Chapter One: Starting at 'The End.' (In part)

(Ed. note: With difficulty I have divided the text where I have such that mouthful sized bits can be served. I have come under some reproach, good reproach mind you, regarding post length. This selection represents only the first portion of draft two's first chapter in an effort to avoid excessive yawning, as I know is your custom.)

Chapter One: Starting at ‘The End.’

-When I was fifteen I gave $2,200 to an old woman in Milwaukee; she gave me a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle. Her son had purchased it new, driven it a short time then given it to her when he left for Vietnam. Vietnam in the mid-sixties was nasty, I saw Deer Hunter and that wasn’t even the half of it, poor kid. She had carted groceries with it for another twenty odd years before a brake line decided it was sick of the constant pressure and broke. Three years before we exchanged goods, she had deposited him in the carport, left for dead. Needless to say, but I will say it because that is our method of speaking; the car was in a sad state of affairs. It could have easily been mistaken for the barn abandoned Herbie, as I recall it was frowning slightly and the wheels had that sad sort of outward cant, a telltale sign of clinical-auto depression. I on the other hand had wanted a Beetle for time out of mind and was giddy beyond words. We collected the Beetle with a trailer borrowed from someone that escapes my mind and brought it home to a receptive garage full of tools. We, my dad and I, lovingly worked through that dejected little machine. The motor was on the floor in the corner awaiting a new clutch and re-install, the interior was strewn about the shop, there was a pile of glass what had been and would again be my wind screens, $2,000 worth of boxes crammed with new parts sat in a queue waiting to be assigned respective roles, and heaps of old, oxidized metal said teary farewells under the cover of darkness to their longtime Bavarian master.
-We developed a relationship in those few months. We spoke often, between sanding the hood a fourth time and mounting new tires, I’d chatter about the times ahead and how things would be one day when we’d be found cruising along with little more to do that just be. The AM radio would play big band music through the one tiny speaker on the left end of the dash, all would be well, happiness would be had at a comfortable 55 miles per hour. He rarely offered much above a scrapping shutter or peal of pain while I ground out his cancerous rust, but there was a connection of some kind, at least I thought we were on the same page. In a short time the car was stripped, patched, repaired, and renewed.
-I was elated. I drove that car for six months before I sold it.
-Wait, what? Six months?
-Yes, six months.
-There was no major melt down, it never exploded or the like, it simply required me to park in slightly down hill conditions because the 6-volt electrical system was rarely enough to start it, it simply left me broken down at the side of the road time and again, often in the rain or snow, it simply required me to use the emergency brake on multiple occasions due to massive brake failure, it simply…yeah, that. All the while I would wash him, and vacuum him, change his oil religiously, and protect him from any foul element be it nature or man. Through all of this, the dynamic remained, though was increasingly one sided. If I was not at an appointment on time, chances are the lower half of my body could be found halfway ingested by the bonnet of a white VW on a blue road somewhere between my parents’ house, and the meeting place.