More Than A Jeep

I need a staff to help with this blog.  If nothing else, they could go through old files and find things for me.  I don't have the time.  I don't have the time to make all the images I want to make, and sometimes. . . I just get exhausted.  But regardless, the next morning, we must go to press.  So to speak.  It is a tough solo gig, I promise.  Perhaps I'm just getting old.

Yesterday, a man stopped by my house.  He wanted to buy my Jeep.  I've been thinking about it, thinking how little I want to go out and clean it up, buy tires, get the electrical system fixed. . . all of it.  So when he asked how much I would take for it, I told him.  He had most of it in cash, but needed to go to the bank to get more, then to get a truck to tow it away.  That meant I had time to process my decision to sell it.

I bought the Jeep brand new in 1985.  It was the first new thing I had ever gotten for myself.  I bought it because I had just finished my M.A. degree and thought I deserved a present.  It was quite fun.  I had long hair that fell past my shoulders then and a physique that pretty was good.  I ran every day across the Country Club College campus with my dog.  When I got the Jeep, the Shepard/Husky mix went with me everywhere.  The Jeep was white and not so many people had them and we became quite a well known figure.  It was the only car I had, so when it rained, I donned a rain jacket.  People I didn't know would stop me and ask if I was the fellow with the white Jeep and the dog.  Then they would tell me a story about seeing me.  I was always quite pleased, of course, for that is why I did it all, I am sure.  I wanted to be some modern mixture of Tarzan and Indiana Jones.

Thinking about it yesterday afternoon, I remembered that every girlfriend I have had since high school had ridden in that Jeep.  No. . . they'd all had fun in it.  I was I was a very safe rebel, I guess, almost like real danger only with a seatbelt.  I knew some of the scariest people on the planet, but I was not one.  The Jeep, I guess, was a symbol of all that.  I wanted to look like one of the pictures in a Patagonia catalog.

Now the dog is dead and the Jeep and I are both in disrepair.  At least the Jeep might have a second chance.  I may have to start a chronicle of my life with the Jeep, little vignettes of suburban madness.  There are plenty of good tales to tell.

I bought some photo corners yesterday and started making my summer journal out of the Fuji instant pictures.  I am not so good at that.  It is spacial.  Maybe with practice, I will get better.  I have always said that I have a lot of estrogen, but it doesn't show when I make the summer book.  Every little girl in the world make scrapbooks that I envy.  I think it is genetically programmed, but I may be wrong.  I sit with photos and corners and colored pencils and am simply frozen with befuddlement.  I do the first thing, and it looks like shit.  Then I begin to sweat and my hands shake, and then I push it all to the side and go on the internet to look at other people's scrapbooks.  Look. . . I'm embarrassing myself by even telling you that I am making a scrapbook, so give me a break here.  It's just another piece of the puzzle.