The Great Vocho

Years ago I owned a 67 Volkswagen Beetle.

My Bug had originally been painted orange.

The paint was long neglected, oxidation eating away at any memory of gloss.

The back left fender was primer gray and obviously replaced.

The interior was okay, with the exception of my dashboard

and driver’s seat.

The radio had been removed and the bottom of the driver’s seat was mostly springs.

I had a small pillow to sit on underneath a faux fur seat cover.

It was barely legal to drive.

I had a misplaced hope of restoring it to a former glory.

That never happened.

I drove the Bug 4 days a week from Highland Park

to Granada Hills for work. It was roughly 30 miles.

Getting out of my driveway was always

a nightmare. Between 7:45 and 8 am the parents

of the students attending school at St. Ignatius

two doors down, would inevitably

all be running late and back up traffic on my street,

forbidding my exit. And making me late.

There’s nothing like the indignant entitlement of

Catholic School Parents.

I often wondered what Jesus would think of them.

Once out of the carport and safely onto the street,

I’d navigate my way down York Blvd to the 2 Freeway North

merging onto the 210 Freeway heading East.

I’d then sputter my way to the 118 North

and finally get off at Balboa Blvd.

During commute times the 210 was akin to the Autobahn.

The average speed being about 80 miles per hour.

Since the Bug vibrated at speeds above 70

I stayed in the far right hand lane cruising at 60.

Which by the way, was the fucking speed limit.

One morning on the 210 about 3 miles before I had to merge onto the 118,

a woman driving a gold sedan drove up next to me.

She was making some sort of motion with her hand.

She was flipping me off!

Passing me, she rolled down her passenger window

and screamed “Get that thing off the road!”

I laughed and yelled, “Fuck off!”

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There were two nefarious cars when I was growing up during the 1960s

Corvairs and VW Bugs.

Corvairs had some sort of suspension and handling issues that deemed them dangerous.

Ralph Nader wrote a book about them being unsafe at any speed.

The Volkswagen Bug wasn’t much better.

Very little safety and zero luxury.

Known for roll overs, which were almost always fatal.

Jim Judge, one of the neighbor boys was killed in his VW Beetle. He was between 16 and 18.

Drunk driving, I heard my parents say. Rolled the car.

I have a memory of Jim liking my little brother Bucky.

Jim and Bucky were in front of the open garage at Jim’s house.

Jim was holding my brother under his 3 year old arms swinging him up,

both of them laughing and Jim exclaiming, “BUCKY! BUCKY! BUCKY!”

A few years later, Jim’s younger brother, John would punch me in the face

giving me a nosebleed.

I don’t recall exactly what it was I said that triggered him,

but it was shitty.

—————————

Buddhism has held my interest for a long time.

Specifically the Mahayana branch, otherwise known as The Great Vehicle.

It seems to shake hands with another favorite philosophy of mine, anarchism.

I’m not didactic about my interest in any philosophical vehicle,

preferring to embrace the spirit of each.

Dogma gets me down.

Once a decade I do a self portrait. And in 2004, I was reading a lot of Buddhist texts.

And I was driving that little orange Bug all over Hell’s Half Acre. Add a little anarchism

and The People’s Car becomes a symbol for something else all together.

Like social and economic class. And how those deemed in lower castes are never

allowed comfort and safety,

giving away their labor and lives for wages over actual value.

Affordable means inexpensive which equates to cheap.

And cheap means cutting corners.

Did you want seatbelts with that?

It seems to me that, historically, those who have been given so little materially and socially,

tend to have a deeper connection

to real things spiritual and philosophical.

And so The Great Vocho was created. A vibrant graphic work filled with pun and metaphor.

Beep Beep!

——————

During Christmas 2003 I drove into Pasadena to shop at the

Trader Joe’s on Lake Street.

It was a larger store with more products and better parking.

Trader Joe’s parking lots are notorious for being a clusterfuck.

I chugged up to the top of the structure looking for a close enough space to park.

There were none. Which was fine. But as I started to move toward the overflow lot,

I noticed two huge luxury class SUVs parked in the compact parking spaces.

They had parked on either side of the 5 spaces, taking up 2 each.

My first thought was, “That’s not very Christmas of them.”

My second thought, was “Fuck it, and fuck them, I can fit in that space.”

So, I pulled in.

There was just enough room on my driver’s side to get out.

But not much room for the driver of the SUV to my right.

Not my problem.

I hopped out and started to head toward the store entrance.

I heard, “Thanks. I can’t get out,” only to realize

that there was a driver in that SUV.

“Hang on,” I said walking to the back of the vehicles

and pointing the clearly painted lettering, “Compact.”

Pointing to my car, I then said, “Compact.”

Pointing to hers, I stated, “Not compact.”

She then told me I could have parked somewhere else.

“Funny, I could say the same thing to you,” pointing to the overflow lot, with plenty of parking.

Walking off, I said, “Merry Christmas!”

Finished with shopping, I pushed my cart back to the Bug.

Looking up, I could see the impending rain.

I piled the bags into my back seat and got in.

As I put the key into the ignition, I noticed that Mrs. Entitlement

had dumped a whole extra grande coffee thing all over the hood of my car.

I laughed my ass off. She was out 8 dollars and it was about to rain.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot…