//THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD HOME//
On my way to fulfilling one of my mid-year resolutions to cut clutter, I’m going to try to sell my stereo. The CD player works only part of the time, both cassette decks eat tapes, and it’s just too big for where we want to put it. I paid $200 for it, but will part with it for less than $20 if I can find a willing victim at our upcoming garage sale. That thing’s got to go.
I bought the stereo 12 years ago, but I remember the day vividly. I was about to graduate from high school and was planning the purchase with monetary graduation gifts.
It turned out to be the longest day of my then-17-year-old life.
Our family motorhome was in the shop, so the plan that Saturday was for my dad and I to go stereo shopping, then I’d drop him off at the mechanic’s and drive his car home. The plan worked flawlessly until I was heading back to the house alone.
Was stopped at a red light in the center of a three-lane road, be-bopping to whatever horrid music I fancied at the time. I checked the rearview mirror. To my frozen horror, a Ford Bronco was approaching way too fast. Time stopped for an instant, I tensed up, and I watched it come until it smacked the back bumper. BAM! Metal crunched, plastic shattered and the impact sent me rolling into the car ahead of me.
The driver of the Bronco scrambled out of his truck to see if I was OK. I told him I thought I was fine. He said his wife was yelling at him and he didn’t see the red light. How nice. So it’s your wife’s fault? Good to know. Whatever.
There was another wreck on the opposite side of the intersection, so police were on the scene in minutes. There wasn’t much left of the trunk, and the right rear wheelwell was pushed solidly onto the wheel. I wouldn’t be able to drive it home. I guess the bright side was I’d put my new stereo, still in its rather bulky box, in the back seat. It sat at my feet as the tow truck hauled off my dad’s now-abbreviated 1987 Nissan Maxima. The idiot who hit me was able to drive home. Later we’d find out he didn’t even have insurance.
The police officer could not drive me home because it was outside his jurisdiction. He could, however, drop me and my stereo at the police station. There I could use the phone to call for a ride. Remember, friends, this was 1991 – cell phones weren’t as prevalent and the teen-age me certainly didn’t have one.
Things only slightly improved in the police station’s waiting room. There was one phone against the wall, and a bank of permanently anchored plastic chairs in the middle. My first attempt to call home yielded the answering machine – my mom and sister were out running errands, and my dad was making a few more stops in the motorhome before going home. The second and third calls, spaced about 15 minutes apart, ended the same way. During the third attempt, I called my friend Banana Man and got his answering machine, too. Where is everybody?
I hung up and, like I had during each calling attempt, pushed my big box back over to the chairs. The desk officer had been watching me. “Did you just get out of jail? You know, you only get one phone call.” Um, no, I was in a car accident. And I haven’t gotten anyone to answer at my house, Officer Jerk, sir. Leave me alone. Go back to sharpening pencils.
A woman in her late 30s witnessed this exchange and asked me about the accident. I told her what happened and that my ride was undrivable. I lived in ____, so the police couldn’t drive me home. Turns out she had a friend she could visit who owned a donut shop in my town, and she offered a ride. There were four little kids yo-yoing from her to all points of the room, so I figured the drive would be like hitching with a carload of sugar-shocked monkeys.
The reason she was at the station broke my heart and made my situation seem trivial. Her 5-year-old niece was in a back room talking to a female officer about how her teen-age uncle had raped her. The scars that precious little girl probably still has to this day weren’t visible when she happily skipped back to her aunt’s chair, pigtails flying behind her. The woman and the officer spoke a few hushed sentences, and then we left.
The five little kids piled into the backseat of the boat-like old Lincoln. I crammed my box in the trunk and rode shotgun. “I need to get some gas,” she told me as the engine sputtered to life. I told her all I had was $5, but it was hers. We stopped at a nearby station and put exactly 5 bucks’ worth in the tank. After the behemoth was fed, we noticed one of the tires was going flat. The car hobbled over to the free air hose, one of the boys karate-chopped the hub cap until it clanged onto the ground, and then I refilled the tire.
The chit-chat and intermittent kiddy chatter made the ride go quickly in a noisy kind of way. So glad the hyper youngsters wouldn’t be popping donuts until after I was out of the car.
Home at last, three hours after the ill-fated fender bender. I thanked the woman profusely as she helped me unload my stereo. She drove off, gaggle of kiddos whooping it up and waving at me. My house was the best thing I’d seen all day, even though it was sadly empty when I arrived.
I unpacked my stereo and played one of the few CDs I had. My dad was the first one to get home, and I related the story. After my mom and sister returned, we went to the impound lot. A few hard pulls with a crowbar rendered the crumpled car able to limp home.
Banana Man and Straw Hat came over that evening to check out the beatup car and see how I was doing. Straw Hat handed me a stack of CDs, which were rejects from the CD-imprinting factory where his dad worked. They played fine then, and they still do.
The stereo has been a fairly good one. I dragged it to college and the seven places I’ve lived since leaving home. It has survived loud, angry breakup music, alcohol-soaked parties and my frequently misguided taste in music. The CD-player’s laser needed realigning once and both tape-decks have needed new belt drives. With those things failing again, it’s time to say goodbye. Someday we’ll upgrade to something smaller and more powerful, with a remote.
And this time, I think I’ll buy my new stereo online.
