Chapter Five
Destruction and defiance
It was Monday morning and I had to go to god-forsaken school again. I hate this place! After the warm springlike week that I had spent driving around with Kathy, winter turned its cold-hearted attention to us once again. A cold front came through during the night and it was just about zero degrees this morning. I walked out to my Dodge where it was parked around the back lot of our apartment complex. I began parking it back here ever since it was given to me in early December. Identity, I guess.
As I walked across the frozen ground down the grass hill, the Dodge came into view. I saw frost on the windows, or at least this is what I thought it was at first. The reality of the scene began to warp and distort in my mind. Comprehension began to break down. It was like my vision twisted. I felt the bitter cold penetrate my clothing and a different sort of cold hit me. At this moment something changed before my eyes, in my mind, and in my life. Suddenly the image of my car itself twisted and distorted but became then crystal clear. It was actually sitting very low on the ground and the frost on the glass edges was not frost at all. My car had been beaten brutally. There she sat in a pool of broken glass and all four tires were cut and flattened. It was a feeling of violation like I had never known before. I did not have much, yet this simple vehicle was my salvation from Waterbury and now Waterbury had destroyed her.
Anger surged through me! I turned back toward the house and I swore blatantly in front of my Mother as I entered the kitchen. This was not something that I would normally do but these were not normal times. Mom understood.
School was no longer an option. I called my uncle Brian. I had seen Brian a couple of months ago and he and I carved out what I believed to be a gentleman's agreement to assist the other in times of need. He said that he was on his way with tires and a floor jack.
I also called the police. This was undoubtedly a severe waste of time. Oh, sure, the officer showed, but this was it. A car was vandalized in the city of Waterbury, Connecticut!!! How is this possible!!!???
Time passed by slowly. I drank coffee with my mother as I waited for Brian to arrive. The Dodge sat in frozen ruins in the back lot. The highs today might reach 20 degrees the radio said. It would also be windy. Winter was back.
Brian and my Grandfather arrived in my Grandfather's Ford station wagon. I did not know that my Grandfather was coming, but I was not disappointed to see him there. We removed two tires and brought them to Goodyear where Margie's step-dad Brian worked. Brian was very quick to help just as he always was. Brian was visibly disappointed to see what had happened. He knew that this was only a car, but he knew what it meant to me. This was my first car. This is a catastrophic event for me. This was the car that was due to carry me to Texas later this year. Later this year! Time was ticking away. March was now upon us June was now only three months away. The sight of my destroyed vehicle made it very hard to believe that it could really ever shuttle me to my new life in three months.
Brian mounted the two tires, a couple of bias-ply snow tires my Grandfather had in the garage. We went back to the car, removed the next two flat tires, and then brought them to Goodyear to be replaced by a couple of used radials from my grandfather's garage.
Getting the tires on the vehicle was only the beginning of the task. After work at Goodyear, Brian came over and checked out the car. He told me that there was a junkyard in Oakville that had a windshield for forty dollars. This, at the time, was a lot of money for me. My weekly checks were about sixty-six dollars from work.
My stepfather took me down to the Waterbury Police Station. He demanded that something be done. They just gave him the "what do you want us to do about it treatment." They affirmed that although I may be a hard-working eighteen-year-old who does not cause trouble, many cars are demolished in this city each day and that most of the bitter dealers of such abuse are never apprehended.
He told the police that he suspected Sherry's ex-boyfriend was responsible. It turned out, that the guy lived in an adjacent apartment building to our own and could clearly see Sherry's car at our house back in January, then me following her home and staying till morning. All of this is circumstantial to something more going on. They wanted proof, which there was none, despite it being a perfect motive. My stepfather even called Sherry to ask if he was capable of this. Evidently, there was a history of this sort of retaliation, but when she called him, he claimed to know nothing about it.
We returned home with no hope of action. I looked out the window at my frozen and crippled car in the dark and malevolent world of Waterbury, Connecticut. If I hated Waterbury before, it was petty compared to the detestation that I now held for it. I decided that Vicki-Lynn may still be vulnerable. Vicki_lynn was what I named my first car. Lynn Nettleton, 1st girl I ever asked on a date in Torrington, and Vicki Magro, a girl I dated after Margie, whom I made a promise to name my first car after. I went out and drove her over to the far end of the housing complex and hid her the best I could. My dilemma was clearly that my opponent was hidden from me. I felt certain I knew who did this, but I needed more.
I spoke to Brian on Tuesday. He instructed me to pick up the windshield today and he would come over to help me install it later on after work. I went to the junkyard and walked out back with the operator, a guy about forty years old and glasses with wild curly hair. He cut the windshield out with a utility knife. We placed it in the back of my mother's Chevy wagon. Little did I know it but this car we took the windshield out of would be the source of many enhanced parts for my car before we became residents of Texas.
That evening Brian came over and for nearly an hour he tried to install the windshield. Windshields in 1972 were installed by inserting a thin rope in the outer edge of a thick rubber gasket. I imagine that this is pretty easy on a hot summer day. This was not that. Icy winds screamed, blowing snow all around us and the rubber on the gasket resisted with the end result, Brian telling me he would think of something else.
Wednesday came and it was still winter. Hell came to Waterbury Sunday night and I felt imprisoned. My mother drove me to school each day this week. I felt broken as if I actually had lost an arm or leg.
As the week continued everything felt so desolate. Currently, my car is hidden, but I cannot hide forever. I made a decision, I was going to move 3 towns away to Bristol to my grandfather's house. Thursday night, I told my stepfather that I was moving to Bristol. He was angry. He argued that I was running away from my problems. "If I knew who did this to me", I told him, "I could confront this person and settle the matter and life would return to normal. That is not possible." He told me that I was fleeing at the first sign of trouble. I told him that my reason was practicality. On my part-time salary, I could not endure a second hit. "Will you buy the next set of tires and glass for me if this should happen again?!" That hit home. He would not do that. I was speaking in terms that he could understand, money. It was settled then, I was going.
On Friday I stayed out of school because Brian had a new plan. He told me to drive the Dodge, without a windshield to a glass company a couple of miles down the road from Goodyear. Over all this would be about a 7-mile drive. Driving a car without front glass at 30 degrees would not be something I would wish to ever do again.
Brian had so many friends. He was in the repair business his whole life and did things for people all of the time. He was the kind of guy who could call in a favor and the backing he got was incredible. The guys at the shop took my windshield and still yet another new gasket and with four of them pounding on the outside and one pulling ropes from the inside, successfully installed it. I could hardly bear to watch since they told me there was a chip in the glass and that it would most likely break. Fortunately, it did not break.
The windshield was in, and although I had a long way to go, it was drivable. The back window was covered in plastic and duct tape. The driver's window was done in the same fashion. Broken glass was all over the inside of the car. I went to vacuum it out at the Merit Station. I must admit, I still felt vulnerable and realized that my freedom really seemed to rely on the well-being of my car. The world was now a more untrustworthy place to live. My awareness was acute now. I headed to my house and gathered my things. I was moving to Bristol to live with my grandfather and uncle Brian.
The person who saw fit to take my car down was not man enough to face me. He was concealed behind some unknown shadow of purpose which he felt important, not to reveal to me. I knew for sure this had been some sort of retaliation. I could not prove who the person was and what it was that I had done to cause this reaction. Sherry's ex-boyfriend was the best lead I had, but I did not even know what this guy looked like.
Over the next few weeks, my naive self gave way to an awareness. I was sure at different times I was being followed. Each time it happened, I would reroute my driving to smoke it out and once that proved true, I would make moves that would cause the person to know that I knew I was being followed and they would inevitably fall away. One Saturday, I was walking into Toys R Us after lunch on a long day working at the store. Two guys pulled up in a red and white square-body 1970s blazer. "Hey, punk!" I heard behind me, I turned around and walked to the blazer. "What?" I was eye to eye with the guy in the passenger seat. I had never met Sherry's ex-boyfriend, nor had I even heard a description of him. But, I knew, this was him. His eyes looked into me like he was searching for the truth. "We saw you walking around at the edge of the parking lot around those cars. I had a vehicle vandalized a couple of weeks ago over there. We were thinking you were messing with them."
In his own way, he was introducing himself to me and was looking for a status update. "No, I work here, I have to park over there. But, listen, I sympathize with you. Someone did the same thing to me a few weeks ago. Dirtbags couldn't even face me, had to mess with my only car in the middle of the night." He just looked at me quietly, searching again. "I have to get back to work," I told him. "I hope you find out who did this to you, it really sucks." As I turned, he called after me, "Hey kid! I am sorry I called you punk, I apologize."
After that encounter, there was no more feeling of being followed. Obviously, he was satisfied that what he thought was happening with his ex-girlfriend never happened at all. I spent the next 3 months before moving to Texas living in Bristol, but going to school in the swill that is Waterbury. In late 1986, I attended a dinner at Sherry and her new husband's house in Farmington Connecticut. I learned that night that after I moved to Texas, she had taken that ex-boyfriend back for a time. During this time, he admitted that it was he who had vandalized my car. He told her that he really regretted doing it after he met me. Whatever that was worth, I guess at least I had closure.
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