Slow ride, take it easy

Cars are a liability in San Francisco. Adage reconfirmed this week when our '98 Ford Contour was totaled out Wednesday-- by parking tickets.

That's a little more than $900 in parking tickets culminated by a $250 tow. Scoff-laws that we are, we always had better things to do with our 35 bucks than offer it up to the DPT, and considering that we were ticketed nearly weekly, and again considering that 35 dollars a week is a bottle of cheap wine a night... well, you get an idea of our priorities.

We're not into cars and we're not into microwaves. Both take up space and are seldom used. My mother has, however, given me a minimum of four microwaves over the years-- always when she found my kitchen piteously lacking one during a visit. By the same token, people generously give us cars. They see us driving decades-old clunkers, it pains them. Example: Shortly before our return to SF, Michael's brother gifted him "The Dog Truck," so named because my brother-in-law used it to haul doggie playgroups around Oakland for his dog walking business. We were moving, it could haul, so we gladly accepted it. No longer good enough for Jeff's clients' dogs, it was good enough for us until it was totaled back in November under the sad circumstance of a pricey clutch job.

We were just taking a few deep-cleansing breaths at having The Dog Truck off our backs when Michael's employer offered him The Rayko Truck. This truck had, in fact, been donated to Rayko by the sculptor Jack Soman, well known for (among various and sundry other distinctions) creating an ArtCar every year for the Bolinas, California "How Bolinas Can You Be?" 4th of July parade. Given that one of Jack's masterpieces was made up of many hundreds of stainless steel scales I was afraid of what to expect, but as it turns out the Rayko Truck is a dignified plain black. Only the "War is Stupid" slogan soddered into the back bumper and Jack's signature superchicken hood ornament indicate its origins.

The Contour was the last of numerous former company cars passed down to me by my parents' business. They were traditionally given upon my destitute return from an extended seat-of-my-pants stint outside the country and driven up and down the entire stretch of I-40 until they gave up an exhausted ghost. The Contour had logged more than 200,000 miles in her seven-year life, and had recently begun flashing a red "check-engine" light in protest when the DPT came for her and held her for ransom. Little did they know that her greatest value to us was in the "urban cred" Michael gleefully calculated we stood to gain by having a car totaled out in parking violations.

And that leaves two adults, an infant and a carseat in a filthy king-cab truck with a chicken on the hood...but hey, my mother is coming out to visit in a few weeks. At least we have a new microwave to look forward to.