Freddogg Off The Chain

My mission, and I choose to accept it before self destruction, was to pick up my seventh grade daughter and her girl friend from the newly opened Midway Skating rink.
This was the big -social step out- arena for young teens without driver’s licenses. They were all very conscious of having the right look. Kids of that age are very tuned into “looking right” but the world is stratified and “it ain’t right” like I used to tell my students, ”All Peoples are created equal then their parents take them home from the hospital which is when the real bullshit begins.”
So I rolled up on Friday night and figured “this is a good moment because I am known throughout the community and kids think I’m cool so Carrie will get social points for having a cool dad.” I hop out and go around to the passenger’s side to muscle open the sliding side door on the three quarter ton Chevy work van with no power steering and 100 thousand miles of history.
“No way dad, I can’t believe you picked us up in an EARS van. I bet you think it’s funny but everyone in Junior High will be busting on me saying ,’where did your dad get an EARS van?”
“Climb on back there and take ‘my mommy’s got a Mercedes' Beth with you’. Just be careful no saws, old paint brushes or mineral spirits fall out of those basket shelves made of green wire. There is a drywall bucket for each of you to sit on but I would advise turning them upside down.”
Carrie arrived home in a huff and went straight to her mother. “Mom, he picked us up in the EARS van. I’m standing out front and up rolls this stupid green van with EARS on the side. EARS mom! Admit it mom, did your dad ever pick you up in an EARS van? Would dad have even gone out with you if you were from the EARS van family? I don’t think so. That was so wrong. Here he comes and he still thinks it’s funny. You need to talk to him and tell him that it’s not.”
Back in 1985 I ran a painting company I called the “Miracle Painters” because it was a miracle when we showed up for work. I can remember showing up to big jobs wearing kakis and Izod Green Golf shirt. I was tan and fit and all the hair above my neck was dark, now I look like a primed but unfinished human with drywall cracks. I knew how to bid jobs which was, ”I will paint your house for a flat or gloss rate of three thousand dollars. I make no money on paint or materials. We’ll be gone in two weeks and you get two call backs. Call a third time and I’ll come around to turpentine your tabby.”
One women who wanted me to de-algaefy then paint her stupid assed aluminum siding house said, ”That’s great, do it, when can you start?”
“Start? Did you say start? I said, I could paint your house for three thousand dollars, but didn’t say I would do it. Paint? You mean ladders and buckets and shit like that? I just ride around and bid jobs but I sure as hell ain’t starting one. And, by the way, it was a pleasure to meet you.”
I saw the pale green-many said puke green- van behind a Sears surplus store. The regular repair man had been issued a new one so parked the old horse and just walked away from it. I negotiated to buy it “as is and as it was” for five hundred dollars. I jumped the battery and drove it home.
The van had a security door separating the front from the back which was lined with those "oh so cool" repair man shelves. I put ladder racks on top and felt so “redneck working guy” . I listened to Springsteins “Born in the USA tape over and over, ”We busted out of class had to get away from those fools. We learned more from a three minute record baby then we ever learned in school” but wait—I was the teacher-“No retreat baby no surrender.”
The problem with owning a lettered Sears service van is that the desperate housewives of Lewes were throwing themselves under my tires pleading with me, “Fix my dryer, it don’t get hot no more”
"Does it rattle or hum--you must pick only one condition" i would say and hwen they did I said I only worked on the other condition then drive away.
On a hot Saturday too hot to go to the beach I commandeered a hair dryer and a six inch drywall knife and began the de-lettering process- which my redneck buddies said—“that lettering shit will come right off.”
Well after 90 minutes the S finally was scratched away along with all the paint underneath. I did the S on the other side just to achieve symmetry otherwise I’d have the Bell Palsy EARS van, then I quit somewhere between ADD and closure.
The EARS van was so cool but then student Joey who worked at a body show said he could get rid of all the letters and paint the van white for 300 dollars. Back when I worked at a private school for emotionally disturbed teens this student John-who worked in a body shop- arrived in a baked candy apple red 1950 Plymouth he had restored. It was beautiful. The Phys Ed teacher arranged for John to paint his green Karmann Ghia and high gloss, hard shelled, baked enamel white. John returned three weeks later after having painted the roll out the balls moron's car with antique white house paint with the help of a small roller. It was hysterical.
Joe painted my van white and it was perfect. So perfect that when I came out from a Sunday night football meeting the van had been stolen.
“Did you leave the keys in it, ”the state cop asked? “I always leave the keys in it that’s the only way I can find them again, ”I said.
The next day my van was discovered in the parking lot of the 911 center where operators are protected behind heavy and locked steel doors in case someone wants to come by and kick the asses of thier “please describe the gun pointed at your face” high school drop out selves.
Nothing was stolen from the van and the cops thought it was a prank perpetrated by one of my friends. I told them if my friends did it they would have disassembled then reassembled the van in my living room.
Two years later a farmer from outside of Milton walked around the back of his barn because real rednecks don’t much like indoor plumbing and became confused because the tractor in the high weeds- that had sat-or set in redneck- and rusted there over 30 years was gone.
He called the cops who once again advanced the “your friends are pranksters” theory of social deviance but an hour later Charles, the compulsive but non malicious joy rider of unauthorized and unusual vehicles ,was pulled over by cops for driving a 1953 John Deer farm tractor, it’s double front wheel riding on a double yellow line, down the middle of a country road.
I was sent a “personal loss form “ from the state when it was determined that Charles had stolen my Sears van—now The White van- two years earlier. Charles was linked to hundreds of joy rides involving unusual vehicles. He was sentenced to two years in prison and no victims ever asked for or got money back because people who own crazy shit are cool like that.
Now Carrie drives a black Jetta with spoiler and fancy wheels with leather interior a sunroof with blue in dash lighting which adds to the ergonomics.
Gone are my Glory Days of EARS vans which I wouldn't trade for anything except perhaps a HOMO DEPOT truck.