Window to My Soul

Chicago, IL

This morning I pick Cherry up from the garage and the air conditioner now whips an arctic front up in the driver’s cabin. They weren’t able to get to the brakes so I’ll bring it back Monday and with luck we’ll have a safe split master cylinder for the trip. Cherry has all four drums and a manual “jam jar” single master. For those familiar, I hear you wishing me luck if I need to slow down in less than a country mile. For those not familiar, imagine you have to stand on the brake pedal to stop the car…but carefully, because if you stand too hard you’ll lock the brakes and plane to the left or the right or wherever the hell the car feels like careening.

This reminds me that safety wasn’t a big concern when they designed this deathtrap. Rear wheel drive and manual drum brakes. The dashboard is contoured jagged steel with a heavy coat of paint for safety padding and a rigid steering column perfect for a reliable mid-chest impaling. No headrests. Lap belts without shoulder straps. And a sketchy stock carburetor (she stalled again when I picked her up from the garage. Takes a few minutes to warm up. I need to remember that). At least she has a 30 foot front end so in case of a head on collision I will be alive long enough to experience being catapulted through the windshield in slow motion.

With the car back I start working the window regulator around 5:30…plenty of time to swap the parts and make an 8:00 date, right? Turns out not so much. I’ve been in the car door countless times, changed windows, did the driver’s regulator, hell I wired up the security system and door locks myself. The window has what designers refer to as a scissor mechanism where turning the crank moves an arm up or down and that basically squeezes what look like scissors on fixed rollers. As the scissors open the window sags under its own weight (that’s rolling it down) and as the scissors close they push the window up (rolling it up). Fine. Great. Except sticking your arm in the narrow gap is a whole lot like sticking your hand in a giant pair of scissors—so when that window came down on my knuckles, I don’t mind telling you I share with the universe a string of profanities so long I estimate the likelihood of that exact curse being stated before to be one in ten to the 57th power.

My knuckles will punish me for my folly for days.

• 6:00 – There is no force fitting these parts. In fact the aftermarket manufacturer cut the connection hole (the thumb hole for the scissors) a touch too small and I have to drill it to the right size.
• 6:30 – I have to take the entire assembly apart to get the geometry to work out.
• 6:45 – I snap off the cotter pin that holds the thumb in place and lose the little bitch in the door (ten more now-precious minutes fishing that out).
• 7:00 – I still have time to grease this up and get showered and make it on time right? Being a few minutes late is fashionable, but twenty makes a pricky impression on a blind date.
• 7:15 – With a little blood and a lot of sweat (okay, some tears too) I get the door pieces to fit. Now to put the cover back on…okay, where are the door screws? Fuck sake they were right here a minute ago! ARRRRGH.
• 7:25 – Fine, done, now to rush and—oh, my watch is slow. Make that 7:35.
• 8:00 – Showered and ready and on my way with a text message to my date. At least it’s close and I can valet park. And the valets love (I mean, love) this car. I get social validation from the outgoing restaurant patrons too.

Repairing the car before a dinner date? I think to myself, “Why do I do this? To show her off? To impress other people?” The whole time I’m fighting with the beast (and she’s winning) I’m thinking, “Cut your losses James. Clean up and finish tomorrow.” I’m busting my knuckles and cutting it down to the wire and I can’t just stop. I love it and I hate it. But I’m not clear why.

One way to think about passion would be as an investment of time, money, or energy. The more passionate about something (a sport, a girl, a job, whatever) the more it merits, even deserves an my investment. Trivially, if I am indifferent I don’t feel invested so to hell with it either way. I don’t really care how the Chargers end this season or any season they’ve ever had. But I will feel that pang of excitement and well with possibility as the Vikings kick off another one of their perpetually losing seasons. What’s amazing is just how regularly I feel “pot committed” to borrow a poker term. How much I feel that having put such time, money, or energy into something that no longer works I still have to keep investing to “fix it.” My restore of Sally (my other Mustang) is a perfect example: I could have tore her open (it pains me to use these words about a classic car but bear with me) and found she had a weak heart. Instead of doing a bypass along with reconstructive surgery I could have let her pass, sold her for a loss and chalked it up to odds—and gone back to the well to find another just like her. In a very practical sense a car is just a commodity even if I see myself reflected, if I project myself onto her (if I ego-invest or identify with her). And in a very, very practical sense our interpersonal relationships are often similar reflections and projections. We can linger out of comfort or confusion or fear of being alone. My last year at CA had nothing to do with my passion or drive but rather my inability to imagine alternatives having invested some prime years.

With Sally my passion led me down the garden path into a classic gumption trap. I spent maybe $20,000 to create a $10,000 car. I destroyed value. (Of course a full account would price the learning benefit of having taken an entire car to bare metal but I’m just talking matter and markets here.)

Now if I choose to price my time the numbers get worse. Wage labor is based on the exchange of time for money (which so many people resent often because they feel their valued skills differ from personally relevant goals). Company X pays any office worker Y dollars or any welder Z dollars per hour; you seem qualified, you want the job? I always figured that’s the nature of labor trades (union workers) and the other day I got a call from my uncle Wayne, my dad’s brother. Most of my dad’s side of the family are labor and union supporters, and Wayne’s wife Kathy just retired and he commented how busy he in retirement (it almost sounds like a cliché doesn’t it?). As we got to talking he told me he loved his job…not a single day went by where he wasn’t learning something: retirement changed his focus but not his mindset. God bless him, I thought, because he figured how to morph wage-labor into work satisfaction without the schizoid gulf many of us experience (I did) where we feel we’re “whoring” ourselves for our jobs.

Personally I don’t buy the philosophy that getting paid always comes at the expense of giving up something you’d rather be doing. Clearly accomplishment involves struggle and commitment and sacrifice so there’s no reason to think earning should be equal to indulgence—just that it might be wholly integrated in a person. A little learning, a dollop of passion, a few good friends who get your work interest. Might that enough to feel you aren’t trading your precious few days on the planet for cash? That your passion amounts to something?

I’ve found that I hate talking shop with cocktail party strangers because as much as I love what I do it gets heady and unsexy really quickly. But boy do I love talking shop with a few people I feel I can confide in. Because our interests are somehow lined up and they get me. And by “get me” I mean whatever I choose to make that mean.

Next stop: Real Prepared