Life With A Werewolf

Try Looking Tough In A Hooptie

Are you really tough? Do you think of yourself as the worlds biggest badass? Someone who could stare down any motorcycle gang with a simple glare and get away without a scratch? Would bears think twice before crossing your path? Are you the Billy in Billy Badass? Well, then try driving a hooptie.

Hoopties are the kinds of vehicles that can take the venom and vinegar out of anyone. They will get you from point A to B, no problem (usually no problem that is), but you won’t look good or tough doing it. That’s why the toughest people in the world drive them. Sure, anyone can look tough, sexy and cool behind the wheel of a perfectly preserved early seventies muscle car. Throw on dark shades, stomp the go pedal, and lay a nice thick set of elevens down on the roadway at any red light.

Try having that same sort of look in a late eighties Yugo. Go ahead, try it. There won’t be any elevens. In fact, you won’t even get a one-wheel peel. The most you’ll get is a few chuckles, because you’ll feel like a clown minus the circus. A Mercury Topaz is the kind of car that’s economical. It’s durable. It gets you where you need to go and the most you’ll have to do is change the oil and other fluids at regular intervals. But you’re not gonna look cool doing it. In the service, I’ve seen plenty of men and women driving large expensive trucks. Especially when the big sign-on bonuses hit. I’ve seen plenty of expensive modern muscle cars, too. If you sit outside the gate one day and watch the cars going in and out of a military base, you might think its our service men and women who single handedly keeps them in business, you’ll see so many of them. But you’ll be hard pressed to find any hoopties.

These dedicated, durable, mostly forgotten about vehicles of mass-produced econobox fortunes have proven themselves time and again through years and sometimes decades of dedicated service. And yet, they never get any love on screen or in real life. In all my years of watching action movies, I’ve seen exactly two scenes that involved hoopties. One in “The Crow”, where it was played up for laughs, and another in “The Expendables 3” where, again it was played up for laughs. I honestly can’t think of any others.

I guess what I’m trying to say is my ride is starting to get to me. Crash has that Caddy. Despite its dents, dings and scratches, it looks bad ass. It’s easy to look tough in a vehicle like that. Especially a beat up old American Luxury car that’s primed to move steel at a high speed. But, I on the other hand, don’t have any such vehicle. I’d love a new car. It doesn’t have to be expensive, it doesn’t have to be exactly new. But it does have to be sporty.

And by sporty I mean a sports car. I don’t mean those cross-over bastardized things that look as if an SUV and a sports car had an inbred love child. I never understood the point of those. You want the room of an SUV but the maneuverability and comfort of a car? Then breakdown and get a station wagon. That’s all that is. And beneath the marketing and images of these cars going in places they will never go, doing things they will never be seen doing, beneath the angry eye headlights and aggressive bucktoothed grills, that’s all it really is. It’s a station wagon, just with a modern name.

I’m counting pennies again. Ramen noodles are now becoming gourmet cuisine for me. Tap water is my new Avian. I’m saving as much cash as I possibly can over the next few months and taking a look at what’s out there. Used car prices are collapsing finally, so hopefully now’s the time I can actually afford a fun, yet easy and cheap to repair car that will help me salvage a little bit of dignity driving.

If you think it’s a bit silly, you’re right. I admit it is a little silly. So is paying fifty bucks for a haircut. A hundred dollars for a shirt, or two hundred dollars for shoes. So is paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for a home in a fancy neighborhood for the exclusive right to say “I live here”. We all do silly little things now and again to save our own pride. Certain things that mean the world to us, but to others perhaps mean very little. What I’ve come to understand after months of driving a Mercury Topaz around is that such things aren’t really all that bad. Sometimes it’s okay to wear the leather jacket cause you feel good in it. To suck in your gut in a mirror and flex when no one’s watching. To have those little reasons to like yourself just a bit so you can honestly hold your head high when you’re around others instead of just faking it. It’s okay to be proud of who you are, no matter what silly way or means you use to get there.

So yeah, I’m looking for a crazy nineties or early 00s sports car. Something probably American, easy to fix, and cheap. Something that I can easily put a good exhaust on, do a few things to the engine and get a bit more angry ponies under the hood. I’m going to be doing that for me, cause that’s what I want to do. That’s just one more small thing I’ll have to make me feel good about myself. And there’s nothing wrong with having a few of those small reasons to do that.