Corvette spotted Monday in West Des Moines
What good is a car like this? How would I haul firewood or a broken-down refrigerator to the landfill? Where would I put the bales of straw Violet the dog likes to lay on during winter? What if a neighbor needs a couple of sheep moved?
1968 Dodge Charger from Wikimedia Commons.
I’ve never been much of a “car guy.” Well, maybe I was for a hot minute. In 1972 I was working construction and had enough money to buy a 1968 Dodge Charger that had been totaled and repaired. I have an uncle who fixed up cars that had been in wrecks and sold them. He sold the Charger to me at a reasonable price. Back then, we loved our muscle cars. My friends and I thought chrome-alloy wheels were all the rage, so I bought some with my carpenter’s salary.
A buddy and I drove it to Iowa City that summer for a wrestling tournament (I’m an old UNI wrestler). If I remember correctly, the speedometer in the Charger went up to 160 mph. We drove from Des Moines to Iowa City on I-80 at what seemed to us a reasonable speed of 140 mph, blowing the engine near Newton.
We thumbed a ride to Iowa City to make the wrestling tournament in time, leaving the car on the side of I-80 for a couple of days.
When the tournament was over, another buddy came to Iowa City to pick us up and drive us back to the car to meet my uncle. He had a flatbed trailer and was going to haul it back home for us. My buddies and I arrived before my uncle did, and found that someone had jacked the Charger up, stole the chrome-alloy wheels, and kicked the jacks out, so the car lay on its belly like a turtle with its legs tucked in.
I’ll never forget the look on my uncle’s face when he saw the car.
I’m still troubled about mistakes I made 50 years ago, including this one.
Many years ago, Annie and I visited her parents in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. My brother-in-law Sean had a brand new fancy sports car that sat very low. He parked it behind my beat-up old pickup truck one afternoon. The next morning, when I went to my truck to go somewhere, and another family member had parked in front of me, I looked into my rearview mirror and saw nothing. So I backed up.
Crunch. I had dented the hood, yes, the hood of his impossibly low, expensive, fancy car. His hood was below my bumper. I thought for a panicked moment that I could just drive away and act ignorant. There was no damage to my truck, so I could just play dumb. That was the seven-year-old in me thinking, just like the seven-year-old that resides between Donald Trump’s ears.
Instead, fearing that I had to act before my worst instincts took control of me, I walked as fast as I could into my in-laws’ house and yelled, “Sean, I just backed into your new car!”
My brother-in-law came out, looked at the damage, then looked at me and said, “I shouldn’t have parked so close to you. Sorry about that.”
Annie’s family is very forgiving. When I was a young man, when the earth's crust was still cooling, I had several girlfriends, believe it or not. Their mothers never liked me. They knew their daughters could do better than me.
Their fathers, however, liked me. They knew their daughters could do worse than me. Much, much worse.
Annie’s mother was different. She knew the truth that I was OK.
The New York Times recently published essays from eight opinion columnists telling us about times when they had made mistakes and why. Liberals do this kind of thing all the time, but not conservatives.
Can you imagine Fox News or Newsmax ever telling us they were wrong? Try to imagine Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, or Laura Ingraham saying “mea culpa.” It’s not going to happen. How about Florida Governor Ron DeSantis? Texas Senator Ted Cruz? House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy?
Never. And the list goes on.
I figure admitting mistakes is part of learning and growing, but I’m not an insurrectionist politician or an enabling media figure.
Have you ever noticed that Republicans in leadership -- and some of our real-world Republican friends -- never admit they are wrong? The party of “personal responsibility” seldom accepts it. I don’t know how they sleep at night.
To admit one is wrong, in their minds, is to show weakness. I once had a Republican boss who told me that something the people I was supervising did was “wrong,” or more accurately, a mistake had been made. I thought about it and realized he was right. I told him that I was the one who made the error because I told them to do it and that I would go to them, say it was my fault, and ask them to correct it.
He was flabbergasted. He said, “why, why, why you’re management! Never admit you are wrong!” Can you imagine Trump ever admitting he was wrong?
On Monday, Fox News came close to admitting it was wrong about one thing, the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago when they are actually wrong or lying about oodles of things. Every day. Of course, the piece was the opinion of only one contributor and is still far from an expression of wrongdoing.
A little over five years ago, I wrote “Want to Get Rid of Trump? Only Fox News Can Do It” for the New York Times. I still think this is correct, but I doubt they will ever take any responsibility for enabling his criminal presidency. Hopefully, they turn, but I’m not betting the farm on it.
This is a representative of the genus Narceus, part of the American giant millipede complex I encountered on an early morning walk at Cedar Bluffs Natural Area in Mahaska County earlier this summer. I share its image here because, as an invertebrate, it’s related to Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Ron DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Kevin McCarthy, and their ilk.
Annie and I went to the East Village in Des Moines on Saturday to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary and stopped at Sticks. What a creative place! We bought a few gifts, but what we both wanted was this magnificent “What We Love About Iowa” piece. If we only had $14,440 to spare. Don’t get me wrong--it’s worth every penny given the artistic skill and level of craftsmanship and the time the artist(s) put into it, but beyond us. Fortunately, Sticks has plenty of incredible art that is affordable. But now that I think about it, you can spend $14,400 on a used car that might blow an engine in a day or two!
When a delivery arrives, this is a familiar scene at any Casey’s store. One would think that with all the money in the world, Casey’s could find a way to design their stores where semis could unload at the back of the store. While it’s frustrating for us when trying to get into the store (I go in every morning (except Saturdays) to get a copy of the Des Moines Register), imagine how frustrating it must be for the driver, having to wait until all the vehicles cleared the front of the store! To say nothing of worrying about squishing a pedestrian.
But Casey’s has other priorities. This is from the Des Moines Register on August 3:
“In the midst of slowing growth, Casey's General Stores CEO Darren Rebelez signed a new contract with the company that includes a $200,000 raise and the possibility of additional annual bonuses, stock options and equity.
The agreement, which went into effect at the end of July, increases Rebelez's base salary from $950,000 to $1.15 million.
Because the company bases his annual bonuses on his base salary, the raise also increases how much he can earn in incentives by $300,000 a year, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Rebelez is also eligible for more pay in the form of stock options or other forms of company equity. He can now receive $6.1 million, up from $2.6 million under his previous contract, according to the Monday filing.”
I showed this to the young woman who sells me the paper nearly every day at Casey’s, and she snorted and rolled her eyes.
And here are the core Marion County Democrats who make it all happen for the party here. As you can tell, it’s powered mainly by women. They are enjoying Peace Tree beers after the Knoxville Nationals Parade.
And here is another reason not to get a fancy and expensive car; you have to worry about every little scratch and take up two parking spaces. No thanks!
Before you go, Julie Gammack has pulled together some Iowa scribblers trying to make a difference. If you value our work, please share, subscribe, and comment. And if you can afford to, please be a paid subscriber. And, thanks to Julie and Kathie Obradovich with the Iowa Capital Dispatch, our work will be featured on occasion in that important publication. You should support their work too if you can afford it.
Here we are, in alphabetical order.
Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin
Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury
Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook
Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck
Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt
Dana James: New Black Iowa
Bob Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture
Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger
Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land
Iowa Writers Collaborative: Iowa Writers Collaborative
Beginning to appreciate your writing more and more. This was very well done.
Well done, Robert. I can relate to all of it.