Castoffs

Castoffs, an essay by Valera Ashcraft (1985)

“A creature without memory cannot discover the past; one without expectation cannot conceive a future.” -George Santayana

In my youth, I stayed with an old woman whose idea of entertainment was a country stroll to the river dump. The dump was located on one side of a wooden planked bridge. We would climb down an embankment using tires as steps and tree limbs for handrails. Repeatedly the old woman would point out the poison ivy plants and warnings of rusted nails then we would go our separate ways. She was a bottle-collector, I was the treasure hunter.

We lived in a treasure chest, the inside separated by rooms f8lled with an unorganized collection of junk oddities, broken suitcases, doll heads and amputated bodies, chipped plates with unmatching patterns and bottles ranging in every color of the rainbow. Outside was a landscape dotted with bed frames, a bear clawed bathtub, flat tires, hubcaps, lifeless spark plugs, a cotton trailer (that transformed into my bed during spring and summer months) and my fantasy machines-three old cars rusted with sentiment. All were castoffs and textured accents for future memories, especially the old cars. While the old woman worked in the cotton fields, the antique cars became my sitters. Behind the steering wheel, I would imagine adventures to places I had seen in torn up magazines. Spiders on the speedometer and cats on the hood became my passengers as we sped away on country dirt roads throughout the USA.

“The whole story of humanity is basically that of a journey toward the Emerald City, and of an effort to learn the nature of Oz, who, perhaps wisely, keeps himself concealed. In each human heart exists the Cowardly Lion and the little girl who was sure that the solution to life lay in just walking far enough. Finally, among our great discoverers are those with precious straw-filled heads who have to make up their thoughts because each knows he has been made such a little while before and had stood alone in the fields.” -Loren Eiseley

My naïve image of the USA was distorted. Cities spread into the country. The dirt roads became concrete. My car would not be the only one traveling, there were many. Rules, regulations, and lack of gas money prevented extensive travel. Kenneth R. Schneider in Autokind vs. Mankind stated that “…the car, delightful as it might have been in a nineteenth-century land of wide-open spaces, is not really appropriate for urban living patterns It is, in fact, in that class of th9ngs that are undeniably good to have, but only so long as only a few other people have them too; if they’re too common, they interfere with everybody’s enjoyment.”

Yet, I was young and rationalized that a few inconveniences for freedom was not such a bad sacrifice. Maybe buying a more efficient car would solve some of the inconveniences, use less gas, be more stylish and aerodynamic.

Being too sentimental maybe hereditary, I started a collection of cars hopefully to recapture the image of freedom, dirt roads, spiders, and cats on hoods. Only the spiders and cats returned.

One of my collections that brought memories of carefree fun, surfing, Beach Boys and timelessness was a 1955 Woody. I couldn’t resist the free price if I towed the “…lifeless piece of junk away”. I had such high hopes for that car. Instead, Sloop John B continued to rust sitting tireless on my front lawn, the surfboard long gone, the Beach Boys not tireless but tired and the timelessness took on the shape of illusions trapped in the splintered side paneling of the Woody relic.

Freedom through meditation, peace with two fingers instead of one and plenty of beads as I traveled the U.S. in a 1966 V.W. Bug. Unfortunately, the engine froze up two states into my hunting for experiences. It also sits in the front lawn next to the Woody. The lights broken, the engine in some forgotten weed patch with a cross and dried flowers stuck in the manifold and the empty shell used as an insect haven. Karma long forgotten.

The Toyota was a practical buy with a hard sale for gas efficiency and cheap, cheap, cheap. It sits in the back of the house dented with anger, frustration and hopelessness.

The dirt road led to a fork on a path being paved with concrete and the other path for recreational vehicles to scar our environment with their idealistic pursuit of freedom. There were others who started their own collections. Families would house a car for each member older than sixteen. Garages started overflowing onto the streets. According to David A. Andelman, Suburban Auto Glut, Suburban Transition, “Over the last ten years, the number of cars have been increasing from twice to five times as the growth of the suburban population.”

My freedom was smothering from air pollution, sight pollution, noise pollution and over population. The desire for freedom sought other avenues of expression. Television became the vehicle that would lure many of us toward the path of consumerism. The wringer washer, a black and white television set, the rocking chair with springs coming through the upholstery found space on the porch to rest in peace. The cars became storage units for replaced lamps, toasters, excess tools and dented typewriters. Others followed suit with overcrowded dumps, abandoned cars on highways, undesirable wastes on the bottom of ocean floors. Space was limited.

“The ideas for which millions yielded up their lives produce only bored yawns in a latter generation.”- Loren Eiseley

Time is moving at such a fast pace that imagination, sentiment, along with history rusted in our minds. They were replaced by meaningless experiences of superficial life illuminated from a fantasy machine.

Technology doesn’t allow time to savor textures and accents of individual experiences. Attention spans became less, casting off at a faster pace the novelty of anything experienced. There are no roots, the mind is dulled. “But then there intrudes another problem.” As stated by Loren Eiseley, “Mouse is trying to convert all organic substance into mouse. Black snake is trying to convert mouse into snake. Man maintains factories to convert cattle into human substance. It is ingenious but hardly edifying spectacle in which nothing really wins, and through which whole orders of life have perished. If our tempo of seeing could be speeded, live would appear and disappear as a chaos of evanescent and writhing forms, possessing the impermanence of the fairy mushroom circles that spring up on our lawns at midnight.”

One evening I was trapped in a traffic jam. It was one of the rare opportunities I had to stick my head out the window and view the stars. The street and vehicle lights dimmed my view, so I fantasized being in the cotton trailer once more with the old woman. She now lives in a one room basement apartment surrounded by remnants of her bottle collection. The fantasy time machines were sold for recycling and the cotton fields were transformed into adult communities. Most of her time is spent in bed, the back pain a reminder of her career in the cotton fields. And, for entertainment, she strolls through alley ways searching through trash cans (a creature of habit) mumbling to herself. She is a character the neighborhood kids will never understand and hopefully, will never forget.

One of the stars caught my attention. It was very bright.

“The erection of artificial worlds in space is inevitable Once man’s breakthrough into space has begun, it will be a irreversible as the discovery, colonization, and exploitation of new countries during the age of great historical discoveries.”- Iosif Shklovsky

Sherry Baker in Omni Magazine, Oct. 1983, reported that “….350 pieces of space junk enter the atmosphere every year.”

Horns honked bringing me back to reality. I moved ahead three car spaces and once more stuck my head out the window. Like the old woman, I too search through words, life quotes and fantasies to support my idealism, a temporary conciliation with contemporary society.

Images appeared of the old woman and me ascending a rainbow made up of her bright colored bottles, using satellites for steps and the Milky Way as a handrail. We were searching for castoffs.