The engine block of my Toyota cracks as I’m driving south on I-35. I’m on my way to pick my daughter up from school so I can take her to her birthday party at McDonald’s. Having just passed the Oltorf exit, the strange clicketa-clicketa-click that I’ve noticed coming from the front of the car since I took off has gotten louder, and now there’s thick black smoke pouring out from under the hood. Thick black smoke, like a darker version of the stuff you see spewing forth from Aladdin’s lamps in various cartoons; except that, from the way this stuff looks, the resultant genie would probably, instead of granting three wishes, rip the limbs off your body and feed them to you one by one. Not the sort of thing that invites continued driving.
I stop the car on the highway’s shoulder, pop the hood, and peer into the oil-spattered cavity that my mechanic will later diagnose as, “It’s all over for this one, buddy.”
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Maybe it’s the coincidence of those sevens that makes this day turn out to be so surreal. Or maybe it’s just that, as the bumper stickers say, Shit Happens.
I gather up the few things of value in the car, stash them in my jacket’s copious pockets, and hoof it to the nearest pay phone. Several punched digits later, I’ve informed my daughter’s mother that I won’t be able to pick the kid up from school although I swear I’ll somehow get to the birthday party, and I’ve informed my girlfriend that my car has given up the ghost and that life generally sucks and I’m going to be a miserable excuse for a human being later this evening, be forewarned. I hang up the phone and head off down the road.
Oltorf Avenue, at least from I-35 to where it runs into Lamar, is not the most inspiring stretch of urban conduit; neither is it the least. It’s a road like any other city road, really, with its share of things both cool and lame on either side. But it doesn’t really matter: The condition of its sidewalks or its lack thereof, the neighborhoods through which it passes, the number of motorized cretins who honk at you for reasons that, while probably ill-conceived, you’ll never really know — all of that is irrelevant. Because whatever road you’re walking down, right after your car has died and you don’t have the money for a new or even a used car, and you already owe your family several hundreds of dollars, and you’re seemingly stuck in a dead-end food service job at age 35 while your 10-years-younger girlfriend is beginning her sprightly climb of corporate America’s success ladder, and it’s the seventh birthday of your only child who’s growing like the proverbial weed but still not old enough, yet, to realize what a sorry-ass loser you are. … Well, whatever road you’re walking down then is going to be the uncompromised equal of any major thoroughfare in Hell.
And after a few miles of sunbaked self-loathing intermingled with generous helpings of self-pity, I walk into the High Time coffeehouse on South First. And it turns out that, as usual, I know most of the people gathered around the bar; and at least half of them are people I’d be all grins about if I met them in any circumstance; as it is, I feel as if I’ve stumbled into an oasis in the midst of some globe-spanning Desert of Loneliness. And I allude — rather jovially, I’m hoping — to my sudden car-lessness. And I mention that I need to get to a miles-away McDonald’s for Angelica’s birthday. Much sympathy and advice is offered. And beautiful Merrit, who works behind the bar and who I for chrissakes don’t even know outside that context, this Merrit offers me the use of her car. And it’s just too much to bear, her unmitigated kindness, so I demur with the excuse that the rest of the journey is a sort of penance I must undertake — like Robert DeNiro’s character in The Mission carrying his dead brother’s armor up the face of the waterfall cliffs … or something.
But there’s also this guy Mark, who used to work at the cafe where I’m still employed, sitting nearby. And we haven’t seen each other for over a year, and I don’t even remember his last name, but he offers to drive me to the McD’s because he’s leaving soon anyway. And that I do accept.
And so half an hour later, I’m there: in the place where capitalism slams fistfirst into cuisine. In the place where profits have been recently increased through the use of a clever national TV campaign — for which I provided one of the voiceovers.
This is where the surreality begins to set in.
I’m sitting in this McDonald’s, the first one I’ve been in since I did the commercial, and it’s giving me a weird feeling. I’m early, the first partier to arrive, and the place is almost empty. Except for one bald and well-shaved individual in clean bright clothing, and a couple of guys who appear to be part of Austin’s homeless population, the only other humans are in uniforms and doing routine things to bland food products on the far side of the counter.
This particular McDonald’s is, it seems, a sort of temporary haven for the homeless. At least, it provides cover during inclement weather, when it’s less comfortable for them to congregate under the railroad overpass at the nearby art center. And the weather — a steady drizzle from the darkling sky since before I left High Time — has been pretty inclement. In fact, it’s because of this weather that, after a few kids have arrived and begun gallivanting, the junior manager or whatever steps forward and informs us that the door to the McDonaldland Playground must remain locked. Because, he explains, fumbling with the pathetic little mustache that seems to be a sort of facial-hair requirement among McDonald’s junior managers, because, he says, the water on various items of playground equipment renders those items too dangerous to play on. Insurance requirements and so on. Certainly we understand?
Well. This information does not go uncontested. Oh, the kids and the other parents and I take it pretty much in stride, sure. But the bald and well-shaved individual in the clean bright clothing, the one with the smile like the smile of an engine block about to crack? This guy is perturbed. Vocally so.
“I wouldn’t stand for that,” he says loudly, addressing himself, for reasons still unclear, to me. “I wouldn’t stand for that,” he says, as the junior manager heads behind the counter. “I’d demand use of that playground. For the kids, I mean. Playground’s for kids; what difference does a little water make, huh? What difference does it make?”
“Well,” I tell him, trying to keep things all nice and smooth, “they gotta protect themselves, I guess. From lawsuits and all, right?”
He scowls. “I wouldn’t stand for it,” he says again, and turns back to his McBurger.
And more kids and parents arrive, flooding the place with noise and activity. And of course there’s the entrance of the birthday girl herself. Who greets me with a huge smile and a hug and something along the lines of, “Hi, Dad! I’m so glad you’re here! Where are my presents?”
And then the party really takes off.
There are kids running wild, there are parents mixing and mingling, everything is cacophony and multicolored motion, as if the McDonald’s were under attack by some chattering midget army and their larger, slightly addled generals. And I’m in the midst of it, a bit dazed, trying to help Angelica’s mother organize things like Happy Meals and table arrangements and such. And one of the two homeless guys has left, and the remaining homeless guy is walking slowly around the party, kind of skulking through the tumult — so I’m keeping one eye peeled in his general direction. And eventually he notices me noticing, and he sidles up alongside me like one spy making contact with another. “Hey,” he says in a conspiratorial whisper, “I left some money for you on that table over there.”
This guy looks amazingly like Dale Gribble from King of the Hill. He’s wearing a camouflage-patterned jumpsuit and military boots and he even has the reflective aviator glasses like Dale. But there’s a stench coming from him that’s not at all cartoonlike, and he moves like he’s had a rough week or so on the streets: the kind of guy who needs you to give him money.
I look at him like he’s out of his mind. “What?” I say.
“I didn’t like the way the kids weren’t allowed to use the playground,” he says, glancing cautiously over his shoulder. “I didn’t think that was right. So I left a couple of bucks for you on that table over there.” He gestures across the room to where, sure enough, there’s a dollar and some change piled next to a forgotten bag of fries.
“Hey, man,” I say, “You didn’t have to do that. I don’t need any money. Everything’s, you know, taken care of.”
He brings his face close to mine and places one unsteady hand on my shoulder. I get the feeling that, behind those shades, he’s looking deep into my eyes. “I wanted to give you that money,” he says slowly, seriously. “Because of the playground.”
He stands there, hand on my shoulder, breathing on me, waiting.
“Uh, okay,” I reply at last, giving him a smile of what I hope he understands to be reassurance. “Thanks, man. Thanks a lot.”
He smiles tightly, releases my shoulder, and shuffles out the door. I look around the room, checking to see if any of the other parents have caught this bizarre exchange. And I meet the eyes of the bald and well-shaved individual who seems to have witnessed the whole thing from his seat near the window. He holds my gaze for a few seconds, then nods. He nods the way I imagine a postal worker might nod after reaching the decision to return with an Uzi after lunchbreak. And he gets up, this freaky bald guy. He gets up, exits the building, and heads across the parking lot toward a big white van.
I’m standing there, surrounded by a froth of children, some of whom I know, one of whom I love, and I’m watching this whacko in the parking lot rummaging around inside his van, and I’m thinking: Uh-oh.
And the guy leaves the van and starts walking back to the party. And he’s doing something strange with his hands at his mouth.
Well, what he’s doing, actually … what it turns out that he’s doing … he’s blowing up a balloon. But not just any balloon, mind you, not just some garden-variety sphere of latex that you might pick up at the 7-11, but a strange and bumpy balloon that’s fast reaching the dimensions of a well-fed python, an enormous warped sausage of a balloon that’s purple with yellow stripes and white swirls and all manner of polychrome dingbats, a balloon that could’ve doubled — believe it — as a French tickler for Paul Bunyan.
From this guy’s mouth comes a Balloon of the Gods.
“Here,” he says, grinning, handing me the monstrous tube. “You gotta punch the air down to the end and then finish blowing it up after that. Less likely to pop that way.” He stretches out another piece of bright rubber, passes it to me. I hand the full balloon to one of the kids who’ve gathered around, goggle-eyed, and I start carefully blowing up the second balloon.
And the bald guy goes back out to his van, and comes back again, and this time he’s got two handfuls of these balloons. He slaps them down on the table next to me. “There ya go!” he says, grinning.
“Hey,” I tell him, “You don’t have to do this. That’s … hey, that’s really kind of you. Thanks a lot.”
“My pleasure,” the guy says.
“Can I give you some money for those? I mean, hell, they look like pretty expensive balloons.”
“Naw,” he says. “I sell these things on street corners, it’s how I make my living. But, you know, I just like to see kids happy. When kids are happy, I’m happy. You’ve got a good party going here. If they can’t have that playground, they might as well have some balloons.”
He looks around a bit, grinning, then leaves.
I commence inflating a dozen balloons. Children boil around me like piranhas around a side of beef. Balloons fly madly through the air. The noise level goes to 11.
My mind is not actually swimming, at this point. At this point, my mind is merely considering the dog-paddle.
“Wayno,” says my kid’s mother. I used to like the way she called me Wayno; now it, among innumerable other things, is a source of irritation.
“Don’t call me Wayno,” I tell her.
“We need to set things up for the cake,” she says.
“The cake,” I say. “Right. The cake.”
So we group the tables together to form one long table, and we get the kids sitting around this Frankensteined surface, and we set the cake up with its seven little candles, and we sing “Happy Birthday,” and Angelica blows out the candles, and everybody’s smiling, and I start to feel like I’m in the middle of an outtake from any of several John Hughes movies.
“Wayno,” says Angelica’s mother from the other side of the table. “Do your McDonald’s thing.”
Visions of justifiable homicide flash through my mind. We’ve already discussed this shit. “No,” I tell her. “I’m not going to do it.”
“Aw, c’mon,” she wheedles. “You promised.”
“I did not promise. I said there was no way in hell.”
“Aw, c’mon,” she says again. “It’s your daughter’s birthday. It’d make her so happy.”
I look at Angelica. She’s looking up at me, imploringly. In cahoots, I think, she’s in cahoots with her mother.
“C’mon, Dad,” pleads my daughter. Does she bat her eyelashes at me? I don’t recall now, but I wouldn’t bet against it.
“Angelica,” I say. “Listen –“
“Please?” Bat, bat. “Oh please?” Bat, bat, bat.
“Okay,” I say, relenting. “Okay,” I say, figuring this will be a way I can atone for having a dead car, for not being able to live with her mother, for having so far acquired less money and security and social prestige than the father of, say, Michael Dell’s kids. “Okay,” I say, “I’ll do the McDonald’s thing.”
“Yay!” says Angelica.
“Kids,” says Angelica’s mother, addressing the gathered kinder the way she probably addresses the third-graders she teaches for a living, “Angelica’s father did a commercial for McDonald’s that you may have seen on your television.” She actually says that: “That you may have seen on your television.”
“He did the voice for it,” she continues, as if breathlessly. “See if you recognize it.” She looks at me, waves her hand. “C’mon, Wayno,” she whispers.
“Don’t call me Wayno,” I whisper back.
“C’mon, Dad,” says Angelica, again — I swear — again with the eyelashes.
“Okay,” I tell the kids. “There are words appearing on the screen like it’s a sheet of paper, and there’s the sound of a typewriter typing away. Like I’m writing something, right? And I say: `The Night Was Dark and Stormy — No, That’s Not It.’ And the sheet of paper is ripped away, and there’s more typing, and I say: `It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Worst of Times.'”
I pause and look down at all the tiny faces looking up at me, their eyes wide. “And then my wife says she’s going to McDonald’s, and I say: `Did Somebody Say McDonald’s?'”
“I saw that commercial!” shrieks a little girl standing next to my daughter. “I did! I saw it on Fox!”
Great, I think, she saw it on Fox.
“I saw it too!” screeches another kid.
“Me too!”
A few of the parents are staring at me as if I’ve just stepped off a flying saucer.
“What else?” says Angelica’s mother. “Tell them the rest of it.”
“And then I describe the Homestyle Burger,” I continue, on total autopilot now, “and my wife comes home and I say: `And That’s All She Wrote.'”
“I saw it on Fox!” bleats the precocious little gamin again.
The Dale Gribble-looking guy, I notice, has been standing outside the front window all this time, watching. He salutes me sharply and moves on.
This is the point at which my mind begins to actually swim.
This is also the point at which I feel another hand on my shoulder. I turn around slowly, reluctant to greet whatever fresh hell may be waiting.
It turns out to be Bill Ivey.
Bill Ivey, one of my oldest friends. Bill Ivey, who I used to know in Orlando before I moved to Austin, before he moved to Austin, before there was a daughter or a daughter’s mother or a McDonald’s commercial or a cracked engine block or so much other water under so many bridges.
Bill Ivey, who I haven’t seen for months.
“Hey,” says Bill. “You wanna sit down?”
I follow him to a booth. We sit, facing each other across the grease-spotted tabletop. “So,” he says. “How you been doing? You looked a little out of it, back there.”
“How have I been doing?” I glance at the surrounding hubbub, the continuing party, Angelica’s seven-year-old face beaming among the other beaming young faces. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” I say, giving Bill a weary smile. “Let me tell you about my car.”
This article appears in September 18 • 1998 and September 18 • 1998 (Cover).