(Author's Note: This is part 2 of a 7 part series. To read previous entries, please visit jonpenfold.com)
Chautauqua:
A Story in Seven Parts
Part 2—Can’t You Smell that Smell?
It’s the summer of the year 2000 and everyone’s
still on edge over Y2K. We are all aware that it’s only a matter of time before
the grid goes down, the government collapses, and those badass robots from the Terminator movies take over the world. An
even bigger concern, at least for my best friend Tex and me, is finding classic
vinyl to add to our growing collections. We spend our weekends traveling clear
across the county, stopping at every garage, yard, and barn sale we can find,
on the lookout for anything vintage; preferably bands with letter abbreviations
like CCR and BTO and ELO; or better yet, bands with numbers in their names,
like U2, Three Dog Night, The Four Tops, or the ever-elusive Five Man Electric
Band.
On this particularly
Saturday I pick up Tex in my 1991 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera Sedan—the best year for
the Ciera, I might add, and best style; sorry wagon—which I’ve recently bought
off the side of the road for the sum of my life savings: a cool $800. And boy, is
she a sweet ride—Navy Blue, 2.5 liter Tech IV 14 engine, 110 horsepower, 135 lb/foot
torque, automatic windows—let’s just say, J.D. Power is pretty damn impressed. I
come up with a name for her the same way I christen all my vehicles—after the
first song I hear on the radio with a woman’s name in the lyrics.
Back to the story…I pick
up Tex in Suzy Q to go “garage sale-ing” and within minutes I notice Tex flaring
his nostrils. “What’s that smell?” he asks.
“Probably just manure,” I
say, as we drive by fields full of knee-high corn.
“It’s July,” Tex says,
“don’t they spread manure in the spring?”
“Don’t know. I’m not a
farmer.”
We hit up a community-wide
yard sale in the village of Java and find several cardboard boxes full of LP’s,
but it’s mostly worthless garbage; shit we already have—The Eagles Greatest Hits, Frampton
Comes Alive—or don’t really want—any Herb Alpert album that doesn’t have a
naked woman covered in whipped cream on the cover. It’s high noon by the time
we get back to the car and scorching-hot outside. When we open the doors to
Suzy-Q, an ungodly stench pours out, like flood water bursting through a dam.
“I knew it wasn’t
manure,” Tex says as he doubles over and dry heaves. “Whatever that smell is,
it’s coming from inside your car.”
“First of all,” I say,
“my car has a name, and it’s Suzy-Q, and you’d better treat her with respect.
Second of all, there’s nothing in my car. Look—it’s empty.”
We give Suzy-Q a few
minutes to air out, roll down the windows, and then check under the seats and
inside the glove box just to make sure there isn’t a dead fish hiding
somewhere—you never know if one of your friends is playing a practical joke on
you. The smell dissipates some when we get back on the road. The faster I
drive, the more fresh air funnels through. I stop at a gas station and buy a
few air fresheners to hang on the rearview mirror, but the stench remains, only
now with a hint of pine tree. We head north to Attica, where Tex scores a Dave
Clark Five album and I buy a half-dozen “Iroquois” beer bottle openers for a
quarter a piece—one of the greatest garage sail-ing finds ever, in my opinion.
“Where to next?” I ask as
we hop back in Suzy-Q. “Heard there’s a street sale in Alden.”
“Just take me home,” Tex
says. “I can’t take this smell any longer. It’s making my eyes burn.”
“That’s probably just
your contacts,” I say as I take a swig of my Pepsi before immediately spitting
it back out.
“It’s the smell, isn’t
it? It’s infiltrated your pop. And you know it’s only going to get worse once
it gets hotter out. Please take me home.”
I drive Tex home and he’s
right—with every degree the thermostat climbs, the smell intensifies. From his
house to mine, I have to drive with my head sticking out the window.
When I arrive home, I
decide to figure out where the smell is coming from. I must have hit an animal,
I convince myself, and its dead carcass is somehow stuck beneath Suzy-Q. I climb
underneath but can’t find a trace of anything. I pop the hood—again, nothing.
There’s only one place left to check. I open the trunk, releasing an odor so
fierce it’s like getting slapped across the face. I don’t know why I didn’t
think of checking here earlier. There’s nothing inside besides a spare tire and
a cooler. I open the lid to the cooler and the stench impacts me like the force
of a small explosion, knocking me a good ten feet in the air. I land hard on
the dirt driveway. I crawl back to Suzy-Q and climb up the bumper to peek into
the cooler. That’s when I see it, the root of all stink—a small Styrofoam
container, a bit larger than a coffee cup, with a plastic lid on top. Oh shit, I realize, I had forgotten all about that.
“What was it?” you ask.
Well, for the answer to that question, we’re going to have to go back another
week…
To be continued...
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