CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Sometime in 1993, after working at Coyote Creek for a few months, I bought my first car for $500 and had to split it into two payments. It was an orange 1979 Dodge Colt with a manual transmission. I had quite a bit of experience driving a stick shift from back home. It’s like riding a bicycle; once you learn it, you just never forget it. There was really nothing like the feeling of having my own car. Yes, it brought with it a host of new expenses, from gas to insurance (which I don’t recall having for a while), but the freedom of being able to get in the car and drive, whether to something or away from something, is an unmatched thrill.
Perhaps because of the size of the country and the vast stretches of highway that crisscross it, America is a particularly car-focused place, and having my own car made me feel cool. When I got behind the wheel, I would put the Eagles or America in the cassette player, and I could feel something in my heart change. I was independent; my car and I were free to go wherever destiny took us. I didn’t care that it was an old, beat-up car. The way I looked at it, I was a Turkish immigrant living in California and I owned a car.
The reality was somewhat different, of course. I would soon learn the responsibilities and lessons that came with owning a car, especially an old one. I hadn’t had the car long when I drove down to Monterey to visit my friend Dominic for a couple of days. Coming back to Sonora, the car decided it had had enough and the engine just shut down on Pacheco Pass Road between the towns of Gilroy and Los Baños. I was able to take the downhill exit and barely made it to Casa de Fruta, a popular stop for travelers that has a shop selling fresh fruits and vegetables, a wine shop, a candy store, and a restaurant.
I rolled into the street in front of the vegetable and fruit shop, and with the help of staff from shops I managed to park safely on the street. I was confused and upset. The car had been running just fine until that moment. I had taken the best possible care of it, keeping the fluids topped up and changing the oil. What could have gone wrong?
I got out and popped the hood, trying to figure out for a while what had happened. A few people passing by stopped and tried to help me fix the car. I recall one man in particular, who told me he was an immigrant like me. He had come to the US from Canada in hopes of gaining residency.
He spent over an hour hunched over the engine, coating his hands and arms with grease all the way to his elbows in the process. In the end, he was as mystified as me and had to give up as well. I remember him sadly pulling away in his blue Trans Am, disappointed in himself and feeling sad for me.
I spent the night at Casa de Fruta, sleeping in the back seat of my dead car. The temperature drops hard at night in that part of California; I was so cold I put on every piece of clothing I had with me.
The next morning, I called a tow truck. I only had enough money to get my car towed as far as Los Baños, which was about thirty-five minutes away. This was long before the era of cell phones. I needed to find pay phones to communicate with anyone at all.
It was two hours’ drive one way from Sonora to Los Baños, and I didn’t know anyone who could come to pick me up. I was stuck again. I couldn’t believe it. I had had so much fun in Monterey, hanging out with Dominic and seeing our old spots, and now I was stuck in an unfamiliar town with a dead car I likely couldn’t even afford to fix and no way home.
Finally, a taxi driver agreed to take me to Sonora late at night. I had to think of some way to pay him, though. I ended up promising him a pair of pearl earrings I had purchased on a Macy’s credit card. I had bought them as a gift for my mother and was saving them to give to her the next time we were together. But now I had to say goodbye and hand them over to the cabdriver, to whom I was grateful for driving me to Sonora.
I still think about how good a person that cabdriver must have been to make the nearly four-hour drive, based on a promise of some alleged pearl earrings made by a guy who probably had difficulty explaining things in detail. In my experience, such gestures and acts of trust were much more common in those days.
When we arrived, I walked inside and collected the earrings. I took them back outside and handed him what was supposed to be a special gift for my mom. It was an extremely bittersweet feeling as I thanked him for trusting me and getting me home safely. What I was going to do about getting my car back, I could not say.
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