I was involved in a hit and run.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, more accurately, my car was.\u00c2\u00a0 I was somewhere else, just living my life, paying no attention.<\/p>\n
It happened in one of three places.\u00c2\u00a0 At the Bel Age Hotel, Lucques restaurant or in front of Felice’s house.<\/p>\n
I used to be super-vigilant.\u00c2\u00a0 Checking my car for injury after every valet parking adventure.\u00c2\u00a0 You see I had a bad experience.\u00c2\u00a0 At Xavier Cugat’s old restaurant on La Cienega.\u00c2\u00a0 The food wasn’t very good, but you’ve got to try everything once.\u00c2\u00a0 And when I emerged, completely sober, my margarita-swilling days behind me, my passenger side window was down, and when I swung a curve, the door opened wide.\u00c2\u00a0 But I didn’t find out until the very next morning that there was a dent in the door.<\/p>\n
Try collecting.\u00c2\u00a0 The restaurant contracts out the parking, even though it’s on their property, and the attendants shrug their shoulders like they’re Cam’ron being questioned by the police, and you have to augur for information.\u00c2\u00a0 And, being incredibly pissed you ultimately get some leads, which yield unreturned phone calls which force you to track down the proprietors in person, just on principle, not wanting to be beaten.<\/p>\n
Collecting was hell.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, my friend Stephen had his radio stolen from the lot at Cucina and could never collect, and he’s more tenacious than I am.<\/p>\n
I hate being beaten.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe that’s it.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe it’s the downer of the experience, the lack of faith in humanity.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe it’s the repair process, and the fear that as soon as your car is back in order, it’s going to get hit again.<\/p>\n
It was not the kind of dent that you could make and not be aware of.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s spread over half of the rear door on the driver’s side.\u00c2\u00a0 So just because you’re an illegal living in the States you have no responsibility?<\/p>\n
Call me racist, but the truth is most of these parkers don’t have green cards.\u00c2\u00a0 Then again, considering what they did to get into this country, shirking responsibility for misfeasance pales in comparison.<\/p>\n
Oh, it could have been someone pulling a u-turn in front of Felice’s house.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is even worse.\u00c2\u00a0 You can’t leave a note?\u00c2\u00a0 You’re probably the kind of person who pees with the seat down, leaving urine all over where I’m supposed to sit.\u00c2\u00a0 Karma will get you, but where does that leave me?<\/p>\n
And I schlepped all over town on Friday, finding out that to get this dent repaired it’s going to cost me $891.\u00c2\u00a0 Or maybe $770 if they don’t have to blend the paint into the driver’s door.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, I could get it done cheaper, but the car’s not that old.\u00c2\u00a0 And I’ve had a bad experience twice.\u00c2\u00a0 Paint fades.<\/p>\n
And the free maintenance on my car is running out in weeks, so I scheduled a service on Tuesday.\u00c2\u00a0 And contemplating this as I was picking up my mail at my abode after midnight tonight, I thought back to my youth.\u00c2\u00a0 Making lists for the dealership, of what was wrong, what needed to be repaired.<\/p>\n
And as I crossed 23rd Street, in the darkness, I recalled my ’63 Chevy.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a convertible.\u00c2\u00a0 My father found it on a client’s property in ’73 and overpaid for it.\u00c2\u00a0 My older sister drove it, I had it for a year, and then my younger sister named the vehicle and killed it.\u00c2\u00a0 It leaked oil, and sometimes water.\u00c2\u00a0 And if you weren’t paying close attention, it would pull off the road, you had to fight to keep it going straight.\u00c2\u00a0 No baby boomer would let his child drive a vehicle like this, but this was a different era.\u00c2\u00a0 My dad had seat belts installed, and then we were off.\u00c2\u00a0 And when I came home from college he took the car to Russell Chevrolet, for service.\u00c2\u00a0 With my long list.<\/p>\n
Almost none of the delineated items were addressed.\u00c2\u00a0 Whether it be incompetence or my father’s ultimate unwillingness to pay, I have no idea.\u00c2\u00a0 But recalling all this, I wished my dad was still here.\u00c2\u00a0 To take care of my car, if not me.<\/p>\n
It wouldn’t be that big a deal.\u00c2\u00a0 It would be his responsibility.\u00c2\u00a0 Not so much monetarily as…\u00c2\u00a0 Well, he was a buffer between me and the real world.<\/p>\n
But now he’s gone.\u00c2\u00a0 And that sucks.<\/p>\n
But what also sucks is that I’m now older than he was when he took that Chevy Impala in for service.\u00c2\u00a0 He was just 52.\u00c2\u00a0 He had rules.\u00c2\u00a0 You always went to the dealership.\u00c2\u00a0 You never let a gas station do repairs.\u00c2\u00a0 You get what you pay for.<\/p>\n
Funny how I’ve embraced all his precepts.<\/p>\n
It’s just that I’m not as responsible.\u00c2\u00a0 He had three kids.\u00c2\u00a0 He paid for not only their private college educations, but graduate school.\u00c2\u00a0 And it’s not like he inherited a single dime, nor did he strike it rich in the market.\u00c2\u00a0 He just carved out his little piece of the world, his little domain.\u00c2\u00a0 Built on sustained hard work.\u00c2\u00a0 He was the integral part of the enterprise.\u00c2\u00a0 He’d drive across the state for less money than I’d leave the house for.\u00c2\u00a0 But that’s what it took, to keep it together, to make everything run.<\/p>\n
My sister was chagrined when he got her a Pontiac and she found out she had to fill it herself.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, he paid while she was going to social work school at USC, but it’s just that when you lived in our house, my father filled the tank, you never had to worry about it.<\/p>\n
He only lived sixteen years more than I am right now.\u00c2\u00a0 I feel unprepared for the inevitable.\u00c2\u00a0 In so many ways I’m still a child.\u00c2\u00a0 I need him here, in my corner, to help me get through.<\/p>\n
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I was involved in a hit and run.\u00c2\u00a0 Well, more accurately, my car was.\u00c2\u00a0 I was somewhere else, just living my life, paying no attention. It happened in one of three places.\u00c2\u00a0 At the Bel Age Hotel, Lucques restaurant or in front of Felice’s house. I used to be super-vigilant.\u00c2\u00a0 Checking my car for injury […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s96vPs-loss","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=784"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/784\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}