a cracker in a Wisconsin wood

My first car was, when I bought it for $300, an antique blue VW Bug. I called her Helen after Helen Hayes from the Love Bug movies. I loved Helen even tho the floor under one of the back seats was totally rusted to the outside, with a board over the hole. I knew Helen's days were numbered but I just had to own a VW Bug once in my life.

On my drive from Chicago to Minneapolis for law school, in my new old beater,  I had car trouble in no-where Wisconsin. A state trooper helped me get my car to a very remote, rural car repair place run by such a strange man. I believe the trooper chose the car repair place solely because it was very where my car broke down. There was no repair garage. Just a junk-filled piece of land with a rusting trailer home in the back.  It did not appear to be a thriving business. He fixed my car quickly but as he worked, he chatted me up. When I said I was from Chicago, he said "I should go to Chicago, find me a new woman, this one I got now," and he jerked his head towards the trailer where he lived with some unfortunate woman before he went on "This one I got now aint no good no more, gotta get me a new, young one." Only he said 'young'un' and spit some of his chew out as he said it, as if he wanted to emphasize his contempt for the unfortunate woman he already seemed to believe he owned. I vaguely suspected he thought he was flirting with me. I believed he had no idea I found him repugnant.

The woman inside the old, shabby trailer kept peeking out behind curtains, rustling a bit, so I knew she was not only there but heard what her man said to me about her. I wondered if she was jealous of 24 year old, 'young un', me. She had no worries where I was concerned.  And she probably knew that.

I felt safe because that state trooper had delivered me to that strange, tobacco chewing and spitting man. Pig would be a more appropriate way to refer to him. A part of me kept expecting to hear twangy banjo music and see a gaggle of creepy neanderthals, or cross-eyed children with six fingers on one hand,  appear from the surrounding woods.  I had gone to college in Wisconsin and thought of it as a very civilized place. I was quite surprised to find that creepy guy, his creepy house trailer and his creepy-seeming life in my beloved Wisconsin.

I had an impulse to invite the woman cowering in the trailer to get in and drive away with me but I did not act on it.  I kept thinking "I am just imagining how weird this man is" and "He can't be violent, the state trooper wouldn't have left me here if he were". And I also thought "Maybe he buries his victims behind the trailer, in them there woods and no one has figured out he is a serial killer." And, finally, "How long until you are done?" That question I said aloud. He did the repair quickly. He obviously had no other business and was very eager to earn some money. He charged me very little, an amount so low it surprised me. He was probably just a poorly educated, damaged man. His line about getting a good woman down Chicagey-way, which is how he said Chicago, had creeped me out and tipped me that he had probably never been to Chicago. I almost suggested that Milwaukee or Madison might be closer to find a new good woman but my saner self kept all my thoughts to myself.

Perhaps he had noted that my car was packed to the gills with all my worldly goods and wondered if I were seeking a new life, a new man. Nope. I was just headed to law school and I told him that but I don't think he got what that meant. Once, while in law school, a man delivered a dozen roses to me and asked how I was home during the day. I said I was on Christmas break from law school and he said "Oh, like a program to be a legal secretary."  I did not say, only thought, "No, like a program to become a fucking lawyer, you nitwit."  I did not tip him, my revenge for the legal secretary chauvism.

I also had an impulse, which I also successfully suppressed, to express my revulsion for the man. That car repair experience was so much like a scene out of the early part of the movie 'Deliverance'.

I drove from Minneapolis to Chicago and back a few times every year for the next twenty years or so, on the same interstate that gently banks through the soft rolling hills of Western Wisconsin. I love that drive. For many years, I always took note when I was near where I had that car repair. I sometimes thought I might pull off the interstate, drive along the frontage road to see if the trailer was still there but I never did. Instead, I usually stopped at the original Norske Nook in Osseo. The Norske Nook was famous for its many, many kinds of pie.  In this part of the world, any good pie shop will sell you half slices of pie so you can try two kinds of pie. It was fun slowly making our selections, for my daughter eventually joined me on these road trips. She loved the Norse Nook.

I sometimes had hopeful thoughts about the woman in that trailer, as I rushed through that part of the WI intersate, recalling how she had peeked at me behind her curtains, trying to convince myself she was happy.

Neither of those people were happy. That semi-toothless, chewing tobacco spitting man was never going to Chicago-way and was never gonna get a better woman than the one over in the run down trailer.

That trailer wasn't even properly mounted. Its tires had been removed and it was just plopped on the ground. It must have had running water, for I saw no outhouse.  I had spent my college years in Wisconsin but that trailer was my first glimpse of poverty in WI. My first up close glimpse of poverty in America, even though I grew up in Chicago. I did not know poor people growing up, although Chicago had its share of them.

I spent a lot of time abroad as an undergrad, living in Mexico, then Colombia, then Spain.  I saw the most poverty in Colombia. As near as I, and the other American students in my program could tell, Colombia offered no social support for the poor, disabled and elderly.

So I had seen lots of poverty up close during the year I lived in Bogotá, and I met that car repair trailer living man post-Colombia. That car repair trailer man seemed more impoverished, of mind, soul, heart and money, than the hordes of beggars I saw daily in Bogotá.  He was so creepy.

I keep hearing that jangling banjo music from the beginning of the movie Deliverance.Creepy.