My first car was named Gus, and like most first cars, he was magnificent.
Gus was a 1976 Honda Civic. White with really cool gold trim work. He was a class act even before we got him up and running, but the finishing touches that I put to him were, at the risk of sounding immodest, nothing short of a masterwork in automobile design aesthetics.
Oh but first, the back story...
I graduated from Redmond High School with a GPA somewhere in the twos and a minimal interest in going to college. Soon after graduating I fell in with a girl and decided, in the kind of way that only 17 year olds can, that I didn't want to go to school, but rather I'd like to stay in Central Oregon and be with this girl and be a FATHER TO HER CHILD. Yeah, I know. Dark days on the horizon here.
So my parents hatched a plan and put it to me like this: If you go to school and finish a year of college, we'll buy you a car.
Well now, this changes everything...
Long story short, the car won out over the girl, the relationship with the girl flamed out as it should have, and fast forward to August of 1992 and my friend Catherine Hayden picked me up from my dorm, helped me load up my shit, and drove me home to Redmond. As we turned the corner to my dad's house I could see, from about five or six blocks away, that there was some big old thing on his front lawn with a big red ribbon on it. While I didn't have any big expectations for anything too fancy, I was still a little bit derailed when I realized that the car that I had re-directed my life for was, in fact, a 1976 Honda Civic. What minor bits of disappointment that might have flashed on the screen at that point went away pretty quickly when I got out of Catherine's car and got a little closer. This was a special car.
He was white, the interior was in pretty good shape, and the fine gold trim on the hood, fenders, and other parts of the car signified a little bit of a special touch that had gone into this one. With the help of m friend Will Chisholm, I named him Gus, and I immediately went to work...
The first big addition was a big velvet Elvis that I got for ten bucks at a garage sale.
I meticulously safety pinned it to the headliner of Gus and moved on to the fabric store, where I bought a long string of red dingle balls (I'm fairly certain that there's an actual term for "dingle balls" but the words themselves are a bit of an onomatopoeia, meaning, you pretty much know what I'm talking about, right?) which I stapled to the trim of the interior. A few months later I added a big fluffy steering wheel cover, which I tried to dye red. That didn't really take, so it ended up being pink, and I was pretty much ok with that too.
Gus was my Freedom Bird. I did a lot of crazy, stupid stuff in, around, and with Gus, and more stories involving him will undoubtedly come up down the road. (For that matter, I think it's probably fortuitous that I chose this as an early entry on this blog. This way I don't have to backtrack on who/what "Gus" is. He'll be mentioned often, believe me.
Mechanically, Gus was relatively sound, other than the fact that he burned a quart of oil for every tank of gas. Seriously. I'm not exaggerating. I carried a case of oil in the trunk. Other than that, ran like a top. And his exhaust looked like burning tar.
One time I was driving up Lake Billy Chinook outside of Redmond with Kris Dunn and some girl named Jenean. (I don't know if I spelled her name right, but I didn't exactly get along with her very well at the time, so I'm not too concerned with that.) A bee got in the car with us and was buzzing around the windshield, so in a quick ninja-like move, I pulled my left sleeve up over the palm of my left hand, extended my arm in a quick, "haaaaaay-ya" motion and attempted to squash the bee on the windshield. The bee survived, but the jerking motion of my arm sent us careening off of the road into a big field of huge, pointy rocks. Bad news. Blew a tire and dented up the body a little bit. Otherwise, pretty lucky. Only problem is that I was sitting on a big pile of small boulders by the side of the road. No way could I drive out. Then a kind and burly park ranger drove by, called a few of his other park ranger buddies and we ("we", meaning me and three other guys) physically LIFTED Gus off of his perch on these big ass rocks, and walked him back onto the road.
A year later, my dad offered to help me buy a newer car. I loved Gus dearly, but the writing was on the wall. He wasn't going to last forever, so I traded up to a 1981 Honda Accord, which I totalled a few months later when I ran a red light on Portland Blvd in Portland (right in front of the Burrito Loco) and t-boned a truck. Nobody was really hurt, as far as I know, but the car was toast.
I digress.
My last night with Gus was spent at work at Pietro's Pizza. During my break I went out to the parking lot and sat in Gus and sang "Long May You Run" to him. Smoked a few cigarettes. Burned some more incense. (I used to stick incense sticks in the dashboard and light 'em up. Just ashed all over the carpet. I didn't care. It added to the charm.) Said goodbye. It was hard. I probably even teared up. Yep. I'm pretty certain that I did.
A year or two later I saw Gus drive by my dad's house. He looked ok. A little dirty, and worse for wear, but still driving.
Long may you run, buddy. Long may you run, indeed.
