There is nothing wrong with Stroudsburg, PA, per se. There is something wrong with my car.
Specifically, its "harmonic balancer", which broke on I-80 the very first night of said road trip, less than two hours into the road trip.
In a scene best described as the five layers of panic, first the speedometer went out, then the dashboard lights, then the power windows, then the headlights, each of which had me pull right, and then right, and then right, until I was parking on the grass off of the shoulder as the car shuddered to a stop.
It was not long before a state trooper was shining his flashlight into my face and asking if I had AAA.
"Yes, officer, I do."
"Would you like me to call them in?"
"Please."
So if you set out on a Tuesday evening, and you get towed by the friendly neighborhood tow truck driver, from New Jersey, seven miles to the Pennsylvania border, and then a couple more miles into the Hyundai dealership in Stroudsburg, and when they finally look at your car the next morning and tell you they have to overnight a harmonic balancer because no one in driving distance carries one for your car...
Well, then, it's Thursday already and you're still in Stroudsburg, PA.
You will not make it to Niagara Falls or the fist in Detroit or Ford's Presidential Library in Ann Arbor or Mackinaw Island in Michigan--the only place in America which has outlawed cars--and not to Mystery Spot or the Northern Star of the US, Minneapolis, Minnesota, where they elect wrestlers for governors, and comedians for senators.
You will not do any of this.
Instead, you will sit in the local cafe on Main St, in Stroudsburg, PA, playing chess with your friend. You will read comic books in the comic book stores for three hours while the owner of said comic book store complains to his patrons that there's never enough people around to get a decent Magic tournament started.
You will eat peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches.
You will bring your own oatmeal to the motel breakfast because they don't even have the decency to serve a single fresh fruit.
And you will read on the cover of USA Today that, in a two-to-one margin, the insane hecklers barnstorming town hall meetings, standing in opposition to the most humane of public measures, health care for all, have swayed independent thinkers to sympathize with their cause.
You will sit impotent in the motel's lobby and throw the paper in the air and know that even if you were granted all the power in the world--
If you, yourself, could go down to Washington, DC, and pull a single level--
The label on that lever being "Universal Health Care for Every Man, Woman, Child, and Dog in This Great Nation"--
If you had this great power in the palm of your hand--
That this measure would still not pass because you are in Stroudsburg, PA, asking the Napa auto parts store if they carry spare alternators for 2001 Hyundai XG 300's.
ON THE WALK TO Main St., yesterday, after the dealership told me it'd be another day, and after I dipped in the motel pool to cool my heels, The Lorax and I encountered, on the side of the road that nobody walks, a groundhog, of all things, here, on our personal little Groundhog's Day.
Punxsutawny Phil.
In the flesh.
We watched him nibble on an acorn or something he had found in someone's backyard. We watched him for a second.
"Is that you Phil?" we called out.
Phil looked up from his nugget. He sniffed left and right.
"Phil," we asked, "how are you?"
He noticed us staring at him and disappeared behind a concrete stairway.
"Is that supposed to mean something?" asked The Lorax.
"What do you mean, like a metaphor. For my trip?"
"Yeah, like a metaphor."
"If it does, it can't be a good one."
We also discussed what it meant for a cross-country road trip if your car breaks down on the first night. No, not the first night, within the first 100 miles.
If your car breaks down and you're still in Jersey. You haven't even made it to Pennsylvania.
"It's ominous, I admit." I wrinkled my nose. "You think I should turn around?"
"Do you think you should turn around?"
"This is America," I said. "We are not a country built by quitters." I shook my fist in the air. "Besides," I asked, "What am I supposed to do? Go back to work?"
He laughed a big choke of a laugh. "Let's not talk crazy here."
THE DEBATE IN Groundhog Day is whether Bill Murray escapes Groundhog Day because he became a good person, or because he learned how to love.
Let us then consider what I have to do, if this is my curse, to escape Stroudsburg, PA.
Do I have to become a good person? This argument assumes that I am a bad person. And while I am certainly no saint, I find it hard to believe that if you reviewed my life, on balance, that I, being some percentile of "goodness" and some percentile of "badness" would fall toward the evil end of the spectrum.
There is malice implied in badness, and I don't believe that I go around doing people harm. And that, in the abstract, if you examined my "badness", it is on the most part self-destructive nonsense, and some rudimentary sexual excess, of which I blame the hormones of my youth.
It's not that I couldn't help myself, it's that I didn't want to.
And if consensual sex is the worst Punxsatawny Phil has against me, then he should just suck it up and let me get on my way.
I've never killed anyone or hit someone with my car and drove away. I never laughed at people who were getting laid off.
(Though, I did laugh at some who were laughable, but I didn't laugh at them because they were laid off. I laughed at them because they couldn't catch a softball which, I guess, is mean in its own respect and I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for that.)
I donate to charities and to Democrats (who are no longer a charity cause).
I give money to the arts and tip well. And I always try to help people out, even strangers, and not just women on the subway who need help carrying their baby strollers.
OK, if you want to nitpick, I'm not perfect, but who are you to judge, Punxsutawny Phil?
NOW, THEN, TO THE question of love. Which is a valid question, and I will say, that I do love.
I love myself with a deep respect, a love for oneself that I encourage all people to have, because John Lennon encouraged all people to have, and he knows, of all people, a thing or two about love.
(And about consensual sex. And about charity and Democrats.)
Lennon sang:
I don't believe in magic/
I don't believe in Elvis/
I don't believe in Beatles/
I just believe in me
I want to comment on this quote further, but Ferris Bueller beat me to it, and it's only appropriate that I quote from Ferris Bueller, here on my two months off:
"Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter. -Ism's in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism, he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon, 'I don't believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.' Good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I'd still have to bum rides off people."
And I'd still have to bum rides off of people because my car is sitting in the Hyundai dealership of Stroudsburg, PA, waiting for a harmonic balancer--whatever that means!
Do I have to learn to love? No, I know how to love.
I love life and freedom and letters and books and my mother and air that is clean and skies that are blue and the road and my sisters and fishing and bourbon and chicken crisps from Fay Da bakery in Elmhurst and the Pannda and big, fat, Greek dinners with lamb and lemon potatoes and taramasalata.
I know love, Punxsutawny Phil, so let me go! Let me go, Phil! Let me go!
Phil! Do you hear me? I will hunt you down and squeeze the life out of your body. Let me go, Phil!
Let me go!
Day 1: Waiting to hear the verdict at the dealership in Stroudsburg, PA.
Day 2: In which the narrator sits in his bed, reading a book, in Stroudsburg, PA.
Never stop learning to love! How about broccoli ? -Phil
ReplyDeleteI hate to break it to you, but the walrus was Paul...
ReplyDelete