Highway 51

The box of cereal was ringing, down there on the car floor. It had to be the box, couldn’t be anything else, since I’d checked all the usual places. My phone had been missing since yesterday evening, didn’t really know where else to look, since I’d used it in the car on the ride home, hadn’t been anywhere else. So I called my brother, ran out to the car to see if I could find it when he called the mobile phone. I picked up the box of Crispix, a recent favorite and constant companion in the car. I munch it as I drive around. I felt down in the box, tried to find the phone. Then I dug into the Crispix itself, felt the hard outline of the mobile telephone, buried under the cereal. God only knows how this came to be. I remember eating a few handfuls on the way home—but the phone? The cereal? I’ll just leave it at that.

This morning was forecast as being a terrifying weather event. Ice, snow, arriving just at the hour that the Friday masses make for their workplaces. I was on the road by five-thirty, trying to make it into DC for an eight-thirty job. I found the roads covered with a slippery mixture of slush and some frozen stuff—maybe sleet. I don’t know; when it isn’t exactly snow, and it isn’t ice, I don’t try to identify the stuff. I was able to make good time, traveling around the slower and more cautious vehicles, taking the surface roads all the way into town. Off to the right was a minivan, the driver having slammed the family vehicle into a utility pole. His aim appeared to be good, since there really wasn’t much of anything else in that area to run into. He’d veered off the road, up an embankment, and found the pole—smacking the minivan right in the middle of its silver hood. It looked as though the entire fire department had shown up for the mishap, with maybe ten fire and rescue vehicles parked here and there—the forlorn minivan the centerpiece of this spectacle. Firefighters wandered around, pointed at the van, chatted in the freezing precipitation, looked again at the van to make sure it hadn’t moved.

With the media onslaught of publicity about the storm, a terrible, terrible event of unprecedented magnitude, people were mostly frozen with fear, unable even to leave their homes. As a result, traffic was extremely light. This made for a pleasant and relaxing trip into the city. The ride home was even smoother, since the rain and sleet and whatever else was falling had stopped, leaving just the deserted roads to travel unmolested. For a Friday evening, at five-thirty, I was able to go well in excess of the posted speed. Normally, traffic is mostly stopped at this time. I was elated. Thanks, WTOP crew—I owe you one; without your dire predictions of ice, more ice, and then snow and ice on top of that, I would’ve had to put up with the usual Friday evening mess.

February 25, 2008

I drove the little wagon over to King’s shop to install the stereo this weekend. I managed to get it all hooked up by leaving time on Saturday—around eight-thirty in the evening—but it remained to put the interior pieces back together. Door panels, armrests, speaker grills all needed to be put in place. I drove home with the new stereo on the seat next to me, playing a CD I’d brought along. It works just fine, and the new speakers are a big improvement over the old ones that came with the car.

On Sunday I drove back to the shop to finish the job, stopped first at the local diner to have a waffle and some sausage. Oddly enough, I ordered coffee instead of iced tea, a mistake I don’t plan to repeat. At King’s shop I managed to finish the work in a couple of hours, did some modifications to get the interior in better shape. The armrests had been kind of sagging even before I removed them for the stereo installation. Now I could address their problem, since I had that area pretty much exposed. When I’d finished the work, King’s father asked what I was up to, wanted to know why I was installing a stereo in the car.
“I’d like to listen to CDs,” I explained. “The old stereo just played tapes.”
“You don’t believe in XM Radio?” he asked—as if I were the biggest idiot on earth.
He then proceeded to explain the virtues of XM, was insistent that this was the way to go. He was fervent in his belief that XM was the answer to all your mobile—and non-mobile—radio needs.
“Besides, you get tired of CDs after a while,” he said. When he’d shown me how easy it was, that even a simpleton could install the necessary receiver and be listening to this pay-radio almost instantly, I was convinced. The little gizmo that allows you to get the XM signal was only about fifty bucks, and—according to the senior Oort—the monthly fee for the service was only five bucks.

I should point out that there was nothing wrong with going out and buying a new stereo, that my car would benefit from the speakers and more powerful deck installed in the dash. I pointed out to King’s father that—should I buy XM—it would sound even better through my new sound system. On this point even he had to agree.

When I’d gotten everything installed and listened to the spiel on XM, then tested my stereo again, I wheeled the little Honda motorcycle out and fired it up. This time I put it on the road, winding it up to a fearsome forty-five miles per hour on the sunny but chilly February day. I’d forgotten how underpowered a little bike like this is, having ridden most recently the big machines that sport engines of eleven hundred and thirteen hundred cubic centimeters. The little Honda is a 175. Yes, it is tiny. But that was the point: To have something classic and understated that I could take out on a warm summer day, enjoy the simplicity of it, then put it away again for the next ride. I won’t be battling eighteen-wheelers out on the expressway—that much us certain.

Today I listened to a colleague I’d never met before, asked her about her origins, since I detected a southern accent. She was from Tennessee, Memphis to be exact. I mentioned that I liked the barbecue there, couldn’t remember the place where it was so good—but that I thought it was across from a fancy hotel. I’d eaten ribs there, and was more than satisfied with the meal.
“I never visited Graceland,” I said, which I kind of regret. Everyone tells me it is really a good place to go—the longtime estate and mansion of The King—Elvis Presley. I asked if she’d been, since she was from that place.
“Oh, well—I was there once, while he was still alive,” she said. She explained that she was a teenager, driving home from work along Highway 51, and slowed to see the gates of the estate open.
“That always meant there was a party, when the gates were open,” she said. She parked along the road, and—on a whim—got out and walked through the entrance. No one tried to stop her.
“I was standing there,” she said, “And then I saw him come out of the house. There was a kind of tree stump broken off there in front, and he got up on it and started signing autographs for all the women who came running up.”
“Did you get an autograph?” I asked.
“Oh, no! I was only about sixteen years old, scared to death. I didn’t dare go up and ask for one!”
She described what he’d been wearing, some kind of black outfit with a silver belt buckle. She went on to say that, although Elvis was from a poor and uneducated background, he’d done many great things for the city of Memphis, had been generous with his money and resources. The city would be forever in his debt. I thought it was wonderful that this woman should have such a memorable close encounter with someone who is regarded almost as a god. I have never been a huge Elvis Presley fan, but I think I understand the appeal—or at least have a better grasp of who he was as a person. Terribly manipulated and exploited by his manager and promoter, he was—by all accounts—a decent guy who wanted to express his music and do good for others. I think his loyal followers want to preserve that memory of this extraordinary performer, give him his due posthumously that he perhaps lacked while alive.

Since replacing the termite-eaten lumber with the help of J.O., I’ve done no further work on the other house. I talked to King about maybe getting someone with an excavator to break up the patio area, and he said he would check around to see who could help me with this.