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March 10, 2010 - Grand Rapids, Michigan Spring Harvest Time As the sap begins to run in the maple trees, so does the testosterone in men. There are various hobbies, activities and constructive outlets available after months of inactivity. For me, it's working on cars. Preferably old, dilapidated, broken, rusting, hideous cars. After many months at sea, one can imagine how pent up sailors must have been in order to see a manatee and perceive it as a mermaid. I think that this is analogous to seeing a rusting hulk sunk in a field with a broken windshield and a tree growing through it and seeing a show car. The main difference being, you'll get arrested for messing with the manatee. While sailing through Craigslist, I came upon a single grainy image of an old Plymouth. I had actually seen this car several months ago, but the sap wasn't flowing then. Now, the sun has come out and people are shamelessly driving to work with their windows down through forty degree air. This time, I paused for a longer look. The car turned out to be a 1970 Plymouth Fury III. The ad stated very little other than it ran when parked two years ago and had no third gear. The asking price was $900. And it was just North of Grand Rapids. I drove up to see it the next day. A long, extremely wet and muddy drive led back to a house surrounded by the corpses of probably fifty different Dodge and Plymouth models. The car I had come to see was at the far back, completely pinned in. Since it had been parked, the wheels had slowly sunk into the clay, resting the body on the ground. And the dead had slowly been packed in around it. The back seat and trunk had become storage and were filled with pieces of scrap wood. The front seat held pieces of foam padding and a hubcap. Pushing the foot deep pile of snow off the hood allowed access to the cold and silent engine bay.
"Wanna' hear 'er run?" I was flabbergasted. "Sure!" I said, a bit too excitedly. We had to trudge back past the field of dead cars and up the muddy drive to retrieve a battery and a can of fuel from the barn. After hooking up the battery and pouring a few drops of fuel in the carburetor, he turned the key and it roared to life. A mouse nest that had been built in the tail pipe during the long winter was unceremoniously evicted immediately. Now, most people [normal people] would never have made it this far. And those who inexplicably ended up next to a vehicle such as this would see only problems and financial loss. But as I stood there in the wet clay and mud, in what can only be described as a junk yard, staring at the mermaid before me, without looking up from the engine I heard my shaky voice utter the words, "I'll take it." Brandon Gohsman is a web designer/developer (and sole proprietor) of EchoBox Interactive. When not raising the dead, he spends his time writing Flash-based web applications, doing amateur photography and playing in the mud with his son. @bgohsman Are you in? "Gunther" ~ photography by Brandon Gohsman
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