One of These Days

Kingman, AZ to Los Angeles, CA

I sleep in longer than I expected, getting up around 8:30AM and with a quick yoga routine, some deep stretches, and a cold shower to get the heart moving I’m eager to hit the road. Last night I noticed the travel center across the parking lot had two-for-ones on meal replacement protein bars so I stock up for the road. Not that I don’t want to patronize mom and pop diners along the way but they can sometimes locate themselves in terribly inconvenient places; and since my goal on this trip is to follow the road and follow my stream of thoughts, not follow my belly, I’m happy to skip the odd restaurant and run the risk of finding something more interesting at some abandoned gas station.

Stock up I do, grabbing a dozen or so protein bars and dropping a few on the floor on the way to the counter. A tall skinny bucktooth kid with Coke-bottom spectacles picks them up and hands them to the clerk for me.

“Thanks,” I say as reflex.
“Anything for a friend,” he responds in a toothy grin, just a little too familiar for comfort. Eager to get rolling I hustle back across the parking lot and just out of the corner of my eye I notice I now have Coke-bottoms in tow. “Where you from?” he asks.
“Minnesota,” I mumble.
“I’m from Oklahoma, me and my family,” he volunteers and I say nothing. As we approach the parking lot he asks, “Which car is yours?”
I chin-point to Cherry and he misreads, “The pickup?”
“Nope,” I answer as we get closer.

Something about this kid puts me off. I don’t particularly like or dislike him, I suppose I’m just not in a social mood and I don’t feel like talking. First thing in the morning is my favorite time to collect my thoughts and float through the world wearing a veneer of polite civility. The Japanese have a concept of tatemae or façade (literally, “that which stands in front”) and honne or sincere feelings (literally, “true sound“). Westerners, particularly Americans, can have a little trouble with the idea of a social self that exhibits formality (as tatemae) in business and cultural contexts and a deeper self that exhibits feelings (as honne) in important personal relationships. Yet it’s not so hard to be comfortable with the idea of different “selves” in different settings when thought of behaviorally. Is a professional baseball player exhibiting his honest and true self when fielding a pop fly? Is a legislator being for really real when making a rhetorical point to advocate a bill? Is a teacher exhibiting her true nature when explaining the subtlety of the atomic structure of chemical bonds? While they aren’t necessarily insincere or inauthentic in these settings they’re playing prescribed roles, fulfilling duties. The baseball player might at that moment prefer to be coordinating dog fights in his Atlanta suburban home; the legislator spending the afternoon with his mistress; the chemistry teacher on vacation in the Bahamas. But they aren’t disclosing this deeper preference at every opportunity. They have a job to do.

Tatemae is like that. It’s like doing the job of “existing in society in public.” Honne is like “revealing your authentic self in a relationship.” Both of these concepts are completely culturally programmed, by the way, and they profoundly influence the Japanese mindset. They’ve provided fodder for drama since the Tales of Genji and facilitate tolerating a relentlessly collectivist lifestyle.

At any rate this morning I’m feeling very tatemae and Coke-bottoms is in the mood to chit chat because he’s curious or nosy or whatever, but I’m not loving his honne right now. I’d love for him to turn it down a few hundred decibels. As I approach Cherry (unfortunately now, more like we) and disable the remote security he sputters the standard 13-year-old-boy gasps and compliments while I pop the hood. I’ve taken to pulling the distributor cap coil wire at night to further reduce the risk of theft and as I take to putting humpty dumpty back together I’m flooded with “What year? Where’d you get it? How long have you had it?” It doesn’t take long for this kid to volunteer more hard-luck information about his family and their misadventures. “Yeah, we’ve been here for a while. Boy, I’m hungry. We haven’t eaten in three days.” Judging from what look like fried chicken crumbs on his shirt and mouth and his malodorous smell I suspect he hasn’t had a bath in as long. I wonder if truck stop handouts are all that easy to come by and pitch him a protein bar as a parting gift. With the distributor wire in place I wish Coke-bottoms all the best and start the car.

She doesn’t fire.

“It’s flooded,” I mutter and give it a minute to settle as Coke-bottoms affirms, “Yep, sounds like it’s flooded to me,” and peers on and starts to talk me up more. Great, thanks, see you later. I crank it hard for ten seconds and she shakes like an earthquake.

She doesn’t fire.

It’s going to be a long day.

+-+-+-+-+=+-+-+-+-+

Goal Appraisal

Before I detail the cluster fuck that is my experience in Kingman, AZ it’s going to be helpful to talk about the goal appraisal theory of emotions. Because my day will be a series of goals and my appraisal of them and my emotional responses to them so bear with me.

First of all, why have a theory of emotions? I mean, aren’t emotions our own private experiences that we ought to preserve, defend, keep secret, and share only in our most intimate relationships (like honne)? That’s a way to go and there’s nothing wrong with thinking that my interior emotional makeup is completely unique in the course of human history. Except of course to privilege my emotional experiences over anyone else’s basically denies the humanity of the six billion other people living on this planet. What if instead I choose to interpret emotions as the palette from which I paint the unique picture that is my life? It may get gloppy and the colors may run, that’s fine—the universe never promised me that my emotions would be perfectly pure hues of magenta and cyan. What I could do with such a theory would be to use my emotions to interact with people and the world and ex (externally) motio (move), that is, I could inform my behavior and take actions directed by rather than at the mercy of my emotions.

Now emotional awareness and behavior regulation is not to be confused with the absence of emotions. That I might not express everything I feel doesn’t mean I don’t feel (tatemae is a sophisticated form of emotional regulation that can feel repressive to some people, completely normal to others, at times repressive while at different times normal to yet others). That I might have learned with years and years of practice and a little (okay, a lot of) psychotherapy to organize my emotional responses, if not my emotions themselves, speaks only to the degree of utility I choose to extract from my feelings. You’re welcome to use (misuse?) your emotions however you like. If you decide to use your emotions to inform your actions, thoughts, beliefs, and so on a theory of emotions can go a long way towards making this happen.

Consider a desirable goal, like getting a promotion, falling in love, whatever is personally relevant to you. The outcome of this goal could be one of a few things:

• Goal blocked by a person. My boss could give the job to someone else. Or I could be your own worst enemy and find the promotion will not go to anyone because I’m not qualified. Whatever the reason, if I think an agent (including myself) blocks my goal and that agent should provide some kind of restitution, the statistically measured response is anger.
• Goal blocked by no one. The promotion may expire, or an act of God wipes out the office the promotion would have sent me to. Of course I might blame God or Father Time and get angry. If I think no agent blocks the goal (or no restitution is possible) and the goal is unattainable or otherwise lost, the statistically measured response is sadness.
• Goal outcome uncertain. Maybe I’m not sure what’s going on with my promotion. I don’t know if I’m going to get it or my coworker but I’ll find out tomorrow. I’m anxious to have the unknown resolved in my favor. Of course I may blame my boss for not telling me sooner and get indignant and angry (I’m pretty skilled at blaming people when it suits me). If I am uncertain about the result of the goal, the statistically measured response is fear.
• Goal unexpectedly attained. I may find at my review that the promotion I wanted but was not really expecting has been awarded to me. Of course I could blame the company for strapping me with all this extra responsibility and get angry (that’s a skill I’ve honed). If I attain a desirable goal unexpectedly, the statistically measured response is happiness.

So to recap: some fucker gets my promotion and I blame that fucker, I feel angry. My promotion disappears due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control and I’m disappointed, I feel sad. My promotion will be announced tomorrow and I want to know right now plz right now, I feel fear. A promotion falls into my lap and I wasn’t really expecting it, I feel happy. Incomplete and not comprehensive as far as models go, but terrifically wide ranging. Not to complex is it? With these simple instinctive primitive emotional colors we start to paint the picture of emotional life. You probably know that television renders its infinite variety of daytime soap operas with just red, green, and blue so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that a complex network of goals, appraisals, and emotional responses would combine to color our interior emotional worlds. It’s a tool to interpret emotional life at any rate.

Here’s how. Suppose you suddenly feel consumed by rage, indignant in the face of some affront.

1. Identify the goal. Ask yourself: What goal is being blocked? Was I expecting to be treated with respect (and in this context did I deserve it)? Was something I valued taken from me?
2. Identify the goal relevance. Ask yourself: How personally relevant is this goal? Is this something I really cared about, or am I getting worked up out of habit, boredom, or an undue sense of entitlement? Will the sun rise if I let this goal go?
3. Identify the agent. Ask yourself: who blocked the goal? Did they do it intentionally (in which case the agent might be informed, corrected, or removed) or inadvertently (in which case I might given them the benefit of the “honest mistake” doubt)?
4. Identify the likely outcome. Ask yourself: What is the most likely outcome? What is the best or worst case scenario? Be as realistic as possible.
5. Identify alternate goals. Ask yourself: If this goal is blocked now, can I put my attention on another goal? Can I meet the goal with a different approach and go right around the agent? This is the insight of Judo: don’t resist but accept and use your opponent against himself.

You can see how sadness would work much the same: What goal has been lost? How personally relevant was it? Can the goal be restored? Do I have alternatives? And fear: What goal is being threatened? By whom? What are the possible outcomes and the worst case scenario? Am I able to turn my attention to another more important goal and get on with the day? For an undesirable goal the game is played in reverse in a way you would expect: an agent facilitating an undesirable goal induces anger; the agent-free attainment of an undesirable goal induces sadness; the unknown state of an undesirable goal induces fear of the goal being attained; and the unexpected avoidance of an undesirable goal induces happiness.

Goal appraisal has nothing to do with repressing or suppressing the emotional itself. It has to do with interpreting and expressing the emotion to meet or let go of the goal. Appraisal and reappraisal occurs in a permanent cycle of stimulus, response, behavior. Emotionally informed action. Cool isn’t it?

Goal appraisal doesn’t address prolonged moods or free-floating emotions like mania, depression, schizophrenia, and so forth. It’s a behavioral response model. It’s useful for what it’s useful for: to help you act in the face of a stimulus; to use emotions to guide your interaction with the world. All this self-diagnosis serves to do is inform behavior in the face of emotional input. Some people are going to use this insight to live rich, satisfying, complete, rewarding lives as they achieve personally meaningful goals. Use it too. Or don’t. Understand your emotions a tiny bit better or leave them a mystery. The sun doesn’t really care if you feel happy or frightened or sad or angry, he’s still going to put in an appearance tomorrow. Of course your relationships may be chaos and you may be a mean spirited prick, but if I don’t run into you in the supermarket checkout aisle I don’t really care either.

The skeptic in you might want some evidence for this nifty sounding model. So do cognitive scientists. So they started conducting studies on the 2,000 to 3,000 anencephalic infants (babies born without brains) born in the U.S. each year. It turns out that for the brief duration these babies survive they exhibit autonomic (spinal cord) preferences and reflexes—such as vocalizing when too hot or cold—but but nothing like the emotional responses and maternal bonding responses of healthy babies. At the very least then the brain is involved in complex, higher emotions. As for goals and emotions, get this: a University of Chicago research team blocked the goal of a three-year-old by having his father refuse to take him to McDonalds (the boy’s favorite restaurant) and then blocked the goal of a thirty-year-old by having his boss refuse his request for a transfer. They then transcribed a free-form interview where each subject complained about the father or the boss respectively and edited out language (“poopie-head” vs. “sonofabitch”) and read each transcript at an international workshop of developmental psychologists. Guess what? The audience could not tell the transcript of the three-year-old transcript from that of the thirty-year-old. This suggests that goal blockage actually induces the emotion of anger even in young children, that it is not merely culturally programming (although culture will determine the expression—remember tatemae and honne), and that the emotional palette is almost fully developed even by age three.

Like most theories about human beings, the theory is precisely as useful as it is useful. Read that again. A theory of human nature is not about being good or bad, being right or wrong, or declaring the ultimate absolute final objective truth about the species. Twenty years from now the goal appraisal will be tweaked or refined or superseded with a new and improved model like “Jimmy B’s Seven Steps to Sweet Sensual Satisfaction.” Models live and die based on how useful they are: whether they have predictive or explanatory or therapeutic value. Welcome to the creative process of continual human development. Not surprisingly then the social sciences regularly generate competing and contradicting theories of human behavior that predict opposite things. This can be frustrating and confusing, not just to the general public but also to expert practitioners. The debate as to whether cognition (the brain) was involved in emotions raged for a decade in the cognitive science field, fueled by the cross-purpose lack of a clear definition of what researchers meant when using the word “emotion.” (Do you mean mood or preference or biological reflex or my deepest and most intimate for really real feelings?) Usually confusion arises because context is significant and generalizations out of context really make very little sense. Whether a person is happy or sad or otherwise depends on a lot of things…not the least of which is what is personally relevant to them.

Are you a “happy person” or a “sad person”? Consider the analog question: Are you a hungry person? It helps to know if you’ve eaten in the past three days or not. If not, it’s likely that you’ll feel hungry (no guarantee, you desert fasting seeker, you). If you’ve just gorged on the whole of a four-star French restaurant’s menu all mixed in a bucket the idea of a wafer-thin mint might send you into convulsions. It’s tempting to distinguish our own private feelings from the feeling of hunger since one is more biological and one is more, well, emotional. Isn’t it? Or is it?

Hunger is a state, not a trait. An emotion is a state, not a trait. Unless a person suffers from severe chemical or psychosocial issues (and PTSD, abuse, neglect, they’ll do that) to deny another the complete, complex, vast range of human emotions speaks more about the person doing the denying than it does the person being denied. I have yet to meet someone who has never felt hunger or never felt fullness. I have yet to meet someone who has never felt ecstatic and never felt depressed. I’ve met plenty of people who have identified themselves in terms of these transient states: “I’m a happy person.” Or “I’m a depressed person.” Good for you. Problematizing the human experience and being disappointed with a life that fails to offer perpetual bliss. Thanks self-help industry, pharmaceutical giants, postmodern narcissism, and self-centered consumerism! You’re doing a swell job.

For better or for worse I’m going to appraise the hell out of Kingman, AZ.

+-+-+-+-+=+-+-+-+-+

As I crank the engine sounds strange. It sort of half fires and won’t sustain itself. The more I pump and crank the more I feel like I’m going to blow the starter or the carburetor or the engine rods. It doesn’t sound good.

I’m a little nervous and a little angry.
{Goal: Get to Santa Monica, the sooner the better.
Relevance: That’s the point of the trip.
Agent: Me if I wrecked the car; my mechanic if he mistuned the carburetor.
Outcome: Uncertain but looking like a needless hassle. Did I put in bad gas? Did I not lead at the last stop?
Alternatives: Wait and see if the car fixes itself; do something to jumpstart the engine; get the car fixed by a mechanic; troubleshoot and fix the car myself; eat breakfast and clear my head.}

“Boy, what a frustrating way to start the day,” Coke-bottoms chimes from just outside the car. “That’s not what you wanted right now is it.”
Not expecting a teenage boy to be all that emotionally aware I explain, hoping he’ll get the message, “Calling my attention to how frustrating it is will probably only make me more frustrated. I think I need starter fluid.”

I enable the security system and cross the parking lot to the Flying J figuring that if the carburetor is wrecked (my working hypothesis) it won’t make it any more or less wrecked to spray starter fluid all over it. And even if it dirties the carburetor it’s a cheap fix to get me to the nearest AutoZone. I buy a can of starter fluid walk back to the car, passing another motel patron and self-proclaimed mechanic who offers to hold open the choke while I turn it over.

As I get into the car Coke-bottoms interjects, “I kept an eye on it while you were gone. That’s what friends are for.”
“Actually that’s what security systems are for,” I correct with a little contempt at his obvious attempt to ingratiate himself.
{Goal: Some peace and quiet while I troubleshoot the car.
Relevance: Not that significant really.
Agent: Coke-bottoms.
Outcome: He’ll probably stop if I ask.
Alternatives: Treat him like a human being; ignore him; ask him to stop talking when I really need to concentrate.}

We pump and spray as Cherry resists all attempts to fire. My fellow patron would like to stay but has to catch up with his old lady, if I want to hire him to take a look I can find him in room 151. As he leaves he mentions he thinks the carburetor needs to be rebuilt. Hardly a diagnosis but it gets me thinking. In software and systems research they have a clever little algorithm called “divide and conquer” that works for pinpointing problems that works something like this: suppose you have a number of pieces, A through Z, and the pieces are failing somewhere. Think about a security leak in the Pentagon that you can’t readily trace, but you know it’s coming one of the offices A through Z. To divide and conquer you divide the offices in half, planting Rumor One in offices A through M and Rumor Two in offices M through Z (or roughly, it need not be precisely half). When Rumor One surfaces you know that the leak is coming from the group of offices A through M, so repeat: plant Rumor Three in offices A through F and Rumor Four in offices G through M. When Rumor Four surfaces, plant Rumor Five in offices G through J and Rumor Six in offices K through M. Of course you can plant twenty six rumors and see which one surfaces. But that takes a lot more time and energy because you have to check with and monitor each office in turn; this approach is great for continuous systems because it rules out problems. For example to make sure I didn’t have a fuel problem I applied divide and conquer to check the fuel delivery to the carburetor; that checked okay so I could proceed to inspect the carburetor or the electrical, but if that failed I would have needed to replace the fuel pump or fuel hoses.

I murmur my provisional hypothesis that maybe, just maybe, it is the carburetor and Coke-bottoms affirms, “Yup, sounds like the carburetor to me.” Amazing how with a little affirmation my hypothesis crystallized as fact in my mind. I go to the motel office to get a phone book and start calling Napa, Checker, and AutoZone looking for a two-barrel carburetor in inventory for Cherry. They can get one on the truck tomorrow; maybe next week; nope, call a junkyard. Finally I call the AutoZone back and get through to a manager who says he may have four-barrel in stock; he checks and sure enough they have one. Asking him how much? Three hundred bucks. (Son of a bitch, I think. I’m cash strapped as it is since I forgot to bring credit cards and only took debit cards…remember my awesome planning skills? I need to conserve some cash as I transfer funds from one bank to another to cover my expenses and I’ve had trouble making the transfer online with the wireless internet flakiness.) Feeling this is my best bet I roll the car to the edge of the parking lot and go to the Flying J for a bite and to get online and check my account balances. The last thing I need is to have my debit card declined and be stranded in Kingman.

I’m feeling nervous.
{Goal: Buy and install a carburetor.
Relevance: Very high since I’m convinced the old carburetor is the problem and a new one is the solution.
Outcome: Uncertain—I might not be able to front the cash for a carburetor; it might not fit; it might not fix the car.
Alternatives: Tow Cherry to the AutoZone and install the carburetor; tow her to a mechanic and let him fix her; sell the dumb bitch for scrap and fly home.}

Having shook Coke-bottoms I settle in the back of the Flying J restaurant and get onto their wireless network. With all the trouble I’ve been having I thank God it works (unexpected goal attainment?) and soon find I’m down to a hundred bucks or so in my Wells Fargo and my Washington Mutual accounts. Lovely, I sigh, and think about what to do to get this trip settled.

I’m feeling anxious and frustrated.
{Goal: Get some cash upfront for the carburetor and to cover the rest of the trip.
Relevance: Very high if I’m going to make Santa Monica or get home.
Agent: Me.
Outcome: Blocked by my own stupidity; unsure if I can advance cash from my credit card and put it in my checking account over the phone.
Alternatives: Borrow some cash from a friend; get to a Wells Fargo branch and have a card reissued; fuck if I know.}

Around 10:30AM I get through to an online banker who initially panics me by requiring my credit card be in front of me (“Yeah, about that, my body is in Arizona and my credit card is in Chicago…this isn’t going to end well for me, is it?”); but with a little gentle persuasion and my appreciative, pleasant demeanor (easiest way to spite yourself is to take your frustration out on the person trying to help you) we’re able to work out a trick where I could get a fantastic rate (doesn’t matter since I’ll settle at the end of the month) and no fees without having my card. The catch is that it will take two days to settle—and I need three hundred bucks now. I go ahead with this because something is better than nothing, then pick at my eggs as I think about what to do next.

I hesitate for a while and finally dial Mieko. I know she’s in L.A., she has a Wells Fargo account and shouldn’t be hard up for money, and if she can help me out I can always pay her cash when the dust settles on the transfer. I’m only reluctant because if feel there’s something not quite kosher about calling your ex to beg favors. {Goal: Pretend to be independent. Relevance: Not that high, what the hell I need a hand. Outcome: Don’t know if she’ll help; she could divorce me again. Alternatives: More phone calls; wait two days in Kingman for the account to settle.} I catch Mieko at work and she has a few minutes, so I briefly explain my predicament and ask her help. I don’t know that I expect her to help and tell her as much—she doesn’t owe me anything and I made my little bed out of my own haste so I’m mature enough to lie in it. Not a problem, she chimes pleasantly.

“Yup, balance on that account is good how much do you need?”
“Well, I’d like to cover the carburetor, motels, a few days in gas. How about $600…no, $700 ‘till Friday?”
“What’s your account number?” she asks and I give it to her, and before I know it she reports, “Done. It says it’s available now if you want to check.”

I do. It is. My gratitude shows. I tell her I’ll maybe keep in touch as I wind through to California and maybe we can get dinner or something. She’s tentatively accepts my tentative offer.

I notice I’m feeling bummed as I ask my waitress for a coffee warm up and a clean spoon. {Goal: To have been on the road by 9:00 this morning. Agent: None, at this point time has passed and no one can rewind the clock. Relevance: I’m all about the trip, man. Outcome: Lost a lot of time and miles. Alternatives: If I can just get going sooner than later I can make it up—assuming I don’t crash in my compound haste; stay an extra day on the road and don’t come back by Monday as I hoped; drown my sorrows in alcohol.} By 11:30AM I have a lead on a carburetor at AutoZone two miles away, cash to pay for it, and the firm conviction that this will get me moving.

Have you ever noticed that a mile zips by in the blink of an eye on an airplane and in a few beats of the heart on the freeway? A mile is a hell of a long ways to go when you need to be there now. Like waiting for the bus that never comes, or hailing a cab when each passing one is occupied, or having a friend coming to pick you up tell you to wait out front because they’re five minutes away and they come twenty minutes later. That loss of independence and control, feeling of helplessness, need to rely on others. Talk about mixed emotions: I’m angry at the bus or taxi or carpool driver for being late (or I direct my anger at myself for not having the omniscience to know all bus times with delays and the best taxi hailing location); I’m sad about the time I’m losing that I can’t get back (but angry at aforementioned driver who I now want fired); I’m afraid to leave my spot (maybe going to a different street or back upstairs) because what if the bus or cab or carpool driver comes while I’m gone?

With all this said, what dominates my emotional makeup depends entirely on why I’m going wherever I’m going. If I’m going to the beach or a museum, what’s a few minutes later going to matter? If I’m in rare form and I leave early with buffer time that gets used up, so what? I’m still on time. But when I’ve got a meeting or appointment with someone, I’ve got an obligation to be somewhere, or I’m missing out on an activity I want to participate in, something else happens emotionally. I feel fear that I will incurring the anger or criticism of the person I planned to meet, which leaves me embarrassed. {Goal: Be true to my word. Relevance: It is my basic integrity. Agent: Me, or none once I can’t make things whole. Outcome: Certain to be late, but uncertain what the person’s response will be. Alternatives: Call to reschedule; apologize on arrival; make a spectacle of myself by walking in late to a meeting. I hate all of these alternatives.} I’m suddenly aware that I’m not keeping my word, and I will be the subject of scrutiny when I make my destination. Sometimes time is less about actual money and more about social cost. Time is reputation; time is expectation; time is me.

In economics they refer to price elasticity as the amount that demand changes when price changes so a very price-elastic good will sell more the cheaper it gets. (Price-inelastic goods such as luxury goods and life-saving medicines tend to be in demand regardless of the price.) Similarly there are those of us who are time elastic and the more time we feel something needs the more time it gets; for those of us who are time inelastic, thirty minutes is thirty minutes, not thirty-one. While I tend to be time elastic I get remarkably inelastic when I’m kept waiting (self-serving, isn’t it?), like, “Those eight minutes you kept me standing out in the gorgeous afternoon sun and made me only on time for the matinee are eight minutes I could have spent curing cancer or working on my fantasy football team or surfing the ‘net reading other reviews of the movie we’re now enjoying together. The nerve!”

Recognition is no refutation. I do this all the time. And because I’ve come to expect it from myself (and others) I am able to be a lot less of a dickhead about it than I used to be whenever it happens.

So much for time. As for distance, traveling a mile with the windows down is a pleasant cruise when your automobile is mobilizing itself automatically. A mile might as well be a trip to the fucking moon when you’re stranded in Kingman, AZ. I can’t help but think about the technology of human transportation (it wasn’t that long ago I was in the museum in Oklahoma watching the brief history of moving bodies around). I’m 1,800 miles from home and I got here in five days with a moderate driving schedule (though my back would say otherwise) and plenty of distractions, investigations, and delays. A hundred years ago there would not have been no such thing as a Route 66 to tool around on playing retro cool. Fifty years before that I would not have had an internal combustion engine much less a road and I’d have to circle the wagons to keep the ind’jiuns off the warpath. Unless’n I took the new transcontinental railway from Council Bluffs, IA to Sacramento, CA. But then why in hell go to California in the 1860s once the gold rush dried up? For the nostalgic ghost towns?

Downtown can seem like a universe away for a kid trapped in the suburbs or the south side of Madison. And downtown is where all the action is—or across town, or at a girlfriend’s house, or damn near anywhere but here. That restless need to move is something I’ve felt over and over. I have no idea how common or intense this is in the population…it seems tied up with the adventurer’s spirit and the belief that there’s something better somewhere else, waiting to be discovered. Or created. {Goal: Overcome the angst of a routine existence. Relevance: This is the purpose of life. Outcome: Destination unknown. Alternatives: There are alternatives? I get to make choices? That’s scary.} At this point I want to be in “downtown” Kingman by the AutoZone and it’s two miles away. I know I had the presence of mind to put insurance on the car before I left. Maybe I put roadside assistance on too? {Goal: Remember my own actions and decisions without being so absent minded. Relevance: Pretty high I suppose. Outcome: Hang on, I had my keys just a minute ago…what was I talking about?}

By 1:00PM I’m borderline ecstatic. {Goal: Get Cherry running. Relevance: It is my one and only interest at this point. Outcome: I’ll be towed in 20 minutes with no out of pocket expense? Hells yeah!} I’m on my way to get my timespace machine working again. Before long the tow truck arrives and I talk up Nick and James about the trip. I’m almost giddy and can’t shut up. *Boy am I glad to see you*Mind if I get a picture*What’s there to do in Kingman*Nice ink*Yeah I hear they have street races*I suppose the faster you can go the faster you can get out of Kingman*No I didn’t know we’re so close to Mexico*Oh what year is your Chevelle*

The tow goes without a hitch (literally: they towed Cherry on a flatbed) and we find ourselves outside the AutoZone. I go in and the first available guy to help me locate the carburetor they claim to have in stock and sure enough they have just what I think I need. I’m in a hurry and want to just buy and bolt this thing on because I think this will cure all that ails her. I’ve never replaced a carburetor before and my enthusiasm cum impatience is showing as Doug, the clerk I’m talking to, listens to be blather about the problem I’m having. As I talk his eyebrows wrinkle and he asks some diagnostic questions. Does it crank? It fired once and quit? Starter fluid didn’t help? Doug is suspicious of my diagnosis, and just as quickly as I became certain the carburetor was the culprit my theory was thrown back into doubt. “Let’s check it out before you go through the trouble of replacing the carburetor,” Doug suggests. Sage advice.

As we go outside Doug offers a compliment about Cherry, but he’s very cool and confident, not gushy. I like that and it relaxes me. {Goal: Get Cherry running. Relevance: Please, please run. Outcome: Could it be Doug knows what he’s doing?}

“Let’s get that air filter off and you turn the car over. I want to see the choke setting,” Doug advises and I do as he suggests. When he gives me the thumbs up signal I turn the car over and instantly he swipes a kill sign in the air. “Holy balls, it’s like the fourth of July in there!”
“How do you mean? Is the battery shorting? Because, dammit, I had electrical problems in Winslow the other day…” I ask.
“No it’s not that. You’ve got a whole hell of a lot more going on in there than your carburetor. Watch,” he advises and takes the keys.

I look under the hood as he settles in to start the car and he tells me to focus on the coil. When he turns Cherry over I see sparks leaping from both sides of the coil—the same coil I replaced when I changed the points in Spokane, WA when I bought her and drove her through Montana! Oh. My. God. Another one of my repairs failed on me. This is the fourth one. I’m speechless because for a minute it crosses my mind that I’ll have to fix the carburetor, coil, electric timer, timing chain, starter, alternator, spark plug wires, coil…I’m never leaving Kingman, AZ. I’m in the hick desert Twilight Zone.

Doug snaps me out of it. “You done anything with the alternator connection wire?”
“Not that I...well, yeah. I took it off overnight to make it harder to hotwire and put it on this morning. Maybe I got grease on the coil and that’s shorting the circuit,” I speculate.
“Could be,” Doug plays along but knowing better adds, “let’s make sure all the connections are snug.”

Like a pro he pulls back the wire’s rubber housing to reveal that what I thought were firm connections were in fact loose wires hidden by the rubber. Well no wonder it wouldn’t run. The problem wasn’t that it failed to fire on all cylinders—it wasn’t firing on any. With attention to detail Doug reseats the coil to distributor wire and tells me to turn the car over. I do, and with a brief whine she fires right up! I’m flooded delighted beyond words. {Goal: Get Cherry running. Outcome: Done deal.} I commend Doug’s cool and knowledge, and he tells me about being reared in a garage and working repo for a few years.

“By the way,” he notes, “you’d be better off taking the rotor out of the distributor at night. As an old repo guy if I found the coil wire missing I’d pull a sparkplug wire and drive ‘er off on seven cylinders. What the hell do I care how she runs if I’m stealing her. Your typical opportunist criminal isn’t going to carry around a rotor though.”

Doug goes on to praise the old car construction (they can take a beating) and for a split second my sense of admiration manifests as big brother sentiment toward him. For good measure he retunes my carburetor for the thin air and gets the engine to purr like a tiger. I give him a firm hand shake as a hug substitute and follow him inside to replace the air filter, fuel filter, and get some electrical tape to cinch up my wiring harness for the time being. The guy saves me $300 and gets me road worthy again and refuses a tip or a reward. “All part of the job,” he says. Hardly, I think—that’s so far above and beyond I’m in awe. I make the simple replacements he recommends, put the car back together, clean up the parking lot, top off the coolant, and finally (finally) hit the road.

At 1:30PM I find my way onto I-40 feeling thrilled to have my driving privileges reinstated and make my way toward California, leaving all my car troubles in Kingman.

Or so I thought.

The reason I wanted to be on the road by 9:00AM was to get a jump on the desert heat. Gary Thomas reminded me in Glenrio that they used to mount canvas bags in front of the radiator because old cars were designed for an hour or two of daily driving. These eight hour days are tough in regular climes; the hot desert just makes it all the more brutal with noon to six being the height of the afternoon sun and the hottest daily temperature. The car is running rough and I attribute that to all the abuse trying to start her this morning. But I have a bigger concern: she’s hot. With an eye on the temperature indicator I cross over into California and need to fuel up surprisingly quickly (my mileage has gone to hell so I’ll need to look at that after I’m comfortably in L.A.). I pull into a Chevron service station and ask if they can do an oil change. They can’t but the three mechanics on duty offer gap-tooth grins at the car and note that I’m spilling coolant. Yep, she’s hot I concur. One of the boys tells me he thinks the thermostat is broken and needs to be replaced. “Great,” I say both sarcastically at the problem and encouragingly at his diagnosis, “what’ll that set me back.” With the theatrics of a professional con artist he makes some calls and gets back to me on the “fantastic price” for the part: $35 (a thermostat costs $10 at any auto parts store) and $85 for an hour of labor. $120 for a do-it-yourself job that they won’t be able to start for at least an hour as the car cools…and there’s no guarantee that will help since the thermostat in the car may be just fine. I pass, and they give me the scare routine about breaking down in the desert. “Thanks, I’ll think about it,” I lie and continue down the road.

What I really need is an oil change since thinner oil will help lubricate the car in this heat (there’s no point in running all-weather oil when you’re only going to see hot-as-sin weather). Or at least, that's my latest hypothesis. I find a shop with three boys that I take a minute to chat up before having them start the job given the bad taste I was left with after talking with the Chevron folks. They get me (I mean Cherry) up and serviced and out in twenty minutes and as I leave Jim the junior mechanic (and proud owner of an El Camino he uses for street racing) advises me to wait out the heat.

“You might make L.A. by evening, but you’re just gonna see traffic from San Bernardino on. Might as well just go to the edge of town and wait it out at the restaurant.”
“Thanks for the tip. Might do that at the next town over,” I reply, anxious to make up ground.
He laughs knowingly. “Brother, this is the next town over.”

Good sense would have had me take Jim’s advice. Yet the Mojave beckons. I cruise a reasonable 66 MPH most of the way but I notice I’ve got virtually no power. The altitude? Maybe but Doug tuned the carburetor so the fuel mixture would not be too rich. The engine starting to give out? Not unless I've really treated her brutal on the road thusfar. I can’t pass the semis in the rightmost lane and my mileage is horrible. But I’m determined to push through. I want to make L.A. today come hell or high water. {Goal: Make up for lost time. Relevance: I just gotta do this. Outcome: The car is moving, but am I making things worse?!? Alternatives: Pull over and wait, which goes against making up for lost time; drive slower, which goes against my speed demon nature; pop the hood and diagnose the performance drain, that is sharpen the saw before I chop more wood.} At 5:00PM I reach Ludlow, CA and have to refuel much too quickly and it occurs to me to take Doug’s performance tuning advice now that the engine has been running all day and recheck the carburetor to make sure the choke is fully open. When I take the air filter off I notice that I knocked a distributor cap wire loose, and all at once it occurs to me to check all the distributor connections for snug fit and gaps. Sure enough I found one wire loose at the distributor and one wire just a little loose at the spark plug. With a quick reseating of all the connections, voila! The beast purrs like a tiger all over again…even as I get back on the highway where it matters. I make short work of the Route up to San Bernardino making the outskirts of town by around 7:30PM. I fuel up, noticing that gas prices have fallen back to reasonable civilization levels now that I'm out of the desert. Checking the map and realizing I'm less than eighty miles from L.A. gives me an intense sense of “mission almost-accomplished,” since I know I’ll make it today even if I didn’t know where I’d end up tonight.

The drive down into the valley is harrowing! Night driving is tricky enough; night driving in an old tank that’s overheating and tossing you around like a rag doll with its body roll and poorly lit reflective road markers while racing along a four-lane mountain descent has more in common with rollercoaster racing than driving! I feel like I’m going to die in a competitive game of metal-box Tetris! I’m ecstatic and exhausted all over again, but unlike my drive into Kingman the night before I can’t yield to road hypnosis since if I take my eyes off the road for a split second I’ll splatter first. Life doesn’t come with a reset button. I keep pushing them hoping I’ll get to start over but all I get is more turns playing Yar’s Revenge. I’m going way too fast for anyone’s good.

At 9:00PM after fighting my way across the 10 into L.A. we take the 405 and that dumps us into Marina Del Rey on Lincoln. I’m about ready to call it a night. But before I do I have some business to take care of.

Next stop: All I Wanna Do