454Monte.com

I found what I thought were some truly great essays on The last refuge of a scoundrel.
All three are excellent, however to get the whole picture they should be read in order as the author takes the overhaul of a friends aging Suzuki motorcycle on.

The Suzuki Chronicles
His writing truly struck a chord with me and after a days mulling it over I sat down to write this post.

I look at my Monte or drive it some days and it “talks” to me in much the same way. I firmly believe in the notion that those of us that keep these old relics of a time gone by, or work to restore them to their former glory “hear” in frequencies others don’t. We “see” dimensions of the world in ways others can’t quite conceive. Our machines transcend mere transportation, or being simply a “hobby”. They truly “speak” to us.

I suppose some nay-sayers would deem us dreamers, or hopelessly old fashioned. But I think the reverse is true, those that would say such things are blind and deaf, they are not able to see beyond their own limited powers of observation, they are stuck in other lesser shallow dimensions.

As I write this, I am reminded of a morning this last trip home, when jet lagged, I couldn’t sleep, with the sun not yet up and the hushed world of 4 in the morning surrounded me. I sat on my steps looking at my car, sipping my coffee pondering it’s future. Suddenly seemingly with no thought, I was sitting inside her, just listening to her, fighting the overwhelming urge to turn the key, and listen to her wake up with a growl and greet the day. Surreal? maybe to some, but to me and those like the Scoundrel, not so much.

We spend untold countless hours, sweat, blood, and yes, sometimes tears working on our dreams & our visions for these mechanical beasts, and there seems to be always a question as to who is truly master of whom. There never seems to be a victor, but sometimes we find a truce in the war between man and machine, and only then, once the truce is made, the results can be stunning.

A sibling who tends to be jaded and somewhat bitter at times once remarked to me “god that car’s ugly”, as I labored over a 1969 Valiant I was restoring, and I felt a flare of heated anger at her, I wanted to really lay into her. She might as well have said the same about my wife.
I would guess that the car in question had once belonged to her ex must of caused her hatred for it, but where she saw only pain and a rusted hulk, I saw promise & I heard the seductive whispers of a piece of history long lost in a world of cheap plastics, and shallow character. Sadly enough I never had the chance to finish that one, and I sold it.

I wonder where that car is now, even still some 24 months later. Did it ever reach it’s potential? Did the new owner put the effort into it and return it to its former glory? Is it sitting in a garage somewhere waiting for the day to come where it can stretch it’s legs once more and gobble up a stretch of blacktop? Or did he give it up as an impossible task and it now sits in a bone yard rusting away, and like the Suzuki it’s now weeping tears of oily sadness?

To some a shiny new sports car or a gleaming new motorcycle is a status symbol, a tool to flaunt wealth, prestige, power, and to attract attention. But who garners more respect in the eyes of the beholder if you set the two side by side at a red light, the sports car owner; or a guy that spent years restoring a car from ground up, leaving parts of his psych as blueprints in its resurrection? I think the latter.

Go read the Suzuki Chronicles.