WHERE THERE’S SMOKE

With a dawning hopefulness—imagining I was finally embarking on my real life path—I checked out various commercial art schools in L.A. but couldn’t afford the tuition, so I decided to study art at Long Beach State instead.

I settled in Sunset Beach, a tiny town south of Long Beach, where I took an apartment with three roommates on a sandy alley, just one row of houses away from the ocean. At Christmas, when I visited my family, I bought a used car for $350—a two-tone, yellow-and-white Ford in mint condition. John from the language lab—we remained friends— drove it down to L.A. with me, since I only had a learner’s permit at the time.

One Saturday morning a month or so later, I set out for Long Beach with my roommate Gloria and a male friend of hers. They were supposed to lead a weekend camping trip for kids, and I’d offered to drop them off at the YMCA. En route, I noticed smoke wafting out from under my hood. When I pulled over so Gloria’s friend could check things out, he said the oil had been overfilled and was spilling out and burning on the engine block.

As we drove on, however, the smoke got steadily worse until I finally said I’d feel better if we stopped at a gas station and had a mechanic check it out—but Gloria insisted they couldn’t afford to be late and urged me to keep going. Even after a loud clattering started up under the hood, she continued to assure me it was OK to keep driving, that I could wait and get my car checked after I’d left them off. And so, trusting her judgment—because she’d told me her father had made her take apart and put together an engine before he would let her drive—I did what she asked.

I dropped them at the Y—right on time—and a few blocks down the street, I happened on a Ford dealership. In the driveway, my car died. The mechanic on duty told me it had an oil leak and that I’d just blown up the engine, driving without oil. He estimated it would cost me $1000 to get it fixed. Belatedly I realized that Gloria’s friend had mistaken the transmission dipstick for the oil dipstick, though how he could have done this is beyond me, since transmission fluid is red. And that’s how I lost the cherriest car I’ve ever owned.

And before I go on, I should explain that the illustration at the top of this post is the cover of the first volume of The Adventures of Jix—a series of learning-to-read books I wrote for my godson Michael. Lisa, my layout person, and I are determined to finish all four volumes as speedily as possible. And since there’s space for an image above every post, I figured I might as well introduce my readers to some of the fantastical creatures in Jix’s world.