Tales from the Christensen Cruiser

I got to Buffalo and found my way to a muffler shop. It was a chain, which has some sort of “touch” which shall remain nameless. There was a nice young man at the desk and he said they could do what I wanted. The guy doing the work put the truck up on the lift and we got under and I showed him what I thought the problem was. He was a nice enough guy and seemed like he knew what he was doing. The job typically doesn’t require the skills of a rocket scientist and he didn’t seem to be one. Someone, years before had mounted the exhaust pipes solidly to the chassis, so as the engine moved and vibrated, the tailpipe did not, and this caused problems. It looked to be a repair of an emergency Mexican sort, which are great repairs for the most part, but this one had a design flaw. As an aside, there was a time when I was in Mexico as a young man and we were way out in the sticks – Palenque in the seventies, a very rural place at the time. I watched as these guys were putting a transmission back together in an old jeep. I was stunned as they cut a gasket out of a Ritz cracker box and buttoned it back together. It totally rocked my world…I thought one just couldn’t do such a thing. It worked great, and it has colored my way of working to this day. Similar to Robert Persig using a beer can to make shim stock to tighten up the handlebars on his friends brand new BMW in “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” – one of my road trip sacred texts. It was another thing that “just wasn’t done”, but was in-fact, a fabulous repair. So. Nothing against a “Mexican repair” – sometimes they are the best thing one can do; however this particular one had outlived its usefulness.

The tech and I agreed on what needed to be done and I went in to the waiting room to wait. Meanwhile, the boss comes in, who is not in a very good mood, and is ordering the young guy around like a drill sergeant. A couple of young girls came in with their tailpipe dragging and he was dealing with them and went out to have a look at their car. I could see the kid was having some trouble being pushed around by the boss, and come to find out that he was his father. I commiserated about that a bit and then went out to check on the work. I got to the lift to see a big old dent in the truck. I asked what the hell happened, and the guy had somehow lowered the truck on to a ladder and just bent the heck out of the side of the truck. I am just pissed and go back in to the waiting room and tried to breathe it away so I didn’t blow a fuse and go off on anyone. It’s not like I don’t make some bonehead mistakes myself. I do, and plenty of them to be honest. I calmed myself down enough to go back out, just as the boss is seeing it for the first time and asking the tech how the f**k this happened, and then I’m all up in it, and the boss is getting a wrecking bar ready to start bending things back and I won’t let him touch it. This is a total New York in-your-face sort of guy – we are as far apart in demeanor as the two coasts. He already said that the work would be for free, and showed me a way overpriced, padded bill. All I want to do is get on down the road, but this guy is almost acting like it is my fault this happened, and telling me that I wouldn’t believe the week he’s had and so forth. I am saying that my week isn’t going so damn well either and we end up taking it outside and he’s acting like this is no big deal, and I am talking insurance, and he’s saying “For THAT?” insulting both me and the faithful truck. He’s screaming “What would make you happy? – What would make you happy?” in a totally New York sort of way. “You want money? How about a couple of hundred bucks – would that make you happy?” At that point, I took the two hundred and got the hell out of there. Welcome to New York.

At that point I just wanted to get to New England, so I drove like hell on Interstate 90 to Albany and then north on Highway 87 all the way to Essex, New York, on Lake Champlain, close to four hundred miles, one way or another. I was totally beat, both cumulatively and from the day in general. It was Saturday and I was ready for a real bed and a shower, not to mention a cocktail and dinner. I ended up at the Cobble Hill Inn and sat at the bar with the nicest couple, the Cunningham’s from Elizabethtown. We sat at the bar while I had dinner and a bourbon and we talked about music and stuff for hours and hours, There were no rooms available – not because they were full so much as that nobody comes that time of year. They let me stay in the lot and I crawled out to the truck very late. They introduced me to a shot of some sort called a “Hind Tit”, which I had one of to be social. I’m glad I just had one of those. The next morning could have been painful if I had had more. Josh Cunningham was a music aficionado of the best kind. He loved music more than most things and was in to all sorts of music – he was open to most all of it. They were just a great couple of people. We had a great time together, and it was the good side of my New York experience. Everyone at this place was great.

When I hit New York, New York many years ago, the first time I had delved into the city by myself, it was to go on a blind date with my pal Neal’s grandmother to a reception at MOMA. I was astonished. I had avoided the city for many years – driven by it, because frankly I was intimidated by people just like the muffler guy. You always see that sort of stuff in movies and so forth. I ended up arriving early on a Sunday morning and got out with my dog Sheba and wandered around. The sun was out, it was a beautiful day, and to a one, the people were some of the nicest people you could hope to be around. The city was just crackling with energy, and I was smitten.  The nice people at the Cobble Hill Inn renewed my faith in New Yorkers, and the good people of Essex did the same.