`Good Tires, Gas Hog'

My day started with the sickening bump-and-flop of a flat tire as I backed out of the driveway. From the dealer who sold me the tire in November I learned I was on the 92nd day of a 90-day warranty. Kids late to school, two hours late for work, I pondered the romance of the automobile. Why do Americans, men in particular, grow misty remembering the cars they’ve owned? My cars have always owned me. And why do people name them?

Tom Waits is a master of American vernacular. “The Pontiac,” from Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers & Bastards, is less a song than a spoken riff recorded to sound like found Americana. Here’s the Youtube video, which inexplicably ends mid-word after one minute, but it gives some sense of Waits’ feel for American speech rhythms. The speaker chronicles the cars he’s owned with a bittersweet passion some men reserve for former girlfriends. Here are the complete lyrics as transcribed in the Orphans box. Much is lost without Waits’ voice, his hoots and histrionic emphases, but this is how I’ve heard a thousand American men talks about cars.

“Well, let's see we had the Fairlane
And then the u-joints went out on that
And the bushings, then your Mother
Wanted to trade it in on the Tornado, so
We got the Tornado -- god I hated
The color of that sonufa bitch, and the dog
Destroyed the upholstery on the Ford, boy,
That was long before you were born. We
Called it the Yellow Bird -- two-door, three on the tree
Tight little mother threw a rod
Sold it to Jacobs for a hundred dollars
Now the special four-holer you've never
Seen body panels line up like that
Overhead cam dual exhaust, hell I had, see…I had
Four Buicks -- loved em all. Now your Uncle Emmett
Well he drives the Thunderbird now, it used to
Belong to your Aunt Evelyn -- she ruined
It -- drove it to Indiana with no gear oil
That was the end of that! Sold that Caddy
To your Mom, your mom loved that Caddy
Independent rear suspension landau top
Good tires, gas hog. Swear it had the
Power to repair itself.
I love the Olds, Dan Steel used to
Give em to me at a discount – show
Room models then there was the Pontiac
God I loved that Pontiac, well it was kind
Of an oxblood god but it handled so
Beautifully. Yeah I miss that car
That was a long time ago.”

This recitation and its faux-solemnity remind me most of Flann O’Brien’s parodies in At Swim-Two-Birds of the Cuchulain saga and his defense of Ulster against Connacht’s army. Another American writer half in love with the homegrown was Karl Shapiro who, in "Buick," playfully links automobiles and women. Read the whole thing here, but first taste this sample:

“But how alien you are from the booming belts of your birth and the smoke
Where you turned on the stinging lathes of Detroit and Lansing at night
And shrieked at the torch in your secret parts and the amorous tests,
But now with your eyes that enter the future of roads you forget;
You are all instinct with your phosphorous glow and your streaking hair.”

Shapiro also wrote “Auto Wreck” but seems to have been a General Motors man, and in the nineteen-sixties he wrote “Cadillac.” This passage picks up the sexualization-of-steel theme:

“If only I could put my arm around you,
If only I could look you in the eye,
I would tell you a grave joke about turtles’ eggs,
But there are always your ostrich plumes,
The hydrangeas drooping between your breasts.
I am afraid of your prosthetic wrists,
The mason jars of your white corpuscles.”

Back on the road with a new tire, I felt neither aroused nor nostalgic, just cranky and a little poorer. There’s a song on Orphans, “Fannin Street,” set here in Houston, that hints at my state of mind after another automotive debacle. Here’s the first verse and chorus:

“There's a crooked street in Houston town
It’s a well worn path I've traveled down
Now there's ruin in my name
I wish I’d never got off the train
I wished I'd listened to the words you said

“Don't go down to Fannin Street
Don't go down to Fannin Street
Don't go down to Fannin Street
You'll be lost and never found
You can never turn around
Don't go down to Fannin Street”