VIEW FROM MY PORCH

Car-less

“Your car frame rusted out and separated from the wheel”. The news was not good. I had taken my 1998 Metro LSI to Roy’s garage because something didn’t feel right with the passenger side front wheel. Too much rust, one too many potholes. Jim Goff had given me the car in 2008 and it’s been a trusty little thing, taking me to Chicago, Door County, Wisconsin, Negaunee, Michigan and Iowa to visit family and friends.

It’s carried neighborhood boys and bikes to bike shops and to pick up paint for bikes. Always loaded with at least three boxes of donated books, I’ve made runs to fill Little Free Libaries around Saint Paul. It’s transported some of the men I’ve met, who stay at Dorothy Day, to their doctors and has helped them move into their new apartments. It’s carried kids to events out of their neighborhood, carried bags of collected winter coats to Gospel Mission and reusables to the thrift stores.

It’s chased down stolen bikes; carried garden supplies, plants, bags and bins of mulch.

Linda Charpentier and I served soup from the little red Metro over the last couple years in the Dorothy Day Center parking lot. My car carried several of my political protest/peace rally signs - you never know when you’ll come across an opportunity to make your voice heard; and you want to be prepared!

I’ve often wondered what my life would be without a car. It’s one of those situations that I imagined intellectually, but experiencing it is completely different. Over time I suppose I would adapt. Never having had a new car, I’ve never taken for granted the priviliege of having a car readily available. I do admit to being car-dependent. I’ve had many little awakenings since being without a vehicle. The Red Cross called, but I couldn’t make my regular platelet donation because of transportation. At 9:30 one night, I couldn’t just run out to Rainbow for the missing recipe ingredient.

I’ve become more aware of Phoenix Market hours...and cost (a can of cat food at Target is 49 cents, at Rainbow it is 59 cents, and at Phoenix it is 99 cents. Little things do matter. If convenience of a nearby ‘corner market’ becomes a necessity, it’ll hurt my pocketbook in a big way and it also limits my fresh food/healthy food availability. Ali, I love that you’re in the neighborhood, but it would be like giving up my ‘brainiac books’ as someone once called my library, for pulp fiction, just because it’s all I could get!

I realized I could no longer keep my schedule - like being in Roseville and making it back in twenty minutes to a meeting in Dayton’s Bluff...let’s see, the bus leaves... I need to pick up super large pieces of cardboard to make templates for a community project, but I have to figure a way to get them home. I can’t run errands on my lunch hour or before work.. After work is more likely, but it’s not as if I can run to several places while someone else is driving and they have other things to do.

I now see outside of my intellectual sphere why payday stores do well, though I question their ethics. I had a difficult time getting to my credit union and then only after hours. ATM fees? the more convenient, the higher the fee. Fun stuff? I picked up my bag the other morning to treat myself to breakfast - oops, no car. I know, I know, I’ve just not yet made the transition that the bus is first on my mind.I recall from when my sons were young - how difficult it was to walk nine blocks between home and store with two grocery bags, a six year old who wanted to run a block ahead and a crying two year old who needed to be carried through the Wisconsin snow. Now I’m at an age where when my pride doesn’t like asking for help and I don’t want to be a drag on friends by asking for errand rides (my perception, not theirs).

Assumed rights become a hard-earned privilege when one doesn’t have ease in access and availability (think fresh food and carrying several days worth for two very hungry, growing boys; think money exchange/bill paying centers (not everyone has computer access or a stable bank account to pay online; getting to and from community resources and agency appointments. Think recreation with the kids in tow. Think a clinic appointment taking three hours instead of a lunch hour, because taking a bus is involved and then walking several blocks on the bad foot the doctor will look at, tell you to stay off - once you walk back to the bus stop and then walk home, of course. This is just over my first week. I’m hoping I’ll have a car again by the time this is printed. But I do promise, even if/after I get a car again, I’ll be a bigger voice for people who lack these conveniences that so many of us take for granted as a right.

sage 5/7/2013