Pound Cake

JIK tells me I've been grinding my teeth at night.
I've always done that. I guess it comes and goes. When Mom asked the dentist about it, he said it was caused by stress. I was in grade school at the time, so I assure you I had very little to be stressed about. Later, another dentist told me children typically do it if their teeth aren't even.

For some reason, thinking about this has reminded me of my tenth birthday. I'm not sure what I got that year, I thought maybe it was the Sega Game Gear, but that had to've came later. What I do remember, was that night, around seven, a car broke down across the street from my house.

I was born in December, so it was well into dark that night, around seven. Our house sat on a bit of a hill, so sometimes when people walked up or down the road, they would climb the hill and stand at the chain link fence, to talk to Mom. Across the road was the Post Office, with a gravel parking lot long enough for Dad to sometimes park his mining equipment, and leave enough room for mail aficionados, as well.

I can't imagine my mom yelling for me to come watch the plight of some poor strangers, but some how or another I figured out something was going on outside, and found myself standing at the fence, looking down across the street.

Apparently what I had missed up to that point was a couple had noticed their car was smoking, and pulled over onto the Post Office lot to see what the matter was. In my memory it was a man and woman, and I have an image of the woman, plump with dirty blond hair, in my mind. She was probably in her twenties, but back then, I imagine I thought everyone was in their twenties, or extremely old.

The man had popped the hood, but the smoke just bellowed out, and he couldn't get close enough to do anything about what was happening. It seemed to be an ugly, off-white car, in the dark. It was December Tenth, and no snow on the ground, in my memory it felt like fall, standing there next to my mom, waiting, hoping for it to happen. Maybe I was too excited to be cold.

The Post Office was a trailer painted blue, and sometimes wasps would build nests in the drop-off box. When the car did catch fire, the flames were reflected back in the hard paneled exterior, and the dark glass of the closed-for-the-day Federal Institution, and it was beautiful.

Of course, it began slowly. Little wisps of flames licking out of the engine, surely nothing would come of it. Whatever magic had delivered this spectacle to my doorstep would soon run out, and it would be over, like the abrupt turning-off of the television at bedtime. But it didn't stop, the flames grew higher, and things, components of a motor vehicle were popping and sizzling in this Tribute of My Birth.

But that's not the best part. Like I said, my dad sometimes parked his mining equipment on the very same lot. On any given day there may set one of two bulldozers, or a flatbed trailer that would've been better off in some country painting in a hotel. However, that night, there was parked my favorite piece of the heavy machinery: The Front End Loader.
To stand next to one of it's wheels was to know your place in the universe, and to sit in it's cracked vinyl seat was to conjure Hannibal. I wouldn't know it as The Front End Loader untill a few minutes ago, when spellcheck insisted "enloader" wasn't a word, neither is "hellsfar" for that matter.

The concern became that the wreak was too close to the Post Office, and there was some fear that it may very well make that subscription to TIME a few days late, if things got out of hand. So, there was my dad, running down to start up the enloader, it had been a great show up until then, but at this point I'm emotionally invested.

What better gift could a ten-year-old boy get, than to watch his father push a flaming wreak thirty feet away from the town's only link to the Sears Catalogue, using heavy machinery? By the time dad positioned himself behind the car with the enloader, it was a hulk of twisted metal and fire. The smoke just poured out of it, and I imagine dad had to breath that thick black air in order to get the job done. Pushing it had left a deep charred ditch, and I can almost hear the sound of it all.
When dad backed the enloader away from the MADD advertisement, it was then only smoldering, no longer bright enough to illuminate the leaves of the trees, overhead. I'm sure I went out to look at it the next day, but I don't remember. Maybe it was taken away that night, or by that time it was just...

In any case, for my tenth birthday, a car blew up in front of my house. I don't think it was planned, but it was one of the best gifts I ever received.

Thanks Mom and Dad.