The Van and the Spruce Moose

Finally, I can say that this blog is a more complete representation of me and my life… I have found pictures of both the van (my first car!) and the bicycle-built-for-two (which I named the “Spruce Moose”) from my childhood. These are two forms of transportation that both loom large in my memory as being integral to my growing up. On the tandem bike I learned how to captain other people’s energy. In the van I learned how to break laws like a hot knife slices butter.

When my father bought this tandem bicycle it was in a state of disrepair. I remember him telling me once that it was intention to ride it with my mom, so that they could exercise together. But as soon as I saw it with its new blue paint job, the thing was mine. I would ride it around the neighborhood all the time, often by myself, but just as often with a passenger powering the rear crank. Going down hills with another person was particularly insane. Two of my friends got bruised purple crashing down a suicidally steep hill.

In this picture I am wearing a Harley Davidson teeshirt that says on it, “Good Guys Wear Black.” That was my de facto uniform for the middle school years, like a second skin. On that particular day I also happened to be wearing a pair of Blublocker Viper sunglasses. You’re goddamn right I still wear Blublocker Viper sunglasses to this day. Whether barreling down the I-95 corridor in the earliest hours before morning, or captaining a double person bicycle down the sheer face of an asphalt mountain, the Vipers will help you get the most out of your eyeballs. Everything is really bright orange.

Then there is the van, a vehicle my grandma Happy labeled, “A bin of sin.” I bought it outright from a man going blind in East Hartford. He had his mother drive over to help him transfer the title, count the money and so forth. It broke down on the short drive home, blew a tire. I had it towed to Home Depot and they let me know that it had had four different size tires at the time of purchase. What can I say other than the previous owner must have overlooked those details. Or underlooked.

As I mentioned, the van and I broke a lot of laws. I can say I probably broke the seat belt law when I drove nineteen kids home from high school in the rain. I probably disturbed the peace with the public announcement system my dad installed… And I don’t even want to know what law I broke when I switched on the faux siren at the loudest level and drove past stopped traffic in the breakdown lane. I was young and stupid, a white young man in the suburbs of America, and I never got pulled over. It felt like the 1970s.

In the back of the van I had shag carpeting, van speakers, a couch. On the inside anyone could graffiti anything they liked on the metal walls with the various Sharpies rolling about. There were a lot of cheesy yearbook-style shoutouts and disses, plus some truly disturbing drawings of gigantic penises, breasts, animals. All the juvenile high school filth friends and strangers could conjure. Sometimes people I didn’t even know used the van to smoke joints in the student parking lot. I had to explain to the assistant principal that I couldn’t lock any of the doors even if I wanted to.

As long as I live, I will remember what it felt like when I was seventeen years old and behind the wheel of my smoky van, with some friends on a sunny afternoon, drifting lazily down a forested hill into fragrant fields of shade tobacco. I will always remember that moment. This picture was taken up at Lake George in New York. On the way back home from there the muffler and exhaust pipes etcetera fell off; this photo was taken right before the vans final journey, in the beginning of the last summer I spent living at home with my mom… Not to be a sap, but the van looks particularly lovely in this light.