The Crank

I'm a cranky old guy, no doubt. My crankiness has alienated some of my closest friends, like who wants to be ridiculed and belittled alla time? Not him, not her. My tío Juan was cranky I recall. My dad wasn't. He was a happy, well-adjusted man probably got to suck at his mother's tit to his heart's content when he were a tiny tot. But oh no not I, I didn't. The woman who gave birth to me abandoned me in another country and went away. I've since made that country my home to the point I wouldn't want to be a fucking immigrant in anybody else's fucking nightmare, right.

October 1993 found my dad and I driving through San Antonio Texas in his gold-colored 1985 Mercury Cougar. My dad had two and a half years left to live and we were visiting San Pedro Park, the barrio where he grew up. He and his brothers used to collect empty soda bottles to redeem them and they would hand over the 25 cents thus earned to their mother, who would take it to the local panadería for to buy a big bag of day-old bread with which to feed the family. Hard times during The Depression. Are you depressed yet?

That October day it was hot and humid in San Antonio as we were driving around looking for a motel and I must have been complaining endlessly of the heat and the humidity, because my dad exclaimed JESUS MIGUEL YOU SOUND JUST LIKE MY WIFE!

We found a motel contiguous to a golfing range you know where you get a bucket of golf-balls and rent a number seven iron and a number two driver, and whack balls into the distance? They got like yard markers 100 yards 150 yards, etc. not my cuppa tea, but my dad usedta love that shit, so he got a room, and handed me the keys to the Cougar and bid me a good trip 90 miles up the road to Austin, which I was eager to visit. The Rock and Blues clubs and that. Stomping grounds of Stevie Ray Vaughan and whomever. Lou-Ann Barton.

I remember commenting maybe I'll grow into a cranky old guy like my tío Juan. My dad riposted you already are like that, Miguel.

But I only mention all of this as an aside and introduction to what burns in my chest today although the intro has taken on a life of its own and grown like a cancer. I want to bitch about something I got no real right to bitch about and should keep my mouth shut about because I've made my bed and got nowhere else to go.

Here's a 1985 Mercury Cougar.

I'M HAPPIER THAN SHIT WORKING AT CORECAB OK BUT I'M A SELF-EMPLOYED CONTRACTOR AND I SHOULDN'T BE MADE TO PICK UP PSYCHOTIC MURDERERS AND BATTY OLD LADIES WHO WANT ALL THE CAR WINDOWS OPEN IN THE FUCKIN RAIN!

There. That's all I really wanted to say. Have a nice day.