Driving to Work in a Chicken Coop

No matter how much you love where you’re at, inevitably you’ll want to go somewhere else. And that’s where cars come in. Cars have three main jobs: Go, turn (preferably both right and left), and stop. If they do all those things to almost any degree, then they are a better option than walking. Walking is for people who don’t have important things to do. We have many important things to do in Alaska and so we needed a car. This is where my brother came into the picture.

My brother Matt doesn’t sell cars but you wouldn’t know that if you wandered into his parking lot. The scraggly evergreens and thick green carpet of the swampy muskeg is interrupted here and there by the glint of chrome and the sparkle of paint as man-made machines litter the landscape like jewels scattered by angels. Matt’s car collection even extends to other states but obviously cars in other states weren’t of any use to us at the moment. Also, there are a few cars that aren’t available to use on a daily basis just because Matt’s family needs them too, but for the most part any car in the odd collection was available for use. We could drive a Hummer limousine, a 1980’s era Mercedes diesel sedan, a 1970’s Ford cargo van, any of several rather normal pickup trucks, a Chevy 18 passenger van (which was converted by Quigly to be a 4×4), a Jeep Wrangler, or possibly a bright yellow supercharged 1998 Ford Mustang (if we begged hard enough). I guess we could have even driven the Jayco RV sitting in the corner. All we had to do was perform any repairs that were needed to get them going and then supply the gas needed to propel them down the road. I thought those were very reasonable terms. After filtering out the vehicles that needed repairs before being used and filtering out the ones that Matt used most often (I hate switching around car seats all the time), I decided upon the 1980’s Mercedes Benz diesel sedan mostly because it promised better fuel mileage than anything else on the lot.

It seems the Mercedes was owned by an elderly person who carefully ventured out on Sundays only to return it to the garage as soon as possible so it was ready for the next week’s careful outing to church. It’s in great cosmetic shape. It purrs like a Kubota tractor and all the accessories like the large electric sunroof and Blaupankt radio (with all the placards in German) work. Except the lights, they don’t work quite right. The low beams don’t work at all and every time you turn on the high beams an ear piercing buzzing sound screams frantically from the dash, like a hyperactive smoke detector. It drones on indefinitely, growing ever louder until you can taste your fillings buzzing. It becomes so all-consuming that even the most rational driver will lose his will to live and will flip the lights off no matter the driving conditions, gleefully succumbing to whatever fate may come – as long as it doesn’t include that blasted buzzing sound! But in a world where it stays light until 10:30 pm, the lights were frivolous luxuries anyway. We squeezed three car seats in the back seat and managed to shut the doors so we adopted the car as our own.

The first thing I noticed was that the Mercedes logo mounted on top of the grill, right in the center of the car, looked exactly like crosshairs. I appreciate this feature because Janice attempts to hit every rodent that finds the misfortune of scurrying across the road in front of her. Without crosshairs it can be hard to line up your tires with the rodent’s vitals and sometimes, as I’m sure you’ve experienced yourself, you can get a little over zealous and end up overshooting the rodent and bouncing through ditches or small forests as you find your way back to the highway. By using this handy sighting mechanism, you can nail your pesky rodent – who was on his way to your garden to eat all your vegetables – with pinpoint accuracy and have fewer off-road excursions. This greatly reduces vehicle maintenance, unless you line up the sights with a moose. Then you’re better off missing it entirely even if you have to drive through a minefield to do it although minefields, thankfully, seem to be pretty rare in Alaska. But really, if you want to hit a moose and you need a sight on your hood to do it, you shouldn’t’ be driving anyway.

After a week of driving to work at MARC everyday, Janice got tired of being confined to the cabin. So I sauntered over to my brother’s car buffet once again and picked out another car for myself. This way I could drive to work and let Janice drive the luxury German automobile. “Ole Blue” caught my eye.

Ole Blue is a 1973 Dodge Ram Custom with a four speed manual transmission. A gear lever protrudes from the floor in the vicinity of the driver’s seat and so this transmission setup is affectionately called “four on the floor.”

I like Ole Blue, much like you find yourself admiring an old hermit who lives in the woods and survives only because he’s too stubborn to die. Even grizzly bears find his personality a bit abrasive for their liking. There’s something infectious about people who survive by their wits out in the wild. That infectious thing may be an actual disease but usually it’s more metaphysical, like the sense of freedom without responsibilities. I must have been thinking out loud because Janice interrupted my reverie. “Who wants to be a lazy old man stuck in the cold woods?” Janice asks a lot of rhetorical questions when I’m reveling in imaginary scenarios. Whenever I mention spending time in the wilderness, Janice immediately suspects that it’s going to be cold. Janice hates being cold. She’s probably still a little miffed about that first time she came to Alaska.

Ol’ Blue isn’t a cream puff like the Mercedes. Ol’ Blue has been through some things. The Carfax would read like a horror novel. Matt took it hunting once and got the van stuck. Tempers were rising. Now Matt takes gun safety seriously and having a loaded firearm around angry people is a recipe for disaster so Matt quickly and deftly unloaded the shotgun by shooting Ol’ Blue until the gun was empty. That way the gun couldn’t be used to do something impulsive that would later be regretted. Matt used the bullet holes in Ol’ Blue as simple visual confirmation that the shotgun was unloaded and the situation was defused. Nothing defuses a situation like pumping lead through a shotgun. I’m impressed with Matt’s dedication to safety although his level of dedication makes it a bit risky to let him borrow any of my vehicles to go hunting. I’ll keep them 4,000 miles away to be sure.

Since Ol’ Blue had a well ventilated interior, Matt turned it into a chicken coop. Despite your temptation to nod your head in approval at such a good idea don’t get too excited because oddly enough the idea didn’t work out. In reality chickens are too stupid to have high standards, morally or hygienically so the van became a cesspool of indiscretion in a very short amount of time. The chickens were also constantly getting their heads stuck in the air vents and hanging themselves not realizing the whole time that, with a little team effort, they could’ve started the van up and made a run for the Canadian border.

About the same time Matt was realizing the van didn’t make a great chicken coop, a good friend approached him about possibly borrowing a vehicle. Matt’s generosity caused him to temporarily abandon the idea of a mobile chicken coop and offered to loan the van to his friend instead. Even though it is retired as a chicken coop, it still feels like you are driving one. Imagine sitting inside of a chicken coop as it is shoved through the atmosphere at 65 mph – feathers, dust, noise, shuddering and shaking – you get the idea! Matt’s friend even pulled a dead chicken out of the dash while driving down the road! But ultimately what caused Matt’s friend to return the van sooner than expected wasn’t the risk of contracting coccidiosis or the Avian bird flu, it was being asked every time he filled up with gas why there were large bullet holes peppering the side of the van. You would think that Alaskans wouldn’t ask such silly questions. Surely they understand gun safety more than anybody.

As much as I enjoy Ol’ Blue, I too returned it back to the driveway sooner than I expected and borrowed the Jeep instead. As much as I admire old hermits living in the woods, I don’t actually want to live with the ornery buggers for any period of time. Like any old hermit, Ol’ Blue has a few bad habits. One instance in particular stands out in my mind.

Ol’ Blue doesn’t like to idle. As long as your using appropriately tart language and your stomping the gas pedal like a snake in the grass, Ole Blue will angrily roar down the road, clouds of blue smoke rocketing from the dangling exhaust pipe. He actually roars quite well. But as soon as you let off the gas for any period of time, Ole Blue lapses into a coma, triggering an undecipherable warning light to illuminate on the dashboard. Now, if you’re still moving you can put it in gear and let the clutch out so Ol’ Blue wakes up again. He bellows and lurches, kind of like a drunk person when you throw a bucket of cold water on them (I’ve never personally done that but I’ve seen it in movies). Now, when I drive into Soldotna, there’s a hill that starts about a quarter mile out of town and leads down into the first intersection where I turn right and find my way to MARC’s hangar. The first couple days I hit the light green and Ole Blue was coaxed through with little drama. Then one day I rolled up to the light and it was red. There were a few cars in front of me waiting to turn right and one or two quickly pulled up behind me. I pushed the clutch in and rolled up nonchalantly to my place in line. Just as I was about to put Ol’ Blue into neutral and patiently wait my turn, the line began to move. I let out the clutch again but Ol’ Blue had already lapsed into a coma, confirmed by the warning light on the dash. I didn’t have enough momentum to pop start the engine but I thought I’d try it anyway. Ol’ Blue shuddered and screeched to a stop. Now when Ol’ Blue shuts down mid-operation, he won’t start again unless you crank the engine while holding down the gas pedal flat against the floor. He’ll slowly spool up, sip some gas, and then leap to a roar. Right when the roar has reached a crescendo you need to ease out on the clutch. The real victim in this story is the clutch. Of course, since the van had just coasted down a hill without the engine running, a lot of oil had accumulated in the cylinders. This meant that a thick, pungent blue cloud of heavy smoke enveloped the van as I held the gas pedal flat and attempted to start the engine. If you’re a particularly quick reader, you may notice that there are three pedals in operation here and you’re probably assuming, correctly, that I have only two legs. I was neglecting the brake pedal during all of this because the handicap of having only two legs. This meant I was drifting slowly backwards. I was mentally estimating the amount of distance remaining between me and the car behind me as Ol’ Blue chugged, sputtered, and belched a cloud of blue indiscretion all over it. I took comfort in the fact that If I did hit the car behind me, I could still escape in the smoke screen and witnesses probably wouldn’t be able to identify me. Just then the van roared to life! Hurray! I immediately let out the clutch. The van leaped forward and then died, the warning light laughing at me from the dashboard. NO! I slammed the clutch in again and floored the gas pedal. It roared back to life! Hurray! I kept the gas pedal pinned to the floor and let out the clutch. The van lurched forward again just to stall out and die. At this point I was becoming a little disoriented since my head was whipping wildly around in the space between the headrest and the windshield. I slammed the clutch in again and once again the van roared to life. From this point forward the pattern of stomping the clutch and releasing it became completely involuntary since my feet were just trying to find something to brace against so my head wouldn’t crash the windshield. I suddenly had nineteen legs all stomping about, unsure of what the other legs were doing and sometimes even trying to do the same thing. I squealed my tires in morse code as I slowly lurched my way through the intersection. The seat belt was my only connection to time and space around me. The entire ordeal happened so quickly and violently that my cup of coffee, which departed my dashboard at the start of this process, was still hovering in midair, trying to find a surface upon which to crash. It finally splattered all over the dash, making my language sufficiently tart to convince Ol’ Blue that there would be serious repercussions if he didn’t cooperate. There would be more lessons in gun safety in his future. Even old hermits such as Ol’ Blue respect gun safety. Ol’ Blue slunk away from the intersection, smirking. As I built momentum and shot out of the cloud of blue smoke like a round from a battleship cannon, I had tears collecting in the corners of my eyes. I couldn’t tell if it was because I was laughing hysterically or because the van was full of searing, half burnt oil vapors. Yes, Ol’ Blue is a cool hermit but an obnoxious person to live with.

From a little town in Alaska,

Josh