I spent a year after high school living in Tannum Sands, Australia, with my big brother Paul, working for a few months at K-Mart and then for seven months as the sole cleaner-gardener at the Boyne Island Shopping Center.
I returned home with about $11,000 in the bank.
I bought my first car in June 1985 through a friend of the family — a 1968 VW Bug. I was so excited to install an AM/FM cassette player in it and crank the tunes.
The first time I went to get gas, I did not know how to pump it myself. The attendant had to come out to show me.
I was initially scared to drive on the freeway. I stuck to surface roads for my first few weeks.
The seatbelt was stained with grease, so I either had to wear a protective towel or my shirts got grimed.
I used to wash my car with great love. I loved the little thing.
One morning in September 1985 while tuning the radio dial, I turned the corner and drove into the sun, colliding with a parked yellow school bus, dinging my head on the steering wheel (despite wearing a seatbelt), getting about 20 stitches, and inflicting about $900 damage on my Bug’s front end.
Once I got my car back a couple of months later, I no longer loved it. It was just a utility. I stopped cleaning it with care.
Still, I wanted a good stereo. I was working construction about 60 hours a week and had some money, so I got a better quality AM/FM stereo installed with good speakers. I could really blast the music now. I hung a Playboy air cleaner on my rear view window. My muscles rippled in the sun.
I did a lot of driving to construction jobs. I liked to listen to talk radio KGO out of San Francisco and to pop music like Kenny G’s Songbird. Whenever I hear the song, reminds me of driving lonely roads in Northern California, perhaps to San Francisco or Chico after ten hours putting in landscaping and slapping myself to stay awake.
The only purchases I’ve made that rival the utility and joy I got from my car stereo are my computers.
When I listen to Kenny G’s Songbird, I feel back in 1985-1987, years when I worked long hours for little money, sustained by the belief that good times and girls were just around the corner.
After the accident, my gas tank leaked fuel when I turned corners, and I lived with that awful odor for about a year before having the problem fix. The fumes will probably kill me young.
I never once made out with a girl in my little Bug.
For my first 18 months with the car, I didn’t know how the heater worked. It took my sister visiting on a trip to figure it out.
I would freeze driving in the winter and I’d stick my head out the window at times to try see where I was going when my windshield fogged up.
In class one cold morning, a buddy said, “I saw this guy sticking his head out the window to try to see where he was going on the freeway off-ramp this morning.”
“That was me,” I said.
After I made a partial recovery from Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in early 1994, I returned home from Orlando and bought a 1979 Datsun station wagon for $600, which I drove through a dust storm south on the I-5 to stay with my friend Jules Zentner at his dorm in UCLA for a couple of months while I got on my feet and re-started my life.
In May 1995, driving on bald tires in the rain to the apartment of a beautiful woman to rehearse a scene, I spun out on Kanan Dune road and went straight into a light pole, totaling my car.
Figuring I needed a big enough vehicle to sleep out of if need be, I then bought a 1982 Dodge Van for $2,500.
I don’t need you to worry for me cause I’m allright
I don’t want you to tell me it’s time to come home
I don’t care what you say anymore this is my life
Go ahead with your own life leave me alone
