Old Curbside

Fiction – Rehoboth Beach Writer’s Guild-2019 Anthology

Time is not kind to anyone or anything. Time is relentless, unforgiving and uncaring, impervious to human pleas and unbiased in its attack. Whether physical or psychological the attack is relentless and destructive, human or otherwise.

I’m not an expert on autos, having considered them a necessary evil all my adult life but I would venture this truck is almost as old as I am and, by the looks of it, giving me a good run for my money trying to reach a state of total decrepitude. My first guess, from the side runners on the hood is it’s a Mercury Curbside classic pickup, early 1950s. I’ve since found out I was wrong, but don’t care. I’ve developed an affinity for Old Curbside.

What once was a useful mode of transportation has fallen into sad disrepair. Fallen, or thrown? One a measure of indifference, the other a measure of disrespect. If you don’t take care of your things you won’t take care of yourself. Which is worse, incidental or deliberate abuse? A topic for another anthology.

Old Curbside peers at me through one semi-good eye, cloudy enough to suspect cataracts, its gaze vacant, no longer interested in its surroundings, bearing its pain and dilapidation stoically. The other eye a testament to violence. Whose? When did it happen? Before being left to rot or after? An errant ear of corn thrown from the combine while working hard? A misplaced bale hook by a lazy farmer’s son? A frustrated fist of the farmer facing heavy rain at reaping time? We’ll never know and Old Curbside isn’t tattling.

The splotches of green patina, nature’s haphazard application, a symptom of sickness. A fatal sickness? What role did the green play in the final demise? Green is the color of life in nature. Perhaps the green is a last gasp by Old Curbside, saying “paint me” like an embalmer for the corpse at a funeral.

Staring at that grille, I see the remnants of a seedy looking grin, sly, devilish, wonderful in its once glory. Reminiscent of one of my visits to the dentist when she told me root canals, plural, were in my immediate future. Rough dental re-work. Fifteen uprights, only two of which come close to being original teeth. Didn’t even match the color. I’d be looking for a new dentist if I were Old Curbside. But the old boy is conscientious about his dental hygiene. Innovative, too, using field vines as dental floss.

The turn signal lights gape empty at a non-moving world. No longer needed. There are no turns left. The road, if there is one, leads straight downhill, into a rusty oblivion.

Yet, despite the ramshackle, deplorable condition this is not a picture of despair and finality, but rather of hope. Behind the tattered, abused, neglected, brutalized façade the blue sky looms, standing guard. Bright, cheery, the thin haze of clouds reminding us there is something beyond, something ethereal, something to hope for. There is hope. For Old Curbside and old me.

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