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Autobiography
In
Detroit, they don't ask how old you are. They ask what year
you are or how many miles are on your engine.
Only
a Detroit boy like Jon A. Jackson would tell his life
story by what he used to change lanes, and in doing so, put
the auto back in biography. Enjoy the read.
(While you're at it, find the answer to question that for ages
has puzzled philosophical minds:
Why
does Mulheisen drive a Checker?)
My
first car was a 1954
Chevrolet sedan, gray. I crashed
it into a bridge abutment on the Edsel Ford Expressway, in Detroit,
in 1958. I fell asleep at the wheel, about six a.m., enroute
to my post as a weather observer at Willow Run Air Force Station,
near Ypsilanti, Michigan. It was a good running car and I hated
to lose it (I think it cost me $400), especially under those
circumstances, but it wasn’t a great car. I replaced it
with a 1955 Ford,
which was a better car. My girlfriend’s father, Ernie Kuhn,
found it for me. He owned a gas station on Jefferson Avenue,
in Detroit, not far from the Belle Isle Bridge (very close to
"Pinky’s," a restaurant which has appeared in
at least a couple of my books). Ernie took care of my cars for
me. The Ford needed a new radiator, so I left it at his shop
while I returned to the Air Force -- by now, I was stationed
about 500 miles north, at K.I. Sawyer Air Force Base, near Marquette.
When I came back to town, a month later, Ernie sorrowfully told
me that I’d have to give up the Ford. It seemed that an
elderly man from the neighborhood, a retired postal worker,
had fallen in love with my car. He had prevailed upon Ernie
to let him sit in it every day (it was usually parked on the
side street, because Ernie’s lot was often over-flowing).
Ernie had thought it would be okay, but he hadn’t reckoned
on the old guy falling in love. Reluctantly, I conceded that
it would have to be surrendered -- you can’t come between
a man and his love. I remember seeing the old guy sitting in
the parked car. I don’t think he ever drove it, just listened
to the ballgame on its radio.
I learned to drive only at the age of 18. My father was a stern
man who had little patience with modern attitudes, so I didn’t
even approach him about getting a license. Many of my friends
had cars, so it wasn’t a very pressing problem. One car
I especially remember was a
1948 Plymouth coupe,
belonging to my best friend, Dick Cattrysse. "The gray
limousine looms through the night," I’d intone, as
he picked me up to go out cruising. My girlfriend, Ernie’s
daughter, had a fabulous 1956
Mercury hardtop convertible.
It also had an automatic transmission. That was very important.
Learning to drive was a snap in that boat. I really liked that
car, and not just for its ease of driver education. There are
elements of auto-eroticism here. This picture is very much like
it.
But my lack of driving skills had already caused me genuine
grief. In high school, Dick and I worked at a Wrigley’s
supermarket. The manager of the store, a huge fat man named
Warren, was extremely irascible. He liked me, but he generally
found it difficult to be kind. On Saturdays he bought his own
week’s groceries for his large family. One of the packers
would have to take a list around the store before closing and
fill the four or five carts with items, then check them out.
Often, I did this. When I had bagged them -- at least ten bags!
-- Warren tossed me the keys of his car, a hopelessly
beat-up, broken seated slum of a 1950 Ford.
"Bring it over to the lot," he said. (Being a good
manager, he didn’t take up valuable parking space in the
store lot, but parked a block away.) Usually, it was Dick who
brought the miserable jalopy around, but he wasn’t there
that day. I was fearful of Warren and his temper, but also a
hotdog. I didn’t want to tell him I didn’t know how
to drive; besides, I thought I did know how to drive. It was
winter, icy. I ran to get the car. I got it going all right,
but when I turned into the lot I wasn’t in the right gear
and the car stalled. It slid back onto Mack avenue on the ice.
A passing car struck Warren’s car broadside and wrecked
it. I wasn’t hurt. I remember fearfully telling Warren
what happened. To my surprise, he merely shook his head and
said, "At least you weren’t hurt." The other
managers for the Wrigley’s chain thanked me; they hated
riding to managers meetings in that old heap when it was Warren’s
turn to drive. Now he had a new car.
After the romantic loss of my `55
Ford, I made a really stupid
purchase: a Renault "Dauphine".
France’s silly response to the Volkswagen challenge. What
a wretched piece of junk! I replaced the transmission and many
other parts. It wasn’t stable on the road, especially ice.
Ernie didn’t approve of it, but by then I had split with
his daughter, so I wasn’t taking my trade to Ernie anyway.
But why would a Detroit boy buy a Renault? It was some kind
of rebelliousness. But I learned one thing: the French can cook
circles around the Germans, but a sauce don’t have wheels.
I got out of the service in November, 1960, and I bought a 1959
Chevy Impala (thanks to a loan
co-signed by Dick Cattrysse, who took a loss for several years,
until I paid it back). It was a beautiful, silver-gray car with
elegant fins that resembled Batman’s cape when he leaped
through space. In 1962, with my friend Dan Cotler, I drove this
car from Detroit to San Francisco, down to Tijuana, back up
to Seattle, and home via Montana and the upper peninsula of
Michigan. We felt like Kerouac and Neal Cassady. It was a great
trip and it convinced me that I should live in Montana. But
first I had to prepare myself for life, some way to make a living
out west. I had been working for the AFL-CIO, but I didn’t
think that would get me far in cowboy country. I went to Wayne
State University, thinking I’d get a teaching permit, but
that didn’t really appeal. I studied English lit, instead.
I stored my car in a garage -- it needed a valve job -- and
forgot about it, literally: I never reclaimed it.
After four years of night school, I gave up and moved to my
boyhood home in Kingsley, Michigan (about 250 miles north of
Detroit, near Traverse City), my father very kindly bought me
a new Volkswagen Beetle. It
cost about $1800, in 1965. I was planning to be a writer. I’d
met Jim Harrison up there and he was making a living as a writer,
sort of. After one starving winter, I decided to be a carpenter,
instead. This VW was pretty tough: one night I rolled it, but
except for a lot of dents and the need for a new windshield,
it kept running. But I had to spend five days in jail for failing
to report an accident. (The judge was convinced I’d been
drunk.) Jim Harrison brought me some books to read, including
Isaac Bashevis Singer’s The Slave, and Malcolm Lowry’s
Under the Volcano. Inspiring reading in my depressed state,
but I read both of them in a day.
After a couple more years, writing in the winter, building houses
in the summer, I decided to be a wildlife biologist. I used
the G.I. Bill to go to the University of Montana, in Missoula,
to get a degree in wildlife biology. I drove the battered VW
out there, in 1968.
I married Ruth Baum, a nice Jewish girl from Detroit, in Missoula.
By 1970, we had a daughter, Sarah (Buzzy), and I had bought
a
newer VW bug.
I went to Iowa, to the Writer’s Workshop, in 1971. The
marriage broke up and I bought an old
Chevy pickup truck and drove
it back to Montana, now with an MFA degree, but still no novel,
although I’d written a mystery novel, with the help of
David Morrell. This novel was never published, although parts
of it became The Blind Pig.
While I was in Iowa I had bought
Ray Carver’s old 1964 Falcon convertible
for $50, but he could never provide a title. I drove that back
to Montana and got away with an out-of-date California license
for a while, but one day I was stopped by the Missoula County
Sheriff. Thank heaven, it was my brother! He said there was
an indication that the car was stolen and advised me to park
it behind the barn up at Annick Smith’s ranch, on the Blackfoot
River, where I was living and writing my second mystery novel,
The Diehard (the first to be published.) The Smiths used it
for a hay feeder, for awhile, and then had the county tow it
away.
I went down to southern California, in 1975, to build houses,
and when I learned belatedly that Random House had bought THE
DIEHARD, I bought a great
old Ford pickup, a 1964 V-8,
and drove it back to Montana.
In 1978, I married again, to Cinda Purdy, and we had a son,
Devin. We were living in Butte, my second novel -- THE BLIND
PIG -- was out, Jack Webb was planning to make a film of it,
when my wife was killed in a plane crash. Devin and I moved
to the Bitterroot Valley.
I still had the `64 Ford pickup, but now I sold Cinda’s
`76 Toyota station wagon and bought a brand-new
1981 Toyota Corona. It was
my first new car. Tracy Kidder was visiting me for some trout
fishing when a guy ran into the new car, while it was parked
on the street. The insurance company didn’t want to total
the car, but it would take $3500 to fix. I sold it and bought
a new, 1984 Toyota, a bright
red, low-slung Celica. It was
great!
Being a little flush at the time, I was happy to pay back my
father for the Volkswagen he’d bought me. Here was a guy
who had worked in the auto factories all of his adult working
life, first at Dodge Main, then for Plymouth for many years,
and finally for some twenty years at Pontiac. He was a machine
repairman, a skilled position which meant he was rarely if ever
laid off. He always bought cars like the `52 Buick, or later,
an Oldsmobile 98. When I offered to buy him a new car, he chose
a Volkswagen Jetta! Go figure.
Eventually, my literary prospects having dried up (Jack Webb
had died without making the movie and no one seemed to want
GROOTKA, or any of the subsequent novels I started), I was living
with a nice woman named Janet MacMillan. When that relationship
folded, I gave her my Toyota and took her old
Datsun pickup. I still had
the old Ford pickup, but I reluctantly sold it. I still see
it running around the valley -- it has a great decal for Arabian
horses on the driver’s door. An indomitable vehicle.
Eventually, GROOTKA was published by Countryman Press’
imprint, Foul Play Press. Dell bought my paperback rights and
I was back in business. My house burned down in 1990, on Christmas
Eve, and I was able to buy a 1989
Toyota pickup, black, with the extended cab.
The Atlantic Monthly Press published HIT ON THE HOUSE, I wrecked
the truck, quit drinking, and bought a crappy
white `73 Datsun pickup, which
my son now drives. A few years ago, thanks to the publication
by Grove/Atlantic of DEADMAN, DEAD FOLKS, and most recently,
MAN WITH AN AXE, I’m happy with my 1994
Toyota pickup, blue with an extended cab.
This is a great car. After my recent peregrinations to New Mexico,
Arizona, Colorado, etc., it wears its 109,000 miles effortlessly.
One day, perhaps when GROOTKA, or maybe, my new novel, LA DONNA
DETROIT, is sold to the movies, I’ll buy a new
Jeep Cherokee. More likely,
I’ll keep the pickup and buy the Cherokee for my darling,
Jean, with whom I now live in Missoula.
Sometimes I wonder
whatever happened to my
dad’s old
`36 Dodge, a black sedan
that
-- depending how you looked at it in the sunlight
-- took on the iridescent colors of an
oil slick, or the plumage of a grackle. It had a funny taste,
too ... sort of metallic, but bitter. But I loved its smell.
I never liked its replacement, a baby blue 1941 Ford. It had
a kind of moderness that was too frank, too bland. But I loved
the `52 Buick,
with its heavy grill like the mouth of a sperm whale. For Carver’s
old Falcon I harbor the hope that it was used by the county
for rip-rap on the Blackfoot River, although, as a fisherman
I find that kind of bank restoration regrettable. Still, I’d
love to catch a rainbow trout out of its front seat, some day.
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