Part 1: Chapters 5, 6, & 7
After leaving LeBay’s, Dennis finds Arnie parked on one of Libertyville’s side roads with a flat tire. A local housewife and her rugrats are less than happy to see Christine sitting in front of their house. Dennis, good friend that he is, runs off to buy a new tire. When he returns, Arnie and the owner of the house, home now from work, are standing nose-to-nose spouting witty repartee at one another. Dennis intervenes, Christine is fitted with her new tire, and they drive off in a cloud of exhaust.
Arriving at Darnell’s Garage, Arnie and Christine are not greeted warmly. Will Darnell dresses Arnie down in front of everyone, and Arnie, much to Dennis’s consternation, accepts it. Christine is left at Darnell’s, and Dennis takes Arnie home.
On the way, Arnie breaks down. The day was just too much for him. In between his sobbing, he promises that he will get them all, that he will make them all pay. Dennis doesn’t like the sound of that.
That night, Dennis has a nightmare. He is back at LeBay’s. Standing in front of the open garage door, Dennis sees a rejuvenated Christine. Her engine revs up, but there is no one behind the wheel. Christine urges Dennis to go cruising with her; Dennis refuses. The nightmare ends as Christine lunges forward, her engine screaming her fury…
As someone who just finished writing a novel set in Pittsburgh (cough, cough… shameless self-promotion…), I know that it is difficult to render the Pittsburgh accent into print. I think what hurts its chances of being generally understood by your average reader is that it isn’t as well known as your Noo Yawk or Bahston or even your, like, Valley Girl accents. If you say a character is from Boston, and you write “Let’s go park our cars down in the Harvard yard!” most readers will know how to hear those words. But if I write “When are you clowns going to learn not to fool around downtown?” would you know how that is supposed to sound in Pittsburghese? No? Well here is a primer for all of you non-Western Pennsylvanians. Listen to this, and then go back to Chapter 5 and re-read the dialogue spoken by the family who wants Christine “aht of dere yard” and Will Darnell, who warns Arnie not to “screw arahnd” with him.
Actually, now that I think of it, everyone in Christine should be speaking like that. I mean, they’re all from the Pittsburgh area, no?
There’s a nice moment — probably the only nice moment in the chunk of text that we read for today, Blog-o-weeners — where Dennis feels the passage of time and realizes that a chapter of his life is soon to end:
“By the time I had the mounted tire back in my trunk… the early evening light had become the fading purple of late evening. The shadow of each bush was long and velvety, and as I cruised slowly back up the street I saw the day’s last light streaming almost horizontally through the trash-littered space between the Arby’s and the bowling alley. That light, so much flooding gold, was nearly terrible in it strange, unexpected beauty.
“I was surprised by a choking panic that climbed up in my throat like dry fire. It was the first time a feeling like that came over me that year — that long, strange year — but no the last. Yet it’s hard for me to explain, or even define. It had something to do with realizing that it was August 11, 1978, that I was going to be a senior in high school next month, and that when school started again it meant the end of a long, quiet phase of my life. I was getting ready to be a grown-up, and I saw that somehow — saw it for sure, for the firs time in the lovely but somehow ancient spill of golden light flooding down the alleyway between a bowling alley and a roast beef joint, And I think I understood then that what really scares people about growing up is that you stop trying on the life-mask and start trying on another one. If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.” (44-5)
That’s probably the deepest emotion ever expressed in the shadow of an Arby’s.
I barely remember what I was feeling at the start of my senior year at Ambridge Area High School. It was probably some form of confusion. “Being a grown-up” was the furthest thing from my mind. It still is. (Which explains a lot about my current lot.) I think that if I could tell Dennis anything, it’s that “being a grown-up” doesn’t necessarily mean “learning how to die.” If anything, thanks to modern science’s penchant for finding new ways to extend human life, it’s probably more important than ever to keep trying on the life-mask — try on as many as you can with the time that you have. Remember, in the timeless words of Motorbooty magazine…
We only get a brief introduction to Will Darnell, but it’s a doozy, ain’t it? He’s only around for four and a half pages, but you get who the man is instantly: your run-of-the-mill mobster/grifter. The kind that every town has. He’s the guy who seems to know everyone worth knowing. He’s the guy who can find things for you… for a price. He’s the guy to track down, as Dennis mentions, if you wanted illegal fireworks for the Fourth. There are whispers that Darnell deals in stolen cars and other illicit activities more dangerous than contraband cherry bombs.
Somehow Arnie bringing Christine to Darnell’s does not bode well, does it, Blog-o-weeners?
And now we come to the most horrifying moment in the entire novel. I am not talking about Dennis’s nightmare — which is a jim-dandy. Is there anything worse than being trapped in a dream where something — a car, a dog, a bear, a shark, a falling building, etc. — is coming at you, and you can’t move, and you can’t move, and you can’t move? Ugh. As terrible as that is, it is nothing compared to what happens in this snippet of text:
“I turned the radio to FM-104, where the Block Party Weekend was continuing, and got Bob Segar and the Silver Bullet Band singing 'Still the Same.’ The serendipity was just a little too hideously perfect, and I dialed away to the Phillies game.
“The Phillies were losing. That was all right. That was par for the course.” (57)
Did you catch it, Blog-o-weeners? Did you see what fresh horrors Mr. Stephen “I just loves the baseball!” King introduced to the story? No? Then let me hip you to something, kiddies:
There is no way — NO FLIPPIN’ WAY! — that any teenager who lives a scant ten miles from Pittsburgh is going to give a frog’s fat ass about the Philadelphia Phillies. No way, Jose! Dennis Guilder is going to choose the Phillies over Dave Parker, over Jim Rooker, over WILLIE FREAKING STARGELL?!?!
Just how far east of Pittsburgh do you think Dennis lives, Mr. King? Do you think Philadelphia is just over the hill in the neighboring county? It’s on the other side of the for-cry-Pete state! It is 257 miles away. Boston is only 190 miles away from New York. By that logic, no one would care if someone was a Yankees fan in the middle of Red Sox Country, right Stevie? No one — and I mean NOOOOOOO OOOOOONNNEEEE! — in Pittsburgh would give two shits on a shingle about how the Phillies were faring. Jeepers, it’s like those morons from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia wrote this lunacy.
And what radio station would dare to broadcast a Phillies game in the Pittsburgh area? That little escapade would result in justifiable arson. There wouldn’t be a judge in the land who would hear the case, and if they did, there wouldn’t be a jury who would convict the mad-dog mob that took justice into its own hands and burned down that station. They had it comin’, coppers!
In 1978, the Pittsburgh Pirates finished second in the division, one and a half games behind the Philadelphia Phillies. (So, maybe Dennis is a fair-weather fan. Which makes me hate him even more.) The following year, 1979, the Pirates won their division (fourteen games ahead of your beloved Phillies, Guilder, so put that in your pipe and smoke it!), knocked off the Cincinnati Reds for the pennant, and, thanks to the pulsing disco beat of Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family,” won the World Series over the Baltimore Orioles.
And you’re telling me Dennis Guilder would rather side with a bunch of people who booed Santa Claus? They booed Santa Claus, for the love of Mike!
I think I need to pull over for a little while, Blog-o-weeners. Get out of the car and cool my jets. In fact, why don’t we all do that? Tomorrow is Sunday, so let’s take our first “Free Day” of the season. There's no reading for yinz to do tonight. Instead, I'll wax fantastic on the roles teenagers and cars (and teenagers in cars) have played in the culture.
You know… I think the fresh air is doing me good. The red mist is lifting, and I’m beginning to see things more clearly. Maybe I’m being too hard on ol’ Stevie King. Maybe I should relax and hear him out. After all…
