Mathilda gets a (new) door
May 27th we pulled out. Boxes filled with clothes, shoes, camping equipment, books, and tools. I get no small pleasure at seeing Atget’s Visions of Paris beneath a Hilti drill and Porter Cable 6″ orbital. And, now that I look at the photo, a watercolor of the statue in front of the Pioneer Home in Sitka, Alaska – the final destination.
Not a few days earlier at the shop, watching the Green Sawyers stand around in a circle and hack with a deflated soccer ball after work – I tell you if my eyes had taken this photo it would have been blurry. That’s about all I have to say about that.
The dog, for his part, was just confused. He truly had no idea the ride he was in for. Perhaps he was having terrible flashbacks from his trip out of Indiana, from Bloomington to New Hampshire in a truck – or so the rescue told us. In any case he took his customary perch in the front seat, on the blue furniture blanket, and stared ahead, intrepid bowsprit that he is.
And off we went – not that quite easy – but more or less. Onto 676, getting a last glimpse of the city out the southern window, and then – like clockwork – hitting traffic up around the curve. Can you believe, in a city the size of Philadelphia, that both ends of 676 – where one bleeds into 76, the other 95 – at a certain point die down into one lane? Who’s brilliant stroke of city planning was that? Worthy of Baron Huassmann, I tell you.
As the case may be, we exited, and took East River Drive, which I have never regretted doing.
Honestly, looking at these photos and writing about this now, I can’t believe I documented so much. It feels kind of silly, to be honest. I mean, who really gives a shit whether I got stuck in traffic on 76 west or took the Kelly Drive? Part of my problem is reading this article in the New Yorker about this blogger who records her life on a ranch in Oklahoma. What would that be like? I mean, really making a visual record of your life for a few weeks? And why not – writing, and perhaps even taking photos with this phone which is alternately a lanyard and a life-line – functions to help translate what actually happens. Writing has helped me understand events – make heads or tails, move through them.
Soooo – the door! Strapped to the roof, almost forgotten in the Assembly Room at the Greensaw shop. Onward we pushed, with the faithful travel necklace fastened round the rearview mirror. I should mention – near ten years earlier, in Antigua Guatemala, I purchased this necklace, braided leather and a piece of cored out bone, from an attractive older Mayan-looking woman on the square, her jewelry laid on a blanket before her. I selected this necklace. She rose to put it on me, fastened it round my neck, and said, “this will give you luck for your days.” I thanked her and began to take out money.
“But it won’t work without this.”
And she leaned forward and kissed me deeply.
Well the kiss, or the necklace, I don’t know, has kept me safe. Africa, Asia, Europe, Cuba, Central America, endless roadtrips across the states, hairy situations – I have been kept whole by its power. When I drive I put it around the mirror.
I tell ya – it protects me but didn’t do much for Mathilda on the uphills as we carved our way into the Endless Mountains. We hit awful storms and hail – she trucked forth, but struggled. Arriving later that night, I was not sanguine about her chances crossing the Rockies. But I have faith in the little tank!
But – we had a door to fasten, and a few good men ready to work. Joe and Tom were eager to have fun with Bondo and fiberglass resin, and I sure wasn’t going to stop them. Have you ever seen an editor of the Smithsonian Magazine apply Bondo? Or the head of the Peggy Browning Foundation work with fiberglass? Truly wonderful. Off came the old door, and Tom began his masterful job of grinding out rust from our “new” door, and preparing it for install, while Joe and I got dirty with fiberglass (how that shit heats up on your hands!).
Meanwhile Cal took his ease, as the Irish would say, beneath a tree.
An afternoon of sanding and fooling around with wires, getting zapped with the radio on and pulling wires from the old door – I thought there was a wasp in there or something stinging me, very confusing – and we had a new, I mean “new,” door! Got the bike rack up there, fresh with two new tires after mine getting stolen just before I left the city – the standard Philadelphia goodbye – and we were good to go.
And so the following Tuesday I headed to the Eagles Mere Post Office and sent as many books as I had boxes for onward to Sitka. The rest of my life got loaded in Mathilda, happy if a bit confused but getting used to her new as yet ungasketed door. Cal took his perch in the front seat (seen here as a truck passes), we took a quick pic before the final Tetrus arrangement of fishing vest and guitar and various other awkward objects, and hit the road up north to Canada.
