Flashlight app on his phone, setting the few remaining tangerine metal flakes ablaze.

Perhaps he opens his favorite e-book and begins reading out loud, as the bees settle on the open combs.

“He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream, and he had gone eighty-four days now without taking a fish. …”

Perhaps as he reads, he hears the quiet purring of the hive becoming more insistent, as though an irritant were present. Alas! He has forgotten that the hive is mostly full of girls who have no interest in a stupid fish story. He clicks off the phone and quickly prepares to flee … perhaps.