Team Wet Dog

music, cars and baseball

In honor of October baseball, Philadelphia making the playoffs, the Mets amazing collapse, and a great season by the over-performing Washington Nationals, I'm posting this photograph from the Carrboro Music Festival.

The annual event was, I have to say, much larger and more impressive than I was expecting. More than 20 venues, music over two days, the streets were bustling, traffic was as messy as it can get in a small town and the level of talent was higher than I'd thought. I didn't get to hear very much, but what I did hear was fun.

The big news on this end is: We finally bought a car. I realize this is normal for most people, but after eight years in D.C. without owning transportation this is a big change.

There's something about cars - their style and the ability they give you to move around - that is almost inexplicable, almost magical.

When I was 17 years old my father told me to take a picture of my first car. "You'll want it someday," he said, but I didn't listen. He was right, of course. A photograph would be useful in explaining to people just how amazing that first car was.

My first car was a 1979 RX-7, a true piece of shit if there ever was one, and I loved it. There was no radio or air conditioning, a hole in the passenger's side of the floor, and it leaked oil in a way that was truly frightening. But I drove it until it couldn't be fixed, all around South Carolina. That car was me, for better or worse.

I bought that car with $650 saved from working as a groundskeeper at a local tennis club. With the helpful guidance of my parents, I bought it before I could even drive a stickshift. "You need this car," my mother told me at the time. More than me, she understood then what a car could mean.

My second car was a 1980 RX-7, actually - stick with what you love, I suppose. But it wasn't the same; it was newer and nicer, but it wasn't the same. My third car was a boxy Volvo that was actually in decent shape but which still fell apart quickly. I think it knew I'd never love it.

Once I moved to Washington, D.C., I couldn't afford a car and I didn't need one anyway. That's one of the many beauties of that city - it can try your patience and frustrate you, but you really don't have to own a car.

But now we're in Carrboro, N.C., which is an interesting place. You don't actually have to have a car to live here either - it's small and walkable, with all the essentials nearby. But it really is small, and in just a couple of months we've found ourselves wanting to get out and explore, see more of the South, get to know what's around us.

The new car is a 2006 Toyota Corolla LE. It is far and away the nicest car I've ever owned - it is also the most expensive, the most anonymous and ubiquitous, and hopefully the most reliable.

What it lacks in style, it makes up for in practicality. You'll have to decide for yourself if that's a balanced equation. I tend to think not.

But like I said, owning a car again is a strange thing. How to get groceries, and where to shop, is now a question instead of an exercise in, ah, exercise. Where to go on the weekends now includes a much wider area. It is possible to plan trips, to see more places, to better understand where we live.

Not owning a car was a fantastic thing for eight years. I loved not having to worry about break-ins, theft, the added cost, the extra glass of wine at a restaurant or the eternal search for parking.

But it was time for a change, for sure. Time to buy a car, to own some wheels, to see the state, to be mobile again.

The new car is blue. We have not named it yet.

— Robert

(10/1/07) 
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