Fiddle around with the dial, yeah, it’s a hand controlled thingy, that’s how old my car is, gotta fiddle around the dial looking for something good to hear.
2006 Lexus ES something or other. Was my Dad’s, and when he passed on in the winter of 2019, rather than try to get a pittance for it when she went in to get herself a new vehicle, my Mom gave it to me as a sort of inheritance.
North of 270,000 miles now, every friggin’ light on, check engine this, maintenance required that, but at least that weird one on the other side of the dash, the one that would flash relentlessly, the one the manual said something like, don’t drive the car if this one’s on, well, I drove close to ten thousand with that thing flashing, and then one day it just went off.
There’s nothing that’ll get your adrenaline going like driving to work on a Monday morning in a car with warning lights flashing, knowing there’s no fucking way you can afford to replace the thing any time soon, and knowing your chances are gonna get even worse if you start showing up to work late everyday.
Actually, gonna take that back.
If you really wanna get that adrenaline going, just do the above, then make sure you’re doing it on an expired inspection sticker.
I remember driving home from the DMV after clinching possession of that red-wine-colored beauty and driving down 67 East, and doing it way over the posteds, I remember thinking, thanks, Dad, for taking care of this thing so that you could pass it on to me. Old as it was then, and it’s almost five years older now, but it felt different, the way it got around the curves in the road.
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Last ride home before a couple of weeks off. How the hell did I fall into a couple of weeks off, I think. Fiddle with the dial, looking for something good. There is a CD player in there, and I have a couple in there, but they’ve been in there far too long.
I know you can make your own playlists, for the car or for anything else, and I even did it myself for a while, a long while ago, but there’s something about driving around and searching the dial for something you didn’t even know you needed to hear that no playlist can replace.
And yeah, I know it makes me sound old, and even if I’m somewhere in-between, but goddamnit, I’ve wandered closer to it than I ever thought I would get.
You get pretty decent radio in your car here in upstate, and you can get on rolls where you’ll hear stuff you like hearing — “holy shit! I forgot how good ‘Found Out About You” is! — but I’d hit a dead patch. Coulpla round trips to work and some errands on top of that, and hadn’t heard one lonesome tune I liked.
Stopped at a station out on the right side of the dial and heard something that didn’t grab my ear at first. Almost kept moving but gave it a few more seconds.
And then the chorus kicked in, and it kicked my ass.
And I don’t even know the name of the song, or who sang the version I heard.
Something like, oo-ooh do you hear that, it’s the sound of a new wind blowing.
Something about the melody of it, the way it got sung, yeah, I knew I’d heard what I needed to hear.